Hopefully the scales will start to balance soon in favour of routes south of the river, so far compared to the huge announcements for the North, we have Sheerness extended and Richmond Mildmay. It would be good to start seeing more of a balance into Hampshire, Dorset, and Essex. Just an opinion, but it seems there is a huge Northern bias currently.
In fairness though we still have very little in Wales or the Marches, nothing in East Anglia or Lincolnshire. Scotland still needs a few more routes and crying out for a diesel hauled period line in the Highlands. LT/LUL has one token route. Newcastle and York are still missing. It was the case that even DTG themselves felt they had burned out the welcome for Southern Region (as it were) third rail routes, but yes they do need to head down into Wessex at some point.
That’s very true. I think the balance was acutely felt in this latest iteration of TSW. Thank god for Firefly is all I can say. I actually hope they morph into a Southern region only type dev
I've always thought the lines up to London Bridge/Charing Cross & Cannon Street from Dartford are ripe for making. There's a load of paths and the chance to Route Hop from SEHS. Bonus points if it's from the BR/NSE era.
Statistically, more of the UK is north of the Thames, compared to south of it. Therefore it's kind of expected there more TSW routes from north of it...
Also nothing in Ireland or (Northern Ireland if you want to stay within the UK). I would love to see some Southwest routes though.
I mean when you combine the entire rest of the country into one region, then yeah you would assume there’s a bias. We’ve had routes from the West, Midlands, North & South over the past year. Pretty good balance if you ask me. Definitely better than when we were getting only the South.
If you take a river in the south of the UK (asuming you're talking about the Thames) as baseline, yes then there will be more routes in the north. But there are also parts in the North unexplored, so I don"t see any bias. Also a missing license is a reason why parts of the south are missing, however it seems to be they now have aquired a license for Southern, so who knows what is next.
Technically, the GWR main line from Reading westwards is also south of the Thames as is the Berks and Hants towards Newbury and Westbury!
By this same logic, we have ZERO lines north of the Great Glen Fault. Nothing to Mallaig, Kyle, or Wick! There's a 100% bias to routes south of this arbitrary line I picked which divides a similar amount of Britain's landmass.
There are still quite a few routes south of the river though. West Cornwall Local, Atlantic Coast on the way, Riviera Line, Island Line (both versions), London Commuter, East Coastway, South Eastern High Speed, Medway Valley and the upcoming Sheerness Branch, certainly the South East is quite well covered. While there are still plenty of places like Hampshire/Dorset that would be great to finally have, there's also plenty of other places lacking like East Anglia, Wales, parts of the East Coast, parts of Scotland, no Irish routes etc.
