Midland Mainline - Leicester To Derby & Nottingham

It was just following on from comments a page or two back discussing why there’s no MML stream next week.

 

Well, not necessarily. Since the roadmaps moved from Tuesdays to Thursdays, it was:

• 10 August - 2nd Thursday
• No September roadmap
• 6 October - 1st Thursday
• 3 November - 1st Thursday
• 8 December - 2nd Thursday
• 12 January - 2nd Thursday
• 9 February - 2nd Thursday
• 6 March - 1st Thursday

So it happened more often on the 2nd Thursday of a month so far.

 

I’m okay with a delay. If the route’s better for it then good. Besides, wouldn’t be able to get it for a while anyway.

 

Some roadmaps were in the second week cuz of special event or just coming back from holiday.

 

The standard roadmap release is the first Thursday, we have also been told that MML would release before the April roadmap, so with everything being normal and as it should be, MML would of been expected to release before April 6th.

It’s all information from DTG, pointless in debating the if or if not’s with me.

 

I hope they add the Derby to Skegness HST. It only ran on Saturdays in the summer. Something a bit different?

 

Derby to Skegie with a pair of 20’s even better. In fact the line beyond Nottingham to Grantham, Boston and Skegness would be Day One for me!

 

But did DTG announce the roadmap would be in the 1st week of April?

 

There used to be a summer service from Leicester to Skegness in the 90s formed of a pair of class 20's. Left Leicester from platform 1 somewhere around 8 in the morning.

 

The Jolly Fisherman HST was a great sight in Skegness station.

 

Try to delay this and 158 needs to have the correct EMT engine version otherwise sound like a Calder Valley line 158 with Perkins engine

 

Good ideas. There was also a year recently where they used Class 66's one weekend, so there are plenty of options. It would be good if they could get 'The Jolly Fisherman' up on the PIS too.

 

I did it a couple of times from Nottingham. I know one set came empty from Neville Hill in Leeds to Nottingham, did an out and back trip and then went back to Neville empty. Did the other set come from Etches Park?

 

Both trains are getting ap sounds and being implemented by dtg

 

This is my problem with the route. It really isn't that long a journey which is why I am dissapointed it didn't go to Sheffield. I have often argued that for immersions sake having a natural end point to a service makes them feel more realistic.

It will be the class 158 and its services which will make me decide whether to pick it up straight away or wait for a sale.

 

Yeah I think problem with this route is that you do need the parallel lines from Leicester to Derby & Leicester to Nottingham, otherwise you’d have no use for the 158.

Of course what that means is you get one short Journey in the 158 and another for the HST, because all the time is being used to create the two side by side lines as opposed to one long line.

If it came down to (which it obviously did) I’d rather have both the 158 & HST with Nottingham, as opposed to just a HST to Sheffield.

What we really need to see here is the 66 & ROG 37 being layered in, and layered well. If the route lacks then it’s down to the timetable to save it.

 

Today the article?

 

Any more news

 

So on the last road map they mentioned service pattern for the 158 would be true to life 1 to 2 trains per hour. So about how many services are we looking to have on the timetable as a whole with the HST included?

 

It can’t be that many. I hope I’m wrong.

 

Plenty of freight options if they use it, also rhtt + static stock. Shunting at racliffe powerstation.
So a low service frequency isnt really an excuse.

 

here's what 2019 service patterned looked like according Wikipedia. not sure how accurate is for 2019.

 

Presumably the class 222 services will be in there but worked by HST's

 

The London-Nottingham service that stopped at East Midlands Parkway was the scheduled HST service as were the Leeds services (To get the sets back to Neville Hill), Everything else from London was scheduled for Meridians with the occasional swap as and when needed.

 

Around 100 services.

Really it depends on if they’ll simulate the 222 & 156 services, so could be more (or less).

We also have no idea if the 66 & 37 will add anything so it’s best to stick with the idea of 100 for now.

 

I really hope so, as they often had HSTs deputising on them. I have a feeling they’re going to be left out, but hopefully I’m wrong.

 

I really need to bring some news

 

Yikes.The Glasgow/Edinburg route from rivet has 224 services and even with that amount the route seems a bit empty.

 

I agree having Nottingham is good, but for 75% of the way Leicester - Nottingham and Leicester - Derby are the same route - they’re not side by side lines. The separate branch to Nottingham is only about 7 miles.

