At least 20 years ago really. It has had much regeneration, starting with the Brindley Place development and the building of Symphony Hall back in 1990. If it was such a national embarrassment it would have hosted the many large events it has over the last few years. It is hardly unique in that much of it was bulldozed by short sighted councillors and planners in the 1960's and 1970's, pretty much most large British cities and many small towns suffered a similar fate.
Then people should research and discover facts. They don't even need to get off their rear ends and walk to a library anymore, it is in the same box of tricks they are using to post messages on this forum!
One of the reasons could be down to the fact that there is still no manual firing. Sos was promised to get a manual firing update but hasn't yet. Injectors are difficult to simulate in simugraph and stuff. Also the fact that steam routes require a ton of research cuz the documents might not exist. They had to use various photographs and magazines and whatever just to be able to build liverpool to crewe. They also gotta fly out or drive out to get sound recordings and photographs and more reference material. At the end of the day, you want accurate looking steam locomotives and the right audio and physics. People would get real mad if they didn't use the actual audio. Sos took dtg like over a year to make so there's a lot more work involved in making a steam route than a modern route
Yes, it's the best way to see Brum - from a distance (I'm from the West Midlands so I know it all too well...). Seriously, I just think attractive landscapes are part of what sells a train sim and there are so many beautiful places in the UK. Exeter - Plymouth, Settle-Carlisle, Cumbrian Coast, North Wales Coast, Wherry line, Mid Wales, Central Wales, Highland Mainline, West Highland, Wick and Thurso... the list goes on and on. And Birmingham is not on it.
So you mainly want routes which are pretty?! Most of those routes would offer very little more of interest in terms of rail traffic than the Cross City line. Exeter to Plymouth would be an exception, many of them would be far less interesting. I love the countryside but urban areas can be just as interesting and very varied.
The Cross City route has quite a bit of rolling countryside at its extremities - I got the train from Bromsgrove to Lichfield only a week ago. The section once you're into Birmingham from the Worcestershire end is also quite varied, offering rural villages, suburban residential, business parks, a fairly new elevated viaduct in parallel with the canal aquadeuct through Selly Oak and past the distinctive QE hospital (pictured) and new University station, down into the deep cutting at Five Ways before heading underground to New Street. On the other side, you exit the city through some light industrial areas and through spaghetti junction (which while not pretty as such, is certainly interesting) before heading through Sutton and out into the greenery up to Lichfield. It should be easy to keep track of where you are on the route, which endless countryside doesn't often provide.
Quite, it will be varied route, offering a good mixture of countryside, suburbs and city, frankly I can't see what there is not to like. From country lanes to sprawling concrete road networks. Surely it is best if the experience of train simming is a broad one? Something we haven't got to yet but this offers something quite different in my opinion. I regularly drive under the Lickey Incline at Burcot on the way to one of my organ playing duties. It is a very pretty area of North Worcestershire.
I think there is room for both. I mean I'm currently doing a couple of runs on the Cane Creek branch which, operationally, is essentially a 35 mile siding with a small yard and loading hopper at the end. But the scenery is jaw drop beautiful and ragging my SD40's back up towards Moab in Notch 8 is bringing a broad smile to my face. So for the UK, yes Cross City has a distinct appeal, but then so would something out of Inverness especially set in the 70's, or Machynlleth to Pwllheli also in that era would have my Steam Wallet open on Day 1 (or Day -7 with a pre-order).
Well yes absolutely room for both. I would too love to see the Cambrian it is one of my favourite stretches of line, the fictional Crabenmore branch on TSC is a scenic delight. But I wouldn't just want pretty routes as that wouldn't represent the railways around us.
I'm a simple man. I see a new route, with a new operator and a new train, and I am satisfied. I won't get it on release because I am still working up my backlog of already purchased content, but the route itself will go into my cart eventually, that's certain.
Somewhere like the Kyle or West Highland would fit the 1 train only now per DLC more realistically than Birmingham New Street.
One of the main reasons is the manual firing. Immagine we have 5 routes and 8 steam locos, they would need to go back to every single dlc with the update. From a immersion perspective, ill hope we get more steam locos for additional activities on the existing crewe liverpool route.
And the thing those routes have in common? Very sparse timetables. People like riding on trains in those places because of the nostalgia and emotions evoked by riding a train (preferably old and noisy) through the countryside where very few cars ever go, but that also means not many people live there so one train an hour is probably the most you'll get on a lot of the more rural lines. A few more down to Plymouth and North Wales, but the rest much less so Yes BHM will look very "dead" with only one train in it and of course we could do with five or six more DLC to beef up the asset count, but for the first DLC on the route I think this is quite a good one, if only because it will call at over 20 stations on a route which CAN be populated
Germany uses a lot of the same locomotives these days. And with the trains already in the game, they can just reuse them without having to change much. Also they are in db red so no changes need to be made to the livery. The uk has a lot of different mus and locos. And the only uk locos made are the br blue locos, electrostars which has been reused soo many times, more modern diesels such as the 43, 166 and 150, 395, 66 which is also used everywhere, 313, 314, etc. And lots of different liveries which dtg need the license to use them. Making new locos takes time to make such as the model, sound, physics. Liveries need licenses and such. It's much easier to just reuse content than to make brand new trains each time.
For me that's a reason to go back to the 1980s for the UK - corporate liveries with similar locos in much of England and Wales (HST, 08, 31,37, 47, 101, 150). Then add new locos depending on route - 50 in the west etc, 56 in the East Midlands and North East. And there are a lot of busy main lines that are both scenic and have lots of stations... not everything needs to be industrial and suburbs.
