40% off in DTG June sale. Can anyone recommend this route and why? Will possibly be 50% or more later on this year!!!
Not a route for everyone, but I'd recommend it in a general sense, the biggest reason I'd say is the hilly nature of it. A lot of US routes have very consistent grades, so you're either going up or down for long periods of time without much change. This route however constantly goes up and down all the time, so you can't just leave your train at one setting for extensive periods of time, which makes it a surprisingly active drive compared to other routes, like Sherman Hill or Canadian Mountain Passes for example. I would also say it's very well made in general, now the scenery itself isn't the most thrilling, this part of the world is largely miles of farmland, so doesn't have tons of interesting landmarks or anything. Now with that said it does a good job at representing this part of the world, said farmlands have lots a foliage, you don't have distracting out of place neon green grass, or other pitfalls that other routes tend to have, at least from what I remember.
I recommened this route too. For 40% absolutely. It´s a fast track for freight and some little passenger, but mostly freight. Trackspeed up to 60mph for passenger I believe around 75mph. So definitely not a route such as Feather River, or Hanover Subdivision with its very slow speeds. The scenery is special because the landscape is lot of farmland - a lot of farmland - have I said it: very much farmland, but the used weather in sceanrios gets a superb great feeling of expanse of Montana. AI traffic also included in Quickdrive. For the mood I hear country music (for example Country 108 ). There are two, three little bugs, but overall accetable. And for more fun, on steam you can get an additional Scenario Pack, and in the workshop (or webpage from the builder?) there´s a backdated version.
I really love that route because it is not the tipical slow mountain pass, I find that mountain routes are really over-represented in US freight routes for TS. Here you can run at top speed for long distance. The only BIG issue I find is that sometimes in the middle of literally nowhere the fps drops to 2-5 and it remains like that for several minutes, but I never heard of that problem for someone else so it must be my installation problem
I too enjoy Montana Hi Line for its tricky grade changes to catch you out. EDIT - the route really does give you the impression of wide open farmland which seems quite realistic, even though I've never visited. I can't recall such a severe FPS drop (it may just be Nacho's issue), I'll try and observe when on my next run.
Sorry Nacho, didn't experience such a lengthy FPS drop when playing the Westbound Manifest scenarios (2 parts - quite long runs). I cannot recall ever having the FPS stay so low for minutes on end. I get the stutters etc. when a new section is loaded in, nut nothing like you describe.