Hi everyone, I’ve spent a while recently looking through threads in the forum, just looking at peoples opinions (being the nosy person that I am ) and one thing I’ve noticed is this hype for the great western express route. Personally I don’t get it, the route isn’t anything different to anything else we have in tsw, it was the first tsw passenger route but that’s all that stands out for me. Am I missing something?
You would have to define what you mean by "hype" (which is a nonsense internet term for people being excited) The route is "good" in that it's a UK route with high speed, local and freight all together which is unusual on newer routes, but I haven't seen anything "special" being commented about it for a while
I don't think there is a great deal of 'hype' for GWE to be honest. Its a good route. It differs from other UK routes in that it has a balanced variety of service types. It has a good amount of express and stopping passengers services along with a reasonable number and variety of freight runs. Every other UK route since has more or less ignored freight. In fact, we have not had a new MODERN UK freight loco since it was released all those years ago!
Compared to the current practice of offering routes with just one train, usually a push and run cracker box ( emu ), the early routes for TSWx, like GWE, provided a plethora of rolling stock, especially if you added DLotGW. In my view, those initial routes, like SPG and GWE, had more time spent on their development and so had superior modeling, along with better night lighting and fewer bugs etc.
There have been several new uk freight locos. 37, 20, 31. Tees valley is a freight centric route. There's a decent amount of freight on other routes like sehs. Of course passenger gets priority but it's not like there's none. Freight on gwe tends to be linear compared to other freight routes.
Gwe is alright. At its time, it was great because you had 3 brand new locomotives doing 3 different activities. Now that is kinda rare. I still enjoy the route. I like the gameplay of certain routes that came after that more than gwe but it's not a bad route. Would like to see improvements in scenery in some areas but other than that, I like it
Then I haven't seen "hype" for ages. A few comments saying it's got better variety than other routes but nothing much
It was good for what it represented at the time, essentially proof of concept for a UK route in TSW. It is a nice quick thrash with the HST, but superceded now in that respect by MML which has a better sounding HST on which you can open the cab doors to value the noise. In fact most correspondence on the forums about GWE is that it is long overdue some love, in particular a rebuild/extension similar to SEHS received.
I forgot to include the word 'Modern' of course (I will edit accordingly). The amount of freight on SEHS is minimal at best and even with new services the MML services are nowhere near what they should be.
It still looks good quality and the class 166 is a nicely modelled train but for me that is about it, I have to say I rarely use it. The HST run is too short for my liking, well the route is really and I am sure the timetable isn't as busy as it should be. When do you ever see Paddington empty in the middle of the day? I think they were too restrictive in the very narrow period it is set. Personally I feel that they should have built it pre-electrification (except Heathrow) or with it completed with the OHEL working. I wouldn't mind a GW class 387 to drive on it. Even better set in BR days with a IC HST and NSE networker turbo.
I agree, but it's no more of a graveyard than BNS, Glasgow, Edinburgh, GCT or Penn. I can't think of a single TSW terminus that reflects real world passenger flows.
It’s a shame they never came back to the route. There was a lot of potential in it. But it still holds up as a decent route (I’ve noticed the first few routes for the game tended to be better quality than what we have had recently).
GWE has been around a while but shouldn’t be forgotten. As has been noted earlier it provided a variety of locos and a good mix of passenger/freight etc. I know MML and a possible extension is the “talk of the town” right now, but GWE would be a great route to extend also.
It has diesel trains therefore it is better than any route that doesn’t have diesel trains. It has an HST therefore it is better than any route that doesn’t have an HST. The scenery is finished to an acceptable quality therefore it is better than most other routes in that regard. It passes through Slough but we won’t hold that against it. It has always been a good route and one that I will always revisit.
For me it is the closest thing we have in game to a proper British mainline, shame it's not longer or it would feel like a proper mainline, and so this is why I still go back to it. Also I know MML is a mainline but it only has a small section of 125 running and I also know we have HS1 but that's not really an intercity mainline, just some fast railway line that runs through the south east, so not a traditional main line in the sense I'd like to see in game. It's a good route and really does deserve a bit more love.
They built it to represent the then-present day, as DTG usually does. The official store descriptions and the like should perhaps be rephrased to indicate it now represents the GWML as it was...
The best route in the game after BML, feels like a proper mainline with faster HSTs and 166s and slower local 166s. Should be modernised and extended to Swindon IMO, it’s such a good route
I know but with a bit of foresight they could have made it so it was more adaptable to new DLC. I suppose it was their first passenger route and only second TSW route.
I would say Victoria is pretty much there. Boston as well seems very busy. Some of the larger German stations seem busy when the layers are included.
Brighton seems pretty realistic imo although I haven't looked in depth at time tables. Its down my end and I go through there a lot. The GWE services down West Coastway were done (massive Joe shout out), the seaford and ECW services are also there with 377s and the 313s. Obviously there's the BML traffic which we all know. All its really missing is the 700 imo.
London Victoria, Brighton, Dresden Hbf (DCZ), Boston (with Acela), Bremen Hbf, Oldenburg Hbf and Wurzburg Hbf all do pretty good jobs of it.
Idk if there is a 166 layer at Brighton, it used to run a service once or twice a day to Bristol a few years ago
There is on London Commuter. I think they go to a place called Great Malvern (Edit: No they don't. That has got to be far too far for GWR, let alone a Class 166.) Obviously, they are not drivable, since they go off-map immediately, but they will come to platform 1!
GWR do or certainly did service Great Malvern, I think the services were from Westbury or Weymouth or somewhere round that area. 150's worked them at some point.