This would limit production of "new" routes ie ones that are in use today Push it forward a decade and you get all the sprinters, 158/159 etc many of which still run today With the Networkers which we already have one and a turbostar and you can populate a lot of the country DTG do seem to like doing niche one off locos though. The 323 is great for where it runs, but I think it only runs in a couple of regions
It gets used around the Manchester area, locals to Crewe and out to Glossop and Hadfield. Despite preferring loco hauled stuff I would actually welcome something in the game that used a well modelled 158 or 159, IMHO the best of the second gen units. Salisbury to Exeter would be okay, I would probably prefer in the Class 50 or even 33 era but a 159 not totally unwelcome. The modern service with DMU's also more frequent than loco hauled days when it was generally every two hours west of Salisbury.
Both the 50 and 33 could be well used nigh on anywhere over the decades so no problem on either of those
The 33 is ready available but frustratingly only in green and you can't repaint it for some reason. I find it odd that the two British diesels with the greatest following - the 55 Deltic and 50 Hoover - aren't available. The Deltic operated on the Trans Pennine. The Hoover operated on the Cornish main line and the GW out of Paddington. These are surely low hanging fruit for DTG?
A large logo class 50. The most wonderful looking and sounding diesel locomotive, ever … … but then, I may be rather biased.
Not really. Both would be rather limiting in their heyday as they only ran in specific places. After they lost their glamour is when they become more useful in game as they can be used more widely Essentially it's the same as the 390. Great if you have a long stretch of the WCML but useless otherwise
Underwhelming to say the least. Still no decent modern UK freight and another busy station with just one train.
Both locos have run almost everywhere on the British rail network on railtours. The 50 has been on all the main GWR West of England services, LSWR main line, cross country to Birmingham and Manchester, the WCML, Cumbrian Coast... The 55 dominated the whole of the ECML for two decades (including trains to Leeds, York, Hull, Newcastle, Glasgow) and spent it's swansong on Trans Pennine (Leeds York) Neither were very limited in scope...
So what? I want full timetables which are populated with the trains that ran them. Spending £13 on something you get to run twice isn't particularly great value. Give me a 158 which runs every hour on just about every route outside of London and I'm happy.
Well presumably if they released a class 50 or 55 it would come with the requisite suitable route, i.e. a 1980's GWML or 1970's ECML for example to run them on. Releasing a class 50 now with some railtour layers wouldn't seem like good value but I don't think that is entirely what he was suggesting. We are going to end up with a very narrow field of rolling stock if only trains which had widespread use over the network are represented.
I had not planned to purchase this route, but after reading the roadmap, I am going to. The fact that there was guard who works this route and worked very hard to get DTG real world sounds, videos and photos, and is working with the team on post evaluation, the 323 should be very close to real.
The point is that to make those locos make sense you need decent runs for them to run on else you end up with the same situation the HST has, a 20 minute run between two major stations and nothing else to do with them Depends... We now have a route which a 220 can run on (BCC), if they then do anything in York, Bournemouth, Manchester, Bristol, The South West , Edinbrugh, Aberdeen... that same 220 can run there. If they do Euston it's not too much of a stretch to get from a 220 to a 221 for the Avanti Services up the West Coast to Scotland Same with a 158. It runs from Penzance to John o' Groats (or close enough) so if they do that one basic unit it would need minor amendments to run just about everywhere Same with a couple of sprinter classes. From 1990 to a couple of years ago they ran in a lot of major cities. Cardiff and Manchester crawled with them So rather than "narrow field of rolling stock" I would say make the base units, then any route which is available for them to run on make a timetable for it similar to Diesel Legends on GWE The only thing I can think of against this is that DTG seem to like rebuilding any unit that has a variant rather than just using what we have, so they may make "multiple 158s" etc. The 220s this wouldn't apply to unless there are variants I don't know about
It feels to me like the 220 has to come at some point. Like it or not, it runs on so many routes, and is absolutely integral to BNS especially.
So what about for those of us who might want to see older trains, have we to just forget diversity just have multiple units from the last thirty years and class 66's. Despite the noise on these forums not everyone's favourite period is post privitisation. They could actually make a west country route for example set in the 1980's and only need to prove a class 50 as there are already class 31, 45 and 47 in the game and even the 101 would be suitable. If they are going to start planning every release on what other routes could the stock we build run on and interlink them it doesn't bode for that exciting a future in my opion.
The same could be said of the Electrostar family, Networkers, most of the sprinters, 158, electrostar... They all "fill out" the network, but as stated DTG seem to rebuild for every subclass which DOES limit
I'm not disagreeing with that. If we already have things which can populate local, freight and need one thing to make an express (That can then be used elsewhere) great. But we seem to be having a lot more "niche" stuff which actually limits where it's possible to be used
Yes that is true I suppose it will take time. I am sure a Voyager is bound to appear eventually, certainly one would be great layered into Cross City as traffic although I wouldn't personally bother driving one on Cross City as there is no end point. Then again would they get the Cross Country licence. A class 170 would perform two function on this route the WMR services to Worcester/Hereford and the Nottingham to Cardiff cross country service.
Absolutely, but if they did ANY route where the 220 runs it could layer into this route, whereas the 323 is the ONLY train we have which runs anywhere in Birmingham right now. If we had any of a plethora of routes outside London these other trains could be easily reused. Less so for the 465, 377 etc As you say, the 50 can be used on loads of routes from the old days so hopefully those routes will be forthcoming (such as the Riviera)
If you want to do modern routes outside of London, then it’s necessary to get the XC license. So it wouldn’t surprise me if they’re planning to negotiate soon.
Again, depending on which specific era BCC is due to be set, 170's were almost recently running the Rugeley Trent Valley shuttles via Walsall/Bescot.
Justtrains are on board developing content and the voyager they produced for classic was not to bad perhaps they will make one for tsw?
