Hi all I’d like to suggest the following route. Set across the fens this route starts in the historic city of Cambridge heading West towards Peterborough and the connection the East Coast Main line. Starting at Cambridge the route takes heads out towards Ely. Arriving after about 10miles you’re greeted by the site of Ely cathedral sat proudly on the hill as well as riverside scenery. With the choice of heading into Norfolk or Cambridgeshire we continue west towards the welney wash. Welney wash is a huge flood plain where your progress will slow as you travel along it’s bank and bridges looking down on the flooded or not flooded (seasonal variation opportunity here TrainSim-Matt ) at around 40mph due to the line condition. Reaching Manea this small village station with limited services to pick up commuters and shoppers. They squeeze on among the suitcase Tetris on board as people use this line travelling to and from Stansted. We continue another 10 miles towards March. On route we pass a class 66 hauling freight. It’s possible it stopped at whitemoor yard, once one of the largest Marshall yards reclaimed by Whitemoor prison and network rails recycling centre. There once stood a traction maintenance depot here when diesel ruled. As we pull out of March we see run past the branch line running 8 miles to Wisbech. Heading across the fields we run past factories heading on our way to Whittlesey, another small usage station. Here we pass Kings Dyykkee (had to spell this incorrect as the forum changes it to love, only one of each letter please) brickworks on either side of us, looking down into the quarries. We’re getting close to Peterborough now breaking through the residential areas and large warehouses. As we slow we look down from our elevated position at posh football ground as we head across the river Nene into Peterborough’s 6 station platform and the ECML. Sat in the station is the new Azuma leaving for kings cross as a class 700 pulls in next to us. I think this would be a lovely smaller route which opens various scenery. Early 80s snapshot gives you a huge Marshall yard, newer still gives you the recycling plant. I’d love it to link to a longer ECML but appreciate the work. I’ll load some pictures below I found online but hope you enjoyed the read
Cambridge Railway Station. Wiki link - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_railway_station You also have Cambridge North which is a brand new commuter stop
And finally Peterborough - hopefully this shows a good variety to everyone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterborough_railway_station I believe there used to a be a lot of Royal Mail trains come through which i'm led to believe this walk way is for. I recall as a kid there used to be lots of small motorised carts with about 7-8 trailers full of sacks on them. Now these bridges are used for commuters and bikes/suitcases to use. This station also links in I believe with Railworld and the Nene Valley historic rail line too.
The only train to Peterborough from Cambridge is cross country which only calls at Ely then Peterborough Greater anglia run trains from Ely to Peterborough which only have 5 stations between them EMR only call at Ely and Peterborough And a freight train from Peterborough to Ely There wouldn’t be a lot services on this route and would only have like 36 mins driving them
Opportunity there to extend the branch lines or include the service through to Stamford etc. services seem longer too based on today’s data
I would like to see this, there are some interesting places on this route and mechanical signalling still I believe. A modern period would be okay but personally preferably set in the 70's and 80's, DTG already have a couple of items of suitable stock, I am sure you can guess one of them!
