Just wow! What an amazing job the community have done at creating this brand new, action packed timetable for the ECML route. As you can see from the screenshots attached, the creators have made use of just about every bit of rolling stock we have in Train Sim World. We also have a variety of new liveries on the rolling stock, featuring Northern, TransPennine Express, LNER and Network Rail NMT HSTs, Freightliner and GBRf 66s, as well as much more! The freight yards in particular of full of wagons and engines, so no more empty looking yards. You can read more about this timetable, as well as download it from the link provided below. Great job, guys! Download here
I haven't driven Peterborough-Doncaster much since its release. It's not that there's anything wrong with the route, it's just that the traction in the era they chose is so uninspiring. They found an excuse to crow-bar in a single HST schedule, but it feels contrived. Once I'd driven that once in each direction (there's no real point in re-driving schedules you've already driven in TSW because it's guaranteed to be an identical drive due to the lack of any randomisation), and tried the Azuma and confirmed it was as dull as expected, I lost interest and never went back. This timetable gives the route a whole new lease of life. There's a decent collection of HST schedules (I wish they'd gone back a couple of years earlier so there could be more, but you can't have everything) and a really nice re-creation of an LNER HST. I had a set with 9 trailers, and it reminded me of many happy days of window-hanging HSTs from the 1980s to the 2000s. At full power the speedometer needle crawled slowly around the big dial as we gathered speed. The physics proved impressively accurate (credit to DTG for that), maintaining a realistic 112mph up the long 1 in 200 gradient to Stoke summit, touching 125mph down the other side before the sigh of the brakes and the scorched-resin smell of heated brake pads (that bit may possibly have been my imagination) as we brought speed down for Grantham. Then back to full power, more fast running before the flat crossing at Newark, the thrill of 125mph through Retford, negotiating the approach control into Doncaster, and a 15 second early arrival. It was one the best TSW experiences I've had for a long time. Lots of traffic with a variety of motive power - passing another HST and several Azumas at a 250mph closing speed - DMUs around, and the yards nice and full. It all felt busy and alive. My only suggested improvement is it would be great to have the option to drive HSTs on some Class 91 schedules. They used to cover 91 diagrams from time-to-time and were capable of just about keeping time if driven hard. It would be an interesting challenge to have that opportunity in TSW. A huge thank you to all involved in creating this timetable, for their talent and hard work - the result is fantastic. It works 'out of the box' and I'd recommend it to everyone.
That is quite interesting, I would've thought it would be pretty easy for the HSTs as from what I've read the HSTs were generally a fair bit quicker at the lower end of the speed curve as a result of the 91s gearing for 140 mph (I wonder why they never re-geared them for 125 mph for better acceleration, especially when the 458 was re-geared to 100 mph even though it was known they would only be around for a fee years at most!!) but the 91s would just beat them to 125 mph.
I haven’t studied the logs for a while, but from memory the crossover point at which the 91 would ‘overtake’ the HST was about 80mph. Given the high speed nature of the ECML, that gave the 91 quite an advantage. On the East Coast’s long 1 in 200 gradients the 91 could hold 125mph whereas the HST, as noted above, balanced out at about 112mph. When running on 91 schedules, the HSTs were basically using up the recovery time in the schedule through their inferior performance. So it worked, providing they got a clear run. I remember when running both 91s and HSTs in the timetable (which was most of the lifespan of the 91s, as HSTs were still needed for journeys beyond the wires) the HSTs tended to have schedules with fewer stops, so that they didn’t become ‘road blocks’ slowing down the whole railway. As a result, some of the scheduled start-to-stop times with the highest average speeds were actually HSTs, not 91s.
I don't usually like high-speed routes like ECML, but I have to admit I appreciate the journey with this new timetable Here are some photos I took:
