Although I now own about 16 versions of this route, I picked up the Chatham Main Line: London Victoria & Blackfriars - Dover & Ramsgate route. Wow! Absolutely fantastic and a total steal at just over £12. If only every DTG product were like this one! TSW who?! Any other recommendations? I'm tempted to pick up the official Suburban Glasgow too. Is it worth it?
Is this the one with Great British Railway Journeys? If so you'd have done better to get that even if you had all the other routes. To anyone else GBRJ is a tenner at the moment and well worth it. Got in in the last sale just for the two routes I didn't already have.
Not this one. This was released at the back end of 2021 I believe, and alongside the extension(s) the existing parts of the route had had a facelift. Once it's had the AP treatment (track, skies, signals, rolling stock) it's stunning, certainly the best £12.50 I've spent (and I've spent a lot) on a DTG product! My only grumble with it was that you didn't get a discount if you already owned any or all of London-Faversham, Chatham & Medway and the Sheerness extension. I did, so as far as I'm concerned £12.50 is certainly a very fair price indeed. If you own none of the above it's almost criminal for a route of that quality and puts the latest TSW DLC to shame.
Suburban glasgow isn't in the sale unfortunately, was tempted to get it myself but then i saw it was still full price so il wait. Got the feeware for now anyway so no big deal.
Really? That's odd isn't it? I have the old one in my backup still but all the extensions/merges need the official release. It'll have to be the next sale then.
If you’re interested I made an AP track patch for them both ages ago. A big improvement but then I’m biased. It’s free on ATS. https://alanthomsonsim.com/downloads/west-highland-lines-ap-track-patch-v1-0/
Absolutely. The Thomson one is the best of the two, but in the sale they’re definitely both worth buying. There are tonnes of scenarios out there for them as well.
I'm thinking of getting the West Highland Line extension. Can you run the AP 37 on it in scenarios or do you have to use the included 37 due to the RETB system?
The packages are an absolute bargain, I can buy all this stuff I already own for a massive discount of £14.99 saving myself £59.94, I almost feel like I'm robbing DTG at this point...
Yep you can run the AP 37 on them I just swapped the loco using the in-game editor and off I went. Whilst the RETB adds some excellent realism it doesn’t change the actual course of events in the scenario itself. For me I preferred the realism of the AP 37 to the RETB.
https://www.youtube.com/@train-simulator-classic/streams https://www.youtube.com/@TrainSimWorld/streams ... unless you meant the merges, in which case, search search
It's a bit of a weird one really. The scenery is brilliant and driving full Victoria to Ramsgate/Dover services is fun, as is going to Blackfriars and City Thameslink (which DTG don't tell you is included). The Sheerness Branch is a nice addition, and the same can be said about the bit to Gravesend. But then it cuts the already existing Medway Valley Line and High Speed 1 is also not included. Therefore there is no 'definitive' Chatham Main Line route, and you have to buy at least three routes to get all of the bits DTG have made. In an ideal world the Medway Valley Line would have been included. As for HS1, I dream someday of having it extended to Ashford in TS with the routes via Canterbury and Deal modelled to create the full 'Kent loop', allowing us to drive the former 3-hour St Pancras to St Pancras service that used to grace us down here. But worst of all is the East Kent Railway, which bares so little resemblance to the real thing I am angry DTG made it at all. They have clearly never visited it (despite DTG employees only needing to take one train to get there) as the differences are so vast I think I could have made a more realistic version of it using Stable Diffusion. Then we have the trains. The 465 is a new model which other than the incorrect moquette (somehow not corrected from TSW which had the same issue) yet has sounds worse than the original DTG model. The 395 is still quite good bar the sounds, but it has been retextured in an unrealistic way which in many cases is worse than the London to Faversham version. The use the London to Gillingham 465 is saddening, as is the use of a new version of the original Class 375 which has no compatibility with the AP sound pack, making it nearly unplayable unless TS is muted and Spotify is on full volume. The Foster Yeoman Class 59 from the Medway Valley Line which was not used in any of the scenarios (for some reason the DB Class 59 DLC was included and used in all freight scenarios) does not return here, which is slightly disappointing even though it couldn't really be used on this version anyway. A 466 not being included is also a disappointment. So overall, this route is one I love despite hating at the same time. TS can be weird sometimes.