 

Unless they leave them out for some future DLC

 

That’s my fear. I’ve no interest in the 222, so it would be really annoying if we didn’t get the HSTs on Sheffield services in order to leave a gap for a future DLC which I wouldn’t want to buy anyway. I’m all for loco/unit DLCs, but not for leaving gaps in timetables on the off-chance. Just put the HSTs in, then those who want to can replace them with 222s later if/when there is a DLC.

 

Yeah I was in 2 minds there thinking of the line from Nottingham to Sheffield via Alfreton.

My point was that, if this line went to Sheffield, I really doubt we’d have Nottingham. If we did have it that way then I don’t think it would matter as people would want the 2 lines upto Sheffield anyway, so Skyhook wouldn’t win either way.

 

Whilst I would like to see a 222, I agree with not leaving the gaps, it works out if the devs do add the DLC, but more often then not, they don’t.

 

I really hope we get some Layers on this route, especially in recent times where they have used the subpar barely useable 'scenario planner' as an excuse to not bother

 

Agreed. Personally I’d have preferred Sheffield, for the longer run, but I recognise opinion would be split - and that would have been quite a few more miles of railway.

 

My question is why set it in EMT era, if we weren’t gonna get a 222, i wouldn’t have minded an IC swallow/Regional Railways era anyways

 

Licensing perhaps? Maybe Stagecoach were more willing to play ball than Abellio were. You won't see me complaining, the Stagecoach livery is arguably the greatest livery in privatisation in my opinion. It's up there with Transpennine's stained glass livery and the GNER livery for me.

I really don't mind this route being short. A lot of the time I don't play TSW3 nowadays because I don't have a spare hour, so 20-30 minutes is ideal. I'm also much more excited than most about Nottingham being included as it's a place that holds a great deal of personal value to me, far more so than Sheffield. That's obviously just me though.

 

AIUI, Abellio has not been willing to play ball at all.

 

Very pleased to see a fellow Stagecoach livery enthusiast on the forums. I agree, in my opinion it's the greatest livery ever worn by an HST.

 

Whilst the VP185 HST will be nice to drive and see, I think the star of the show will be the Class 158, as it will be a totally new train for us TSW players.

From what I've seen and heard, I think its going to be a good one and I think you guys are going to like it too

 

now we need a SWT route!

 

I'm in two minds as to which I'm more excited for. The 158 is completely new, a much needed fan favourite finally appearing in TSW3. But I love HSTs, and if the sounds are done right, driving a VP185 engined HST will be a truly awesome experience. I'm slightly too young to remember the Valenta engines, so these particular HSTs are the first ones that come to mind when people talk about the iconic HST scream. It's not quite as visceral, but it's still absolutely joyous to hear.

 

It will be the 158 for me… They were introduced during my tenure on the “Provincial” Desk in the then BR Control at Swindon and were part and parcel of my railway career for the next several years as Provincial evolved into Regional Railways, then South Wales and West, (with the SWW Control moved to Cardiff in 1997) Wales and West, the split to Wales & Borders/Wessex Trains and then ATW until I jumped ship to Network Rail in Swindon in 2006.

Of course they weren’t perfect and suffered from a few teething problems notably the air conditioning and electrical, the latter aggravated by the fact each car relied on the output from its own generator, so if the engine went out you lost all the lights after about half an hour (only addressed in much later years by adding a through feed supply within each unit). However they were far better than the rancid 155’s that they replaced, were faster and had a slightly longer fuel range.

 

Expected release in April according to post by Alex. Hopefully means they have time to implement the ROG 37 maybe polish some areas up?

 

Works for me, I have become more confident since learning AP & DTG have been used for sounds, it’s proven to be a great combination in the past.

 

Definitely sensible to delay if it means getting a better end product.

 

This is actually good news. looks like they are listening to the community and hopefully after the NYT feedback, with all the comments of "just out of time" wasn't going to go well. Hopefully this will help clean up al the bugs and implement what ever fixes they need before release.

 

Loving the image they supplied!
The 158 is super pretty.
Just needs a scotrail livery and some ai layers on E-G now

 

I'm a little sceptical that any lessons have been learned and more that since it's a third party DLC it doesn't matter as much if it misses launching in a partIcular month/quarter/fiscal year.

In any case, hopefully the extra time will be put to good use

 

Well, I'm not too bothered by this delay as I never saw a date originally anyway. The 158 looks great but seeing as it's leaving Leicester in that screenshot I can see stuff missing, the big Blue hotel for a start.