I'm not talking about 'Mergers' or 'Extensions' here, and i'm not talking about Layers either. I'm talking about DLCs, routes in particular, that compliment and build up regions of content, surrounding certain 'hub' stations. The closest reference I believe we have heard on any streams, from memory, was Matt saying he'd like to see more using Glasgow Central - in the Cathcart Preview Streams (2021). The only UK Example of this, in practise, is Brighton. This features on East Coastway - which introduced the Class 377 - and London Commuter - which revitalised the 377, and brought the 387 along with it. Also, the 313 layer came as a loco DLC. Brighton is, in TSW, Southern's "hub station", with multiple routes and trains serving it across two route DLCs. This is what I call "Regions of DLC". Where we have DLCs not stricly defined by their region on a map, but also by the trains, operators and "hub" stations within them. I suppose you could call it collections or something, idk. People have brought this up pretty much always in the context of "dead stations", and i can't say there's anything wrong with that discussion, after all, we've had stations like Glasgow Central, Birmingham New Street, Edinburgh Waverley and soon Manchester Piccadilly with only one or two trains a piece, AI included. Now what I want to discuss in depth here and open ip discussion on is how we are now at the stage where were we should now be realistically looking towards creating routes and locos that compliment each other, much similar to how modern German routes do it. The Old Problem The issue up until this stage is that we have been missing quite a few of the major hubs in TSW - and therefore if we started to 'fill' them with complimentary content, we would end up neglecting other regions. The heavy focus on Southeast England showed this, with ECW, BKL, SEHS, 465, BML, the 313, SEHX - and soon the 700/0. Whilst the SE/Southern network in game is now really vibrant and comes to life if you have all the DLC/Layers, it did lead to a neglect of other regions. In TSW2020 and TSW2, we had one AC Electric UK Route: Cathcart Circle. And, we had one Modern Diesel* route, Great Western Express - which remained true until the release of Midland Mainline last month. That was a wait of what, 5 years? *Not counting WSR as it's heritage. So, lets take a look at examples of where routes and loco DLCs "compliment" each other. I'm not sure if I've done a great job of explaining my point here or not, so let's hope this does the trick. New York - Penn (LIRR, M3, NYT, Acela) New York's Penn Station focused routes and locos can (and, realistically should) be complimenting each other. Long Island Railroad came in the TSW2020 era, and brought with it the M7 as it's rolling stock. Along came the M3 shortly after as loco DLC and the LIRR Electrics were quite nicely kitted out. Fast Forward to February 2023 with the release of both the Amtrak Acela Express loco and the New York - Trenton route. Now, I appreciate that the LIRR Rolling Stock does not layer onto NYT, but the point is - we've got New York's Penn Side (being specific because Harlem Line is disconnected) to a stage where, with a good timetable, it could be vibrant. It also means that you have similar scenery yet wildly different gameplay experiences - allowing for shared assets and rolling stock for variety, authenticity and life, whilst exploring different parts of these networks to make gameplay remain interesting and as unique as possible. Southeastern England (ECW, 313, BML, SEHS, ROG 37, RHTT, 700/0) As I touched on earlier, the Southeastern England collection now complements other parts of itself - particularly with the case of SEHS, which receives services or substitutions from everything here but ECW, the 313, and the BML 387. London Victoria on BML is another example of this. The playable route only covers the Brighton Mainline/Southern platforms, however thanks to the SEHS add-on, this gave a hell of a lot of AI and variety with the 375 and, most importantly for the latter, the 465. Modern German Routes This very much goes with out saying if you play German routes and have a decent collection of them. The amount of trains, versions and livery variations available on German Routes is absolutely superb. Dresden - Riesa was the first to do this, as it included 6(?) trains as standard, as well as a BR 406 layer from SKA and BR 101 from its own DLC. Over time, we've built up the collection with the 612 and Railpool 185(?) (DCZ), ICE 1 (KWG), 110 + N-Wagen, and PRESS 155 (BRO). These all substitute into and compliment each other. You can find the Bremen - Oldenburg stock on Dresden - Riesa, for example. Historic German Routes This is a bit more new to the game. The release of Linke Rheinstrecke, followed by the release of Niddertalbahn shortly after, led to TSW being introduced to historic German routes for the first time - BRO was 2010, but still DB Red and stuff - and the revised Bremen - Oldenburg rolling stock helped bring the routes to life. Linke Rheinstrecke introduced the BR 103, as well as updating the 110 and N-Wagen to become era-appropriate. Niddertalbahn brought with it the DB BR 612 DMU, which layers onto Linke Rheinstrecke. Likewise, the LR rolling stock can found as AI on Niddertalbahn where appropriate. I suspect, if we see more of this for German content, we'll continue to see layers building up like such. So, the Future... In the UK, currently only two (modern) TOCs feature twice or more - layers not included. ScotRail and Southern. Southern is part of the Southeast of England so I won't talk about them again. ScotRail may as well be my first example, then. ScotRail - Glasgow (GCC, EDN) The two Glasgow hubs, Central and Queen Street are already made and ready to go again. At least, their high levels are. Queen Street is a tougher one to work with as it relies on diesel stock which largely runs long distance routes, which would feel very odd if they ended within the Glasgow Area. Central, on the other hand, has a plethora of Suburban/Commuter routes that suit it. The 314 is appropriate for any route up to or in 2019, and the 385 is appropriate from any route in or after 2019. So, a 2019 route wouldn't be the worst thing to happen. The main outliers from Glasgow Central are the: Class 380 