Been arguing that for a couple of years. GWE is far to short to give it justice and of course far too few trains. Instead of these empty routes DTG like to give us why not concentrate on one and make it special?
Cardiff is 2 hours 45 mins from Paddington, even ignoring the file size, timetable challenges, empty intermediate stations (unless you're also expecting local commuter trains and other long distance trains layering in at Bristol etc). Who on earth has the best part of 3 hours to dedicate to a single run?
Because honing one route wouldn't make any money past it's initial release. They could make the entire GWR system to Cardiff and Penzance and only need to add three or four loco assets, so where would the money to run a studio come from?
I sometimes do. I wish TSW offered at least a number of 3 hour services. At the moment, all it offers are short services. (And it's good there's short services available, it's not good that's pretty much the only thing available).
There are times, maybe on a quiet Saturday or Sunday afternoon I could do that and have done in TSC, if I have a play after work in the week then I might only have an hour or so and therefore shorter routes come to the fore. A route like this in TSW would obviously be done in extensions but I don't see why it shouldn't be viable. If we had a comprehensive working save function then you could pause your run at say Swindon and continue it next time or maybe in another week or so.
We literally have almost all the GWE Rolling stock that runs on that line apart from the 800, if it was added the route wouldn’t be quiet or boring at all , what are you talking about
Swindon to Bristol Parkway has 62 passenger trains a day 50 freight paths That's not many trains on a mainline. I once tried to justify the route between Reading and Swindon as a possible DLC and in the couldn't until DTG work out networks (which I don't think they will) purely because there's a dearth of trains running on major sections of the route, there's few terminals for freight to work at etc So yeah, some parts of the route ARE boring and very quiet
Loads of ways of finding out timetables for a station or route... And asset wise, there are two consist that run the route, IEts and Electrostars. Freight would be 60s,66s & 59s for the most part with the odd 70
No I was referring to the timetable, rather than make disparaging remarks try using Google to find the timetables. And it's not just GW rolling stock needed to pad the timetable, there's Transport For Wales, Heathrow Express, Cross Country licenses and rolling stock required for such a route and that's just off the top of my head.
HX is a subsidiary of GWR, so the license shouldn't be a problem. And today it runs 387s. Unfortunately, back in 2016 HX used 332s, so it would require a new train
I'd love a GWE to Cardiff or even Bristol and as the original short GWE sold well I imagine it will sell quite well. What I meant by honing in on one route I meant one for each region, UK, US and Germany(EU?) Obviously they would have to fix the save system but I don't find the route boring at all. If I remember right I remember a Didcot coal run in TSC? Would love that in TSW.
I apologise, yeah TFW can layer in (158s and maybe 170s) so only 2 or 3 new trains are getting added in (345 for Crossrail, 800/802 for GWR and 170 for TFW) would that be enough for an active GWE route to Cardiff
Personally Id rather see GWE modernised and extended East to include the Elizabeth Line, I feel we'd get much better game play and the best of both worlds, throw in Heathrow Spur for good measure and itd be even better. And if we are extending west, why stop at Cardiff, the line in the southwest is far more scenic and its about time we had Dawlish in TSW3.
1 Cardiff-Padd is about 2 hours and 2 lot’s of people have 3 hours to kill and anyway who said you had to do it in one go.
I've got 'Southwestern Expressways Reading to Exeter (by the legendary Just Trains) for TSC. My god, it's beautiful. I know it would be impossible to bring to TSW (maybe/probably), but it does the GWML absolute justice and one of the best DLC's I own.
If I have said it once then I have said it a million times. GWE needs (and always should have had) all of the passenger and freight branches between Paddington and Reading. This would give it vastly more mileage, more scenery (Windsor Castle for example) and many more services with the variety they could offer. My fear is that without a full rebuild, we will never get to see/use the branches which would be a real shame and a wasted opportunity. Perhaps if we also got Class 165 and 180 dlcs, it would be so much better.
I don't think the branch would feature, something about it not being possible, or not being permitted to model either the branch or the station. It was mentioned many years ago but I forget the details. It seemed catergorical though.
Security and licensing issues have been stated a great many times as the reason that the Heathrow branch is unlikely to ever be included. This should not be a block on any of the other branches though.
For me it would be nice to expand west to see a different part of the country and the idea of going to Cardiff was to get Wales in the game but we all know DTG will not even extend the route to Didcot! I reckon the worst part of the GWE is the timeframe chosen for it, it baffles me. They chose a time when the line was in progress of being electrified. If they had gone pre electrification they had all the diesel library of those that ran on the line at their disposal or if they had chose after they could bring it up to today.
There were Malvern - Brighton services till May 2022. I remember catching a train from Ashchurch that went to Brighton before they got withdrawn, though it was a 158 service
Although as I said in another thread (or maybe it was earlier in this one) I do find that somewhat baffling. Heathrow is represented quite accurately in recent versions of MS Flight Sim so far as airside operations are concerned, even more so with the customised airport add ons. That includes the various radio frequencies for comms and ILS. I do wonder if it was ever confirmed by DTG that BAA had said "no", have they ever actually asked or is it just an urban legend that popped up to drive the narrative?
The idea, I think, was to capture the last glory days of the HSTs as Queens of the Mainline before they were demoted to branch service.
It certainly was a most curious choice, even down to the partially complete state of the OHLE west of Airport Jn.
I still have a feeling that the era of GWE’s setting was a somewhat last minute decision because initially the route was going to be FGW Blue, before we got GWR, there is even some OHLE in between burnham and slough
I don't know why but I loved seeing HSTs and IETs running along-side to Paddington, although it was only a couple of years ago. Hopefully some time in the future we do see some sort of revamp for the GWE, in similar fashion to the SEHS route.
I used to travel on the HST regular all over England and Wales but mostly to Paddington and seeing Paddington with a few HST's in was brill, the noise and smell of burnt rubber, lol. And your right it just seemed like yesterday.
I think the simple answer is that they captured the GWML as it was at the time they did their research surveys, with videos and photos and so on- including the partial OHLE installation. It was a contemporary route- as of late 2016. The livery question is a matter, however, affected by an outside force: First Group decided that they wanted to push the new GWR green branding, and as a license condition effectively forbade DTG to use blue.
Started a journey run last night, an Up Class 166 stopper in the morning peak. Immediately demonstrates what this route needs. It’s the height of the morning peak yet hardly any passengers on the platform. At Twyford and Maidenhead more people got off my train than on. In reality they would be ram jammed in the doorways. Not much other traffic about either, only one HST come by on the Up Main so far. The timetable is still the original which came with the route, given away by the fact arrival and departure times not properly rounded. It was also never adjusted to account for the (correct) performance nerf the 166 received as it now struggles to keep the point to point times especially on the longer gaps between calls.
