As a lifelong Pacific Northwesterner, I've wanted to see more Northwest routes in train simulators. Initially I thought a Stevens Pass route would be wonderful in TSW, but unfortunately the single-main passing siding operations and low traffic (12-15 trains per day) don't fit with TSW's gameplay style. With this in mind, a route focusing on the Seattle area would likely be a big hit with players. One possible routing would be from Everett in the north (west end of Stevens Pass, if you're familiar with the G-Trax route for TSC) down to Tacoma in the south. This would allow for a large variety of BNSF freight operations along with the full Sounder system. The main issues with developing this route involve replicating the local freight power and Boeing equipment, but the picturesque scenery along with introducing the F59PHI (note that almost all of Sounder's equipment already exists in TSW!) might make up for it. The Route Delta Junction north of Everett would be an ideal cutoff point in the north, with the route extending south to Sounder's Lakewood Station, the southern terminal of their system as of writing. The trackage would follow BNSF's Scenic Subdivision from Everett to Seattle, then the Seattle Subdivision from King Street Station in Seattle to Tacoma Yard, where the route would drop south from the Seattle Sub onto the Sound Transit Lakewood Subdivision. This route includes 12 stations between Everett and Tacoma all served by Sounder. There are several yards, mostly BNSF, which might be difficult to fully represent with realistic switching jobs. In Everett, Delta Yard is the main classification yard in addition to a small open-air railcar and locomotive shop, with a trash transloading facility across from the yard. Bayside Yard in the west is simply a holding yard used to hold trains running through Everett (no more than 3 at a time). Seattle's "main" yard is Balmer Yard in the Interbay neighborhood, which utilizes a small hump to sort traffic inbound to the Seattle/Tacoma area. Since humps do not work in TSW, it will have to be flat switched which could be prototypical for a short period around 2020 when the hump was closed, although it was quickly reopened in 2021. Stacy Street Yard just south of downtown handles both port stacks and general merchandise. If the West Seattle branch is included, that would add the Terminal 5 intermodal terminal and the West Seattle yard serving the few industries left in that area, including the large Nucor Steel facility complete with its own little GE switchers. Further south is UP's Argo Yard, serving various local industries. Since UP has its own separate trackage starting at Tukwila, this could just be a static yard as UP is not the focus of the route. Down by Black River Junction, South Seattle Yard is BNSF's main domestic intermodal yard for Seattle. The Z-SSECHC (early morning) and Q-SSECHC (late evening) originate here, and the Z-CHCSSE (usually evening) terminates here, along with a Q-CHCSSE as needed. As a brief aside, Black River Junction is where the branch to Renton, specifically Boeing's 737 assembly plant, begins. Continuing south, Kent Yard is a small local yard serving the various industries in the Kent/Orillia area, including a sizeable autorack facility which occasionally receives unit trains (usually V-BLUKEN as of late 2024-early 2025). This would make for excellent switching. The next yard south of Kent is Auburn Yard, serving as primarily a holding yard for empty grainers and the occasional empty oil/ethanol coming out of Tacoma, preparing for the climb up and over Stampede Pass. However, it does host a small amount of merchandise traffic, specifically for a couple industries near the yard and the Meeker Southern Railroad interchange at Puyallup, which used to be a wye. This is served by the R-NWE704 (Crew 4, Tacoma-Interbay) and R-NWE702 (Crew 2, Interbay-Tacoma) locals. Things will get tricky at Tacoma. The Port of Tacoma is, I would assume, way too massive to include in the route. In addition, it would require a few new locomotives to represent Tacoma Rail's roster. Unfortunately, this would mean players would not be able to run any locals out of Tacoma except for Crew 4 and the Roy turn (R-NWE835). The Rolling Stock There is a wide variety of existing stock that can be simply ported over into this route. Ideally, however, a "core American freight pack" would be developed at some point to cover most of the bases for American freight, since most cars can be theoretically seen on any railroad at any point in the continental US. However, going with a more conventional method of including stock with the route, there is a lot of existing stock that can be included. Most of the freight traffic around here is lumber products either from Canada or local shippers north of Everett, carried by centerbeams and 60' high cube boxcars. There are also lots of LPG (liquefied propane gas) tankers loaded at the refineries up north and sent to various propane distributors across the country. These would need to be modeled from scratch. For passenger stock, Sounder uses Bombardier cars which have already been developed for Caltrain and Metrolink, so that's easy. That being said, Sounder does have some of Bombardier's new, more crash-friendly cab cars which would be a simple modification of the existing cab car. For motive power they use the EMD F59PHI and MPI MP40PH-3C. The MP40 already exists as the MP36, again, for both Caltrain and Metrolink. Some minor modifications would be needed, along with bumping up the horsepower from 3600 to 4000, but otherwise it already exists in game. The F59PHI would be a brand new model, which could be an excellent selling point for the route. Note that while it is built on the same frame as the