Train Sim World 2 - Western Glory

At the very least they should get rid of the ohle if it's trying to replicate the 70s

 

I guess rebuilt is to get them working with livery editor but there doesn't appear to be a difference. I mean at least they are gonna make preserved trains compatible with livery editor after they said they would not do that

 

I think a player should just buy ntp because they are not gonna get a feel of driving in a 70s route with this pack. NTP seems to have better value

 

The atmosphere of Paddington in the 70s was the opposite of bright, clean, shiny and colorful. More like dingy, grey, decrepit , peeling, shabby and depressing.

 

Sounds wonderful to me

 

Something that isn't modelled in the pack. Imagine if dtg did do that though. I must say though I would not want to be in London Paddington in the 70s if it had not so great conditions

 

Weren't most stations like that during the period, suffering the back-end of steam and the remains of the inevitable soot clouds Not that there's anything wrong with a good dose of soot...

Leeds station has undergone a number of disappointing revivals, and I feel its soul has been torn away.. Where there was soot we now have thick dust and the pigeon's last supper... :-| (I'm ignoring the numerous "re-builds")

One's shabby and depressing , is another's life and soul...

 

Shabby and depressing IS Leeds' life and soul.....

 

And it hurt Paddington especially badly, because the now-glorious train hall flooded with natural light through that glass roof was a dismal cave- since all the glass was caked with soot.

 

I also know some of the big US stations from the 60's up until the 80's had that issue massively. Old Penn Station was very dirty in its final years, Grand Central was the same during that time period, although that rather fortunately is still around and has seen far better days since then. Really the 60's to early/mid 80's was just kind of a bad time for rail travel in the UK and the US in general, at least Japan did alright.

 

Do you know it well?

It's northern, and it's supposed to be like that. ;-)

 

I can’t explain in detail but it was said on the live streams that it’s not the same model, it’s a new version. I know that for sure. Exactly what they have changed could only be explained by DTG. The original one wasn’t set up to be compatible with anything other than the coaches from WSR so there will have been changes to the ‘internals’ of the model for sure. The ‘externals’ will have been changed to be compatible with livery designer, that’s been said. Speculation, it may have been easier for them to start from a basic 3D mesh than to change so many things from the original finished model but I don’t know that for sure.

 

They almost never did that in TS Classic, only the HST ever got anything like that, and that was extremely recent. Even now pretty much every type from the Kuju era's still regularly include on newer routes. They have updates like interior lights and newer sounds, but hardly a ground up rebuild. If they haven't done that with those I have a hard time believing they'd do it with TSW engines, which hardly need new models. I always thought that they were just updating it to TSW2 standards, but with a new livery and nameplates, and from judging from the images I'd still think that.

 

That looks very nice but I would argue it is more 1980's esque

As I have said I often run older stock in TS1 on newer period routes and that you do forget about the route being more modern although that normally would involve a route which didn't have catenary.

They could have appealed to the casual gamer and the more serious enthusiast though and this is what I don't understand. Okay, they weren't going to produce a class 117, I was 95% certain they weren't even if it seem logical to me that they should. But, at lease supply a DMU which would be believable for the 1970's period and that is what they have failed on spectacularly.

Why not supply the TVL 101 3 car reskinned in blue, if they can reskin the Western they could reskin that I am sure? At least it would look almost right and after complaining I would have probably capitulated and bought it! As it stands they are claiming it is some kind of recreation of the GWML in the 70's, well no it isn't it has a mainline diesel in it's 1970's guise which was WR specific, a DMU in it's late 80's guise and class 08 which was based all over the country, basically there is one train which speaks Western region.

I am sure it will sell as there will be casual gamers who will love it and DTG will have ticked the box they wanted to tick and yet serious enthusiasts of the 1970's like me will be left wanting again, yet a bit more work might have got them extra sales! Maybe there just aren't enough of us.

 

The French did a great job beside the Japanese with the LGV in the 80's too.

 

This DLC is not about getting more diversity in content, but is is about creating the ability to add a complete new timetable to an existing route. I think this is an awesome additional feature. For instance, it makes it possible to create a Diesel Day at WSR or a day with no trains, but some freight for maintenance. It would make it it possible to set existing routes a bit backward or forward in time (though not much) For this DLC, it would be nice to get rid of all catenary at least. I am some someone can create a mod for that. Going further than this, would be much harder. I like the experiment though, but I probably will not put any money in this one.