For me GWE is a good route but the way DTG have implemented it is a shame. The route could of been special if it had been Paddington to Bristol or even just to Didcot as that would open up freight or a coal run but no we got a tiny portion. Saying that I remember watching the 'British Ace' doing the GWE run and the shots of sunsets put a lot of the other routes to shame.
I've been on a GWE service a few times into Brighton. Not for a while though. Wasn't actually a 166 the times I was on it although maybe a 158 or something similar (not 100% sure as it was a while ago) but it was from Great Malvern. Not sure if it still runs but I remember looking at it back when we first found the layer.
Upon further research it definitely ran as shown in this video which was about a year ago: But apparently it no longer runs to Brighton.
Okay that is interesting, didn't realise they had ran from Brighton. That is quite a journey, an interesting one though.
Yeah its quite an interesting/strange one especially as it seems so far out of the way for GWR. Probably why they stopped it?
Yep GWR ran to Brighton, for as long a I can remember. Ran along the coast to Southampton then Northwest to Bristol and on from there. Stopped a few months back (as per the videos posted above)
In Regional Railways days (the great and good Chris Gibb) there were two daily Brighton services, one ran out from Portsmouth after stabling overnight at Fratton to return as the 0900 Brighton to Cardiff. The afternoon working was around 1200 from Cardiff returning as 1700 from Brighton. Prior to the advent of the Cardiff to Waterloo services, the Brighton trains were number one priority for set allocation, even to the point of cancelling a Birmingham or Manchester service to cover (or requisitioning a Valleys 150 to cover a 158 from Cardiff down to West Wales, which was then released to work the Brighton). Quite often these services were almost fully seat reserved.
I agree. I don't quite see what makes GWE so special. To me, it's a pretty boring landscape over a 4 track straight railway line. But then I do kinda feel the same about London-Brighton, which is often praised as well.
I prefer London to Brighton, that being it is an electrostar route and the second most local line to me. The timetable adds credit as well
It's a nice timetable, if you like Electrostars. Not a lot of variety in the kind of trains you can use on the route... at least GWE does offer a better variety. Scenery-wise, both routes are pretty boring IMO.
Well, the landscapes are what they are. DTG can't change the scenery, only make it as accurate as possible. I imagine most train and bus journeys are pretty dull, unless you're a tourist going through the Rockies or the Swiss Alps for instance. What TSW route would you consider not boring after driving a few dozen services. What makes it fun is the variety of trains and the gameplay, not the scenery. BML has a variety of gameplay and rather tedious trains. GWE has a variety of trains and rather tedious gameplay. No-one would suggest either route has spectacular scenery, either in TSW or in real life. I doubt that extending GWE to Bristol, Cardiff or Oxford would improve the scenery, but it would certainly open up the gameplay. You can't improve the scenery between London and Brighton, but the gameplay and the trains would be better if the route was set back about 50 years in my opinion.
I personally like GWE. I know the routes not exactly hard to drive being so flat but I don't honestly think the scenery is that bad and I do enjoy the HST and freight runs. The 166 is good imo too its just a lot of the feels like a throw it in highest notch and sit there. I think the clutter and approach into Paddington its good compared to other TSW routes when you consider its so old. But then I doubt that mainline was created for its scenery. A few more layers and a bit of variety would do it good though. Maybe the DLGW pack adds a bit more variety? But I haven't tried it myself.
DLGW is disappointingly quiet. GWE on its own is enjoyable enough, but like many routes, could do with a beefier timetable. If only DTG had kept its frequency of new trains per route, though, we'd have a much richer sim.
It’s a good UK route as people already mentioned, very well balanced. However there’s some much more DTG can still do with this route such as either introducing the Heathrow branch or extending the line. Most likely they’ll extend it along the Mainline to Swindon without an Oxford branch, although they could release a Class 180 DLC alongside it.
Obviously. Just wonder why DTG chose these particular routes, as personally I think they're not that interesting. But that's just my personal opinion, plenty of people seem to like these routes. I disagree, scenery is just as important, especially a variety of scenery. Pretty much my point. Although I wouldn't say BML has a variety of gameplay. I find all these services looking very similar, with the exception of the Class 66 services, which are only a few. Not familiar with the landscape, but I've been hoping for some decent length intercity route. No clue an extended GWE would be the best choice though. You can't improve the scenery between London and Brighton, but you can choose to develop a route which does have improved scenery.
Well I guess we got Peak Forest which kind of addresses the scenery issue a bit, though it’s still no Cambrian Coast, West Highland or Far North in that respect. GWE is a route which should be alive with all sorts of diverse and intense traffic but the timetable is still very cut down. We know about HEX and Connect, for the time period set, but there should be far more trains running than there actually are represented.
Even in Diesel Legends the route feels rather empty. I guess one of the downsides of a 4-track railway; it also needs more trains to make it look busy.
I know from my NR TRC days just how busy the Thames Valley could be, even in the off peak or evening. The smallest incident, a track circuit or signal failure meant you had to intervene without delay or you would have trains queued up miles back. A signal check to one train on the Up Main at Airport Junction in the morning peak would bring the following trains down to a crawl, running on 3 minute headways with numerous “PPM” failures. A major incident which stopped the job would see locations like Slough and Reading rapidly fill up with trains, which couldn’t turn back if worked by a London crew. You often had to hold back at Swindon or Oxford (not much space there either) or in extreme cases stop Up trains leaving the origin at all. It really is that busy, probably more so now with Crossrail (relieved in some respects I retired in 2018!).
