Having been driving the trains on the Birmingham Cross City line since it came out on TSW3, I am surprised and dismayed to find that the busiest station outside of London, Birmingham New Street, is so quiet. My impressions of that station when I have used It, as a passenger, is controlled mayhem with the platforms heaving with passengers and trains coming from and going to all parts of the Country. It is in no way realistic to see it only being used by the 323's of the cross-city line. Surely it would have been possible to include other trains using the station and being operated by AI drivers. DOVETAIL GAMES PLEASE TAKE NOTE. Birmingham New Street is not realistic without other trains.
Thats an old discussion about services, if the necessary stock isnt available. Leaving the path with trains get diverted like the hst in l2b is welcome in my opinion. But going fantasy just to make a place busy is neither realistic nor immersing to me. It would actually stop me from playing the route if i would see creations of train sets, which dont belong there in any way. In my opinion the right way is touch the route again with a preservation update if 2-3 more trains are ready for there, or going for loco dlcs.
Agreed. While it's nice to see a new area for the UK with different rolling stock, as I've mentioned before, the inclusion of the biggest station outside London did not make any sense when there was hardly any suitable rolling stock to begin with. They should have had a couple routes beforehand, which could have featured different TOCs and/or rolling stock where realistically possible which could of been suitable layers for the timetable later on, before even thinking of including such a large station like New Street in TSW. While this might of been fine for a route pre-Rush Hour, but now that we know TSW is capable of routes which have busy, large stations that can feature lots of AI traffic (London Victoria, Boston, Dresden Hbf etc) then there's no excuse really.
Same as Glasgow Central on Cathcart. Should be hustling and bustling with different trains and 1000's of people but like a ghost town. In some respects it would have been better if more of these routes had been set in the BR classic blue era, with common trains and no TOC liveries to worry about licencing. Imagine if Cross City had been set in the early to mid 1980's, you could at least have represented the NE/SW services with Class 45 and Class 47 loco hauled services. The 31's could have also put in an appearance on AI trains heading off towards Leicester. When planning a UK route in particular, DTG really need to start choosing something which can layer in enough existing stock to give an authentic busy experience. For all I dislike Electrostars, BML does manage to convey this as of course do the German and most of the American routes.
There are so many classic br diesels now, its a big question to me why dtg has only made 2 routes to actually use them. Yes the reference material is a pain to collect, but im sure there is an interessting location in a 86/87s time period, where many of those dual equiped locos could be used. Or create a railfreight / passenger route with a class 58 / 60 as new loco. Third possibility enhance the locations & industries of tvl and add the section to bishop auckland. However, just 2 routes + 1 from rivet seems just not enough for all the really enjoyable locos they made for that time period.
I don't think there's many route options where most services can be represented with stock already available, unless they were more rural lines with few train types or more routes in the south east. Hopefully once we get routes with the appropriate stock, they will be layered back on. I also wish they had at least included the Walsall to Wolverhampton services as AI only operated by the Class 323 to add just a bit more traffic. Otherwise I don't mind the compromise here too much as the route itself is quite fun and is a nice change of region (as long as you close your eyes going through New Street).
I don't pay the missing stock too much mind, I just focus on the service I'm driving. Would the route be better off with the addition of more stock? Absolutely! At the same time though, I'm highly enjoying my time with the 323 and think this is one of the best produced routes from DTG to date. Do agree with OldVern though, it's about time we had more BR Diesels. The Class 20 was the last brand-new locomotive addition from DTG and that was pre-TSW2! Personally though, I'd like to see some BR Green rather than Blue. Build up a collection of BR Green stock so that we can eventually have that 1960's route in the steam-diesel crossover period!
Birmingham New Street, 0830am almost one year later - maybe 50 passengers in the whole station and no other trains. More passengers at the stations either side (Duddleston and Five Ways).
Still no additional rolling stock to add to it though, so i don't know what more people want. At leas with Manchester, the 323 fills the station and isn't *too* unrealisitic Also, it depends on the console as to the level of AI passengers. Most consoles probably fine, but older platforms would stuggle
Fairly certain BCC now fallen into the quietly forgotten pile of past DLC… Did they ever fix that broken canal spline and missing fencing south of Birmingham?
I've always thought this about some routes being awfully quiet in stations or being overly crowded with one type of rolling stock and engines. Personally I would be fine if they made AI stock that was inaccessible or some sort of stand in to make the place look a bit more lively.
With the upcoming editor it will at least be able for PC (Steam/Epic) players to use community-made timetables with added services. However, and that's a big one, it will take quite a while to build a timetable from scratch and not many will be able/want to do that. Even then there is the stylistic question whether to include train sets which realistically don't drive on the route for lack of appropriate rolling stock. But if community-made timetables and their UE sources are available, it should be easier to backport additional rolling stock becoming available. Especially, if the timetable excel sheets include all the actual services IRL and the platform allocations leave room for such services.
A " small " patch is promised for this route, but what it contains is not specified. Overall, I think you're correct. Most of the older routes are done with. Even the SFJ patch has been cut down to just the Baby Bullet and Oakville is not even mentioned any more, whereas in earlier roadmaps it was getting a large update. I think TSW2/3 has pretty much received the coup de grace, except for DRA and NYT, though MP is apparently quietly beavering away, burning the midnight oil in his secret workshop on Clinchfield etc..
HAHa as a matter of fact I noticed it today - keeps me focused that I'm in a video game because I've got used to the stuttering!
I'm genuinely curious, what console do you play on, because I see so many complaints about stuttering, but I've never noticed or played with a stutter?
I do not know how much harder it is to make trains on tsw but on classic most routes would come with 2 trains but you would always get additional add dlc add ons to populate the routes. For some reason this does not seem to be happening as much on tsw. Cathcart circle suffers too as well as spirit of steam.
Basically think of a train in TSW as a mini game level in of itself. It needs the model and textures as good as you can get, plus a collision model because TSW is essentially free roam, on top of that, you have the scripting for all the switches, computers and processess. Creating a simugraph profile for the acceleration, breaking and now suspension performance. And then, tangle that into the UE4 and licencing agreements because it's a new product so needs licensing sign off. It's not a quick job. Also, I don't know too much, so I might have massively oversimplified
Building a big station is fine because it unlocks potential for other routes. Although DTG doesn’t seem to really go back to older stuff and add to it. Hopefully we’ll get something else out of Birmingham eventually.
It seems to be Route-specific; some Routes are markedly worse than others. For example, hardly any stutter on Arosalinie or Cathcart; but quite a bit on Dresden-Reisa or Southeastern High Speed.