 

I beg to differ, everything this DLC will do, we can do kinda, surely not an entire timetable, but we can recreate an experience with the scenario planner and community repaints. Looking at the screenshots they didn't even bother to make a 3 car version of the class 101, which didn't even run on this route as a standard, it was a very limited sub train, but DTG sees this opportunity to recycle content

 

Exactly, I thought I would not buy it... but since the release of the article I started to think about the 08 services (shunting passenger coaches is a very new and intriguing thing for me, particularly the turning around at Paddington) and the fact I'm supporting this kind of packs, which I think have a lot of potential, and is much better than telling us to use the scenario designer (which I hate).

If the price is right I might actually buy it, even if I am not really interested in BR stuff and I don't like GWE as a route.

 

I agree it is an awesome feature and I hope to see more. I would dearly love to purchase it as a fan of 1970's BR. However in my opinion they have executed it poorly as they could have partly created something which does what the article says it does and whilst not being 100% accurate would have been at least a bit believable. But marketing it as icons of the Western region is frankly wide of the mark and does not recreate the GWML in the 70's. well not for any serious enthusiasts anyway.

 

I do not know much about UK railway history, but I agree this DLC has not much to do with realism. As it does not have a lot to do with realism, it is good not even to attempt suggesting it has anything to do with realism. It may be fun to do the drives that it enables, but it probably is better not to buy it if you will feel annoyed about this lack of realism. I cannot feel disappointed about it as I do not care so much about realism at the level of which train actually did do services somewhere in a foreign country. If it represents a nice atmosphere it is OK for me. At the moment I am definitely not inclined to buy this route due to budget reasons (Clinchfield and Arosa coming as well as Ludmilla).

 

The Swedish 101, the Y7!

 

This is what I longed for after useless struggle with the Scenario editor.

 

I'll probably buy this pack. I don't know an awful lot about UK rail, so the authenticity factor is not relevant for me. But I like to drive older, loco-hauled trains and this represents another opportunity to do that. There aren't that many in the UK it seems to me. I'll probably ignore the dmu, I've never had to drive stick shift and I'm too old to start now. But I'm a sucker for any kind of switcher, so the 08 looks like fun. The whole package is something different for me, at least, reminds me of some of the old stuff from MSTS and earlier Railworks.

 

The metro north station platforms at grand central terminal are not great.

 

Recycle content to earn a quick buck in my opinion.

 

I have no problem with cleaning up and modernising the interiors of the big railway stations, but the unfortunate aspect of this trend in the US is the tearing down of some of the magnificent buildings that housed them, for example, Penn Station and the old C&NW Station. Thank goodness Grand Central and Union Station in Chicago are still standing, more or less.

 

But it's a significant investment to improve service, between the 60's and 80's, even the 90's to a degree, you would've never seen anyone put that type of money in to expand a station. Nowadays there are genuine efforts to improve and increase passenger service, this wasn't the case back then. The only things they improve back then were the locos at best, and even then that was with converted freight diesels like the F40PH. As much as a like those buggers they pretty clearly were only made because they were the cheapest way of replacing the worn out E & F units.

I'm not saying it's perfect by any means, but you can not deny that attitudes towards rail projects are way better then. Think about it, imagine trying to just propose something as costly as electrifying the Peninsula Corridor in the 70's given the attitudes that were common at the time. But look at where we are now, such a project was not only proposed but is nearly completed.

That was more of a 60's to 80's problem, it's not so much of a modern problem, there's a lot more effort put in to keeping these old buildings these days. Keep in mind Penn Station's demise is why we still have Grand Central, Penn Central tried to sell the air rights to it as well. It was saved because new laws were put in to prevent something like that from happening again due to the outrage from Penn Station's demolition.

 

Penn was demolished to make way for the ill-considered (new) Madison Square Garden project. Yale architectural historian Vincent Scully wrote of the crime, "One entered the city like a god; one scuttles in now like a rat."

St Pancras very nearly suffered the same fate.

 

Why shouldn’t they?
If it gives them a bit of easy profit for little work, leaving them more time and money to work on the bigger DLC’s- then I hope it does well.

 

The UK has suffered a litany of crimes against architecture since the late 50's leaving some of our historic cities, some of the most historic in the world with the medieval heart ripped out of them. Look at Gloucester and Worcester for examples, two of our most historic cities, walk round parts of them it is hard to believe that is fact. France and Germany seemed much better at preserving what was there. Look at the difference between Dresden and Coventry. One a beautiful historic city, one with a decaying 1950's city centre and most of its historic buildings gone.