Metrolink F59PHR, it has a totally different streamlined shell. As of writing, Sounder's roster is as follows: 11 EMD F59PHIs #901-911 3 MPI MP40PH-3Cs #921-923 19 Bombardier cab cars #101-111, 301-307, 321-329, 330-332 (321-332 have the redesigned cab) 48 Bombardier bilevels #201-240, 401-410, 411-418 For freight operations, the Cajon Pass ES44C4 is an obvious pick for mainline power, hopefully with the full number range reflecting the nearly 1300 ES44C4s BNSF has on their roster (3250-3281, 4200-4299, 5533-5546, 6500-7199, 7921-8399). If possible, it would be nice to have another type of GEVO (ES44AC, ES44DC, ES44ACH, ET44C4, ET44ACH) or even a Dash 9 to provide some extra variety on road trains. BNSF does not have many AC4400CWs in service so that would probably not be an ideal choice for road power. Local power is difficult to pin down. The Seattle area is primarily dominated by EMD SD75s used as power for the trash trains running from Everett and Interbay to a landfill along the Columbia River and short range manifest trains within the state such as the Crew 4 and Crew 2 locals that shuttle traffic between Tacoma and Interbay. For yard and local power, it seems like no 2 locomotives are alike. Although EMD GPs are the main yard units around here, almost none of them are the same. Most of them are GP39 rebuilds, but there are a wide variety of GP39 rebuilds. Some have GP30 bodies, some were high hoods from the Southern Railway that had their high hood swapped for a normal short hood, etc. Headlight positions can be either low or high (mostly low though), and all have front and rear ditch lights. Most of the GPs are painted in the H4 scheme (similar to the Cajon Pass SD40-2) and have a K3LA horn paired with a standard Graham-White E bell. There are only 1 or 2 SD40-2s assigned to the Seattle area (one of which is retains its original SD45-2 body) so utilizing the Cajon SD40-2 would not be very accurate. The Operations TSW: Seattle Terminal would include a variety of freight operations, focusing on BNSF operations. Now this is where things get tricky. Unfortunately, there's no clean cutoff point to include a realistic Amtrak Cascades run, so Cascades trains would have to be either extremely short runs, AI only, or not included at all, which would leave out a significant portion of the traffic on the route. Currently Cascades only has 1 operational Talgo set, so it would be fine to represent Cascades with Horizon cars, F40 NPCUs, and SC44 Chargers, if it is included. Other Amtrak operations include the Empire Builder (Chicago-Seattle) and Coast Starlight (Los Angeles-Seattle) long distance trains, which can be skipped since they only represent 4 total services and would require developing a completely new set of rolling stock and power. Seattle Terminal has a lot of unique freight operations going beyond basic yard switching. Republic Services utilizes BNSF trackage to ship trash to their landfill with their own containers (some of which have open tops and are covered with tarps when loaded), and 3 of their facilities would be represented on the route (Everett, Seattle, and Renton). Players could build loaded trash trains and take apart empty trash trains at Balmer and Delta. One potential issue would be representing the two rail-served Boeing assembly plants at Everett and Renton. Everett, served by the R-NWE821, receives 767 and 777 parts in special "Skybox" cars from Spirit Aerosystems in Wichita, KS. Oversize containers are also transloaded at the Mt. Baker Terminal in Mukilteo onto flatcars and two 5-pack wellcars captive to Mukilteo. The Renton plant, served by the R-NWE737, assembles the 737, receiving fuselages also from Wichita. These are shipped on special flatcars and many pictures can be found online. Unfortunately, since this equipment is highly specialized, it would require a lot of development time to accurately represent the operations, especially at Everett, so maybe the Boeing plants might have to be cut. The Renton branch at least has a trash facility that could still be switched. There are a couple industries around Interbay, although they do not get much traffic. The bulk of the switching would be south of Seattle and around Tacoma. There are also 2 small shortline interchanges; the Ballard Terminal (BDTL) just north of the Ballard Bridge (served by the Y-INB226 out of Balmer), and the Meeker Southern (MSN) south of Auburn (served by either Y-AUB253 or Y-TAC156... may need to do some extra research). These shortlines each use an SW1200 to operate, BDTL serving 1 customer which unloads fly ash hoppers, MSN serving 5 or 6 customers using a variety of cars including gondolas, tank cars, and boxcars. Overall, a Seattle route would be a great way to shine a spotlight on an underrepresented part of the country. Although there are several challenges associated with developing a route in this area, keeping the route short would likely be to its benefit, as more effort could be placed into developing a realistic timetable and higher quality scenery. If possible, I would love to help the team get in touch with local railroaders and scope out a route here. I would be glad to answer questions since I kind of just spammed my thoughts into one big wall of text LOL
Ditto! BNSF SD75M/SD75Is (common power on trash and manifest trains in the Seattle area), ET44C4s, C44-9Ws, and GP60s/Ms/Bs are needed for freight services, along with the Boeing Fuselage cars and other rolling stock. The Sounder trains should include an MP40PH-3C and Bi-level coaches. Then we'd get SC44 Chargers and Horizon and/or Talgo passenger cars for Amtrak Cascades and the ALC-42 or P42DC w/ Superliner Cars for the Empire Builder. As for the Coast Starlight, a P32-8BWH, P42DC, or ALC-42 Charger are needed.
