What Steam Routes Would You Like To See Come To Tsw3?

Train is from West Germany therefore DB BR 10 fits RRO RSN HRR Schnellfahrstrecke Köln Aachen Main Spessart Bahn and Hamburg Lübeck 1957-1977 when West Germany phased out Steam locomotive

 

1945-1950

 

New Hope and Ivyland Railroad. The railroad is an 18 mile tourist railroad that operates on the former Reading Railroad's New Hope Branch from New Hope to Warminster PA. Most tourist trains operate a 45 minute trips to Lahaska and there are some speical services that run on the line serving Buckingham, PA. There is also a short line freight service. This route would be set in the present. The steam loco on this route is engine number 40 an ex lancaster and chester railroad engine from south carolina. The of the fleet is diesel locos.

 

Nice I suggested the Durango and silverton or the Denver and rio grande western with the k-36 k-37 and k -28

 

I know this thread is a bit old now but regardless, here is my own steam route suggestion. I know someone else already suggested a route on IOW, but this one takes a very different approach. This would be titled:

Isle Of Wight Network

This route would essentially be all lines on the Isle Of Wight as of the 1950s. I'll list each individual line along with the years they were closed, as this will have significance in a moment:

Ryde Pier Head - Ventnor Town (Still open as far as Shanklin, Shanklin - Ventnor closed in 1966)
Ryde Pier Head - Cowes, passing through Newport (Still open as IOW steam railway from Smallbrook Junction - Wootton, rest closed in 1966)
Newport - Sandown (Closed in 1955)
Newport - Yarmouth (Closed in 1953)
Brading - Bembridge (Closed in 1953)
Merstone - Ventnor West (Closed in 1952)

These are a lot of lines so one thing to address is the size. If you were to travel in a straight line from one extreme of the island to the other, in the case of railway stations the longest would be Freshwater to Bembridge, it wouldn't even reach 20 miles. However just a single look at a map of what the railways looked like in the 50s will tell you that the actual line length was probably upwards of 50 miles overall, so I believe it is well within the scope of TSW.

Now one thing you might notice is the closure dates. Asides from the two RPH lines, all of the others were closed in the first half of the 1950s. Which coincidentally is also my setting, which brings us to a detail about the services that could be seen on this route. A specific year to depict with this route would be in 1952 to 1953. At this time, the Merstone - Ventnor line has been closed to all passenger traffic with the only traffic on it being minimal freight, but primarily works trains for British Railways itself. These trains would be recovering equipment to be either scrapped or recycled as things like signal posts, signalboxes, crossings, stations and even the track itself are gradually dismantled. Therefor this line would be depicted in a disused state, not overgrown or terribly rusty, but noticeably unkept with dirty platforms, brown rails and perhaps flaking paint on the signal boxes. The services on this line would primarily consist of open freight wagons, with perhaps the odd coach to transport workmen.
The Brading - Bembridge line would be quite light on its passenger services, as by this point its main reason for existing was the small docks at St Helens. This is where we would see goods trains, perhaps of fish, starting here and travelling down this line before going to other places on the island, likely Newport most of the time which would necessitate a run-around move at both Brading and Ryde St John.
The Newport - Yarmouth line would be equally light, though as this line is longer and has more stops it would likely still be frequently served, perhaps merely in a less maintained state as given the time setting, this line is perhaps less than a year from being closed and is on its last legs. A similar thing could be said for the state of the Newport - Sandown line.
Both the lines that reach Ryde Pier on the other hand would be well kept and clean, more noticeably so the closer you get to either Ryde or Newport, as these were the busiest points of the network, also being the two lines that still survive today even if only partially.

On to the subject of what runs on this line. There were a great variety of stock on the island, as most of it was effectively composed of hand-me-downs from the days of Southern which were small enough to fit the island's lower profile construction. Up until the final closures in the 1960s, the island was effectively a time capsule for surviving Grouping era stock. For this reason it would be next to impossible to definitively add all locomotives and stock that the line would have seen, however we can choose the most common types to pull off the right look overall. There were many classes of locomotive, but I have selected two to be realistic with expectations.

IOW modified LBSCR A1/A1X Terrier

These locomotives went through two major modifications and were a common sight on the IOW. Before even the days of Southern, eight of these were purchased from the LBSC by the IOW Central. When grouping came, Southern modified all of the then surviving A1s into A1Xs, which primarily included the fitting of a whole new boiler and smokebox. On the IOW the engines were further modified, featuring a larger coal bunker to facilitate the longer runs these engines would do compared to their mainland counterparts, on the mainland these engines were mostly yard shunters while on the island they ran almost every service type one can think of. On the IOW, the engines under BR were mostly renumbered under 323XX, with the XX being their original number from LBSCR. It's worth noting that not all of these engines were updated to the later British Railways symbol and still retained their 'cycling lion' badges right up until withdrawal, so both symbols could actually be seen in this route.

LSWR O2
From a different part of the mainland, the O2 was built with mixed traffic in mind, making them perfectly ideal for the IOW. Hence several were moved there under Southern and performed both freight and passenger work much like the A1s.

On the subject of coaches, these would likely be surviving four wheeled Southern coaches. In reality there would likely be multiple different builds, as under Southern they were sent over from numerous different railways and were of numerous builds. In TSW however, I expect we would likely see only one external shape with different internal layouts (1st/3rd class , 3rd class, 3rd/brake)
Freight stock was a similar story on the IOW. The vast majority of it had come from the former regions of LBSCR, with a few littered in from other railways. A handful could be seen such as the LBSC 8T van and some early RCH 7 plank wagons, with a few SOS or Peak Forest wagons being acceptable for layering such as the conflats and 5 planks.

Now the thing about this route is that none of its lines are very long and likely none of its services would last for over an hour at most, however there are numerous points in which freight trains would have to stop and run around their wagons, or passenger locomotives would run around at the numerous terminus stations. For this reason the timetable might end up looking rather busy in terms of individual services, but in reality many would be multiple parts of the same overall movement, much akin to those on Clinchfield. Clinchfield after all is a very similar route in terms of being a network of smaller connected lines.

 

Definitely would love to see the IOW steam network.