The railways were no different, yes thankfully St Pancras was saved but we lost many gems, Birmingham Snow Hill being one of the most egregious examples. Yet they decided less than two decades later that they needed a station at Snow HIll after all and now we have the most soulless station one could imagine, it was clear to John Betjeman in the early 60's that this reliance on the car was already causing congestion and he feared for the decades to come, how right he was and how short sighted policy makers and planners were and still are.

Derby station was another, there was quite a lot of opposition to its demolition but in 1984 BR did just that.

Euston was another.

 

Auto-centric city development in the 60’s was an urban disaster for my hometown of Durham, NC, a mid sized USA city. The struggle to make downtown accessible for people instead of cars continues.

This magnificent station that once served 5 railroads was destroyed for a 4 lane downtown auto loop and a parking deck.



What madness!

 

Richmond's is still here, but its surroundings tell the story:


It serves two trains a day. Meanwhile, most services stop at Staples Mill Station, an inconveniently located suburban dump with all the charm of a 1960s-construction police precinct.

 

What you said makes me think of Andy Byford who was the President Of the MTA New York city Transit for a while. Governor Cuomo and him didn't really see eye to eye because the Governor wanted to modernize the system quickly but Byford wanted to improve service on buses and and trains. He would later resign which was a shame because he had good ideas to improve the Subways and buses in nyc but the Governor and him didn't see eye to eye. Improving service is more important than modernizing quickly

 

It is madness and now developers are trying to reverse the changes in many cases.

Such a shame, seems that politicians all over are short sighted or swayed by short term monetary gains.

They say a picture paints a thousand words!

 

To be fair though I could see why penn station was demolished. With the introduction of airplanes and more Americans owning cars, that reduced passenger numbers at Penn Station greatly because why wait several hours for a train or be on a cross country train from New York to California for several days when you could just go to JFK and fly by plane and get to your destination in 3 hours or fly from New York City to Washington D.C in 30 minutes compared to two-four hours on a train. Also Trains didn't run 24 hours all the time nor do they take you to your final destination so if you really needed to travel to your final destination you would buy a car. Also who doesn't love doing road trips If less people are gonna use a massive station you might as well free up space for other things like Madison Square Garden. I do like going to see the New York Knicks even though they are utter trash.

At least a new part of Penn Station was made and opened last month for LIRR and Amtrak riders which will help with overcrowding.

 

You would get more value out of NTP, TVL or WSR though compared to this pack. Heck the environment won't even look like the 70s

 

I was very surprised when I first found out Cumberland on SPG used to have a really epic station/hotel back in Baltimore and Ohio days. Also torn down and replaced by a... well... whatever Amtrak did...

 

The cumberland Amtrak station is in the game but it just doesn't have the Amtrak logos. I guess the station had less and less usage hence why part of it was torn down. Not to mention that the Amtrak Capitol Limited (which is the service that stops there and is the line that runs on SPG in real life) is not very frequent. I think you get 1-3 trains a day running along that line

 

I don't blame Amtrak for this. The building was demolished by B&O at the time Amtrak was being formed. I was just pointing it out as one of the losses of interesting stations. Apparently, by the time they destroyed it, it was the last "railroad hotel" in the US.

 

I know this is a little late, but i feel as though this pack could've been so much more if they had added more new content like for example adding a Class 117 would've been more appropriate as they were the actual DMUs that ran on this route and possibly maybe another train instead of the Class 08 could've been added to run express trains on the route and the 08 could've been added as a layer for those who own the BR Heavy Freight Pack or Tees Valley Line.

 

This was Richmond's other train station- fortunately, repurposed as a museum rather than demolished.

 

At least the Western Maryland Station nearby still stands.

 

I don't mean to spoil the party but I think a few of these posts are better suited for a separate thread. We're quite far away from the original topic of this thread now.

 

Somebody once quipped, "Since the Luftwaffe was unable to complete the destruction of England's cities, British architects pitched in to finish the job."

 

Looks like we might be getting a preview of this pack Friday night on the railfan TV live stream.

Edit: Changed the day to the correct one.

 

Friday 5th - Train Sim World 2: Diesel Legends with Matt & Sam

 

My bad. I read it wrong. Need my eyes testing, lol.

 

And on this day we shall see what is in store for all of us BR blue fans. We’ll see if they have changed the livery on the 101 to help us buy the pack. We’ll get to see what the timetable looks like, and if we we can accept the irregularities. Looking forward to it.

 

Intresting. The aviation industry really hurt rail travel in the u.s but at least the u.s has the best freight rail network in the world

 

That is a fair point but Adam didn't do proper research and it's most likely too late to fix the irregularities.