Class 318 Class 320 Class 156 The Classes 380, 318 and 320 all also run services on the Cathcart Circle Line - although the route in TSW is set in 2014, a seperate modern timetable wouldn't be too far off. The 380 did run on the line back then on peak services, however. The Class 156 could come with a route that goes to East Kilbride and potentially Kilmarnock along what is the Glasgow Southwestern Line, or it could be provided as a layer from the West Highland Line or something. The 318 and 320 could come with the Inverclyde Line, where they play 2nd role to the 380 and 385, or the Argyle Line, where they run the show. The 380 could come with the Inverclyde Line or the Ayrshire Coast Line. And there, with a couple of DLCs, Glasgow would be more or less full. Whilst I'm not saying we should forget about other parts of the UK and just hone in on Glasgow Central - Okay, I would love for that to happen, but I'm a realist, and I love using TSW to explore and drive routes I wouldn't otherwise know as much as I want to experience the ones that I do know. So, i'll show some other modern examples of what routes could be built around and compliment stations (and each other) in the Modern era. Firstly and importantly: Key (L) next to an existing train's name means it's a layer. The brackets next to an 'ideal route' indicate the ideal train for this. Edinburgh Waverley (EDN) Already has: 385 Ideal Routes: Fife Circle Line (Cl. 170, 158, HST) Borders Railway (Cl. 170, 158) ECMLN (80×, HST/91, 380) Birmingham New Street Already has: 323 Ideal Routes: Chase Line (350) Birmingham - Crewe (350, 390) Could also be complimented by the Trent Valley Line with a 350 and 390, which would set up the other two nicely. Also, solid case for a BCC DLC featuring the 172 and whatnot. Derby & Nottingham Already have: HST, 158 Ideal Route: Derby/Nottingham - Sheffield (222) Leicester Already has: HST, 158 Ideal Route: Leicester - Bedford (222) Manchester Piccadilly - Glossop Line Manchester Piccadilly is an upcoming one, however it doesn't leave much to wish for with the Glossop line. The 323 is the only Northern Traction available, the 158 is the only EMT train that runs here (also, era clash if the 323 is Northern under the Gov't), and AWC/TPE are totally absent from the game. For Manchester Piccadilly, the ideal Routes to make it alive are probably: Manchester - Sheffield (195, 150, 156) Manchester - Liverpool (North'n 158/331) Also, the leaked Preston - Blackpool route could provide options for this - and even if it is historic, if late BR-era stock then it could be adapted for Manchester in a future route. Conclusion Going to put this a bit bigger as it's an important summary: TSW's UK Content is, finally, at the stage where we have established enough regions to look at fitting them out with more rolling stock and layers, etc - or being able to revise stock for reuse elsewhere (eg the BCC WMR 323 turning into a Northern one). I decided to make this thread to discuss this in depth, because for some reason that seems to be my thing lately; just making these in-depth threads on serious topics that I see invading threads and actually not being really understood all that much. I wasn't really sure how to explain/word parts of my point in this post, but I hope it is, for the most part, understood. To this end, if you have any questions about what I say in any part of this I'll answer them. I might do a Pt. 2 for historic UK routes, although it's a bit more clutching at straws with that one. With all that said, thank you for reading as always, and feel free to join the discussion!
+1. I would love big stations to be busy and this is one way to do this. Dtg and/or 3rd parties such as Rivet and skyhook could create a route that shares a common station for one of their own routes. Rivet could use glasgow or edinburgh for their next route. Skyhook could do another section of the mml so the stations have more ai rolling stock to then. Dtg could do a lot of things such as new street for bcc or Glasgow for ccl. Also by making loco dlcs where appropriate. This doesn't have to be exclusive to uk routes but also German routes If there's a new license, then they can create that route but after that's released, mix in releases that build upon past routes by having a common station and rotate from route to route. Can also mix in routes in other regions too.
I don't mind seeing more routes built on what we have, providing the route offers something distinct and is not too similar to the other routes using the same station. If using Edinburgh Waverley again, I much rather see one of the diesel routes instead of another one of the electric routes across to Glasgow. This should also happen provided existing routes are updated with new layers. I don't want routes like Birmingham Cross-City to be forever empty if we get a route featuring a Pendolino in the future. East Coastway could have AI Gatwick Express services but will that ever happen? I also don't want every new route clustered around a particular region and some releases should still explore new areas, e.g. Wales.
There needs to be a mix of everything really. There have been no accurate BR blue routes since TSW 2020 and there are no routes from the Eastern Region either. Yes use the hub stations again but we can't have routes become limited to a certain era or region.
I'd prefer routes to connect together in a modular fashion, huge thread on here about that. Will happen one day.. I don't want to break the immersion with a title screen half way through a journey
I also like the idea of contiguous modules. They could run without mid-way title screens. If the reason why we have a plethora of short routes is due to resource problems they might be able to run the contiguous modules this way: Start your run in Module 1, as you get say 2/3 through the first module, Module 2 loads, and as you seamlessly transit 1 & 2 you can continue your run. As you get 2/3 through Module 2, Module 1 unloads while Module 3 loads. As you roll into Module 3 nearing the end of your run, Module 2 unloads and so forth. Kind regards, Dave
Would love Fife Circle or Borders line with a 170 & 158. But overall really do hope they start using the big stations as hubs for a few routes, being so empty does certainly effect the authenticity a lot.
