Announcing The Freightliner Class 70 From All Aboard Studios

I’m probably being overly optimistic (again!), but this could work well on a Cardiff-Westbury route… I know 4O57 (Wentloog - Southampton) is a thing of the past now, but FL 70s were very common on that up until recently….

 

I'm super hyped for this regardless, but I do have one concern here. The 70 and 90 are both coming, both of them predominantly for the southern WCML. With the apparent lack of cooperation between AABS and ATS, I'm worried that we're looking at there being a very high chance that the 70 and 90 end up only existing in separate dedicated timetables, unless both are programmed to sub in for the 66. The 70 could be, the 90 not so much as that could only happen in cases where the locos never leave the OHLE which pretty much restricts it to only driving on the modern WCML routes, so that will likely have to be manually placed.

 

Hopefully the 70 can just slot in place of the 66, rather than needing to be entirely new services.

Hopefully ATS will also put the 90 into the AAS routes too, since AAS clearly won’t.

It’s so bizarre that one of the few AC freight locos in the UK, which mainly runs on the WCML, is being disregarded by a dev studio who is wholly focused on the WCML.

Freight has long been disregarded for UK TSW, with Skyhook doing what they can but obviously not having the capacity to do locos. Now that we have several wagon packs & 2 upcoming locos, it’s so stupid & anti-consumer that we can’t use them altogether.

 

Mentioned in another thread, someone has discovered the route via Bescot is all laid out in B2C, just devoid of scenery. Would be nice if AABS plan to expand this as part of the Class 70 project. It would need a Colas licence but Bescot is one of their hubs for engineering trains, so loads of scope for operations.

 

I wonder if someone from DTG could illuminate the difficulties of substitutions, layers, AI, etc in timetables. So much of this is guesswork.
Often once you know how something works, a lot of the "what the hell are they doing?" moments later make a lot of sense.
My biggest fear for the 70 is that it turns out to just run on two routes with limited stock, neutering the whole project and making it unworth the buy. Then, the claim is made that it "didn't sell well so people don't like freight" when the problem was it just didn't run anywhere and the LACK of routes made it not sell well.

 

I think it's time to put the "lack of cooperation" narrative to rest. AABS came on the forums and have said they've had issues using unreleased DLC whilst developing the Crewe - Birmingham TT so want to avoid that same issue.

 

Not to stir the hornets nest, but I find this announcement is kind of odd. Wasn’t ATS making the Class 90. Is this some on-going rivalry again to one-up one another, considering their past history.
Just strange we’re getting two new freight locos back-to-back.

 

Competition can be a good thing if we get two freight locos out of it.

 

From the standpoint of "we end up with more locos", absolutely. Not so much if the result is those locos being unable to coexist within timetables made by either 3rd party.

 

I'm not sure the two things are related to one another.