It's another weekend so I'm thinking I will purchase another route, I only really have an interest in uk routes for now, i quite fancy London-Brighton, is it worth it? I must admit to have been a little put off by DTG charging £24.99 for the Eastbourne-Seaford route when I believe it should be a natural extension of the London-Brighton route.
Which platform are you on? If you are on PS4 or Xbox 1 it may run very slow and possibly crash. However, although it is riddled with electrostars if you can see past that it can be interesting to play in small doses as the timetable is very interesting and there is a lot going on. Definitely worth the money. I would also highly recommend both Northern Trans-Pennine and Tees Valley Line if you haven't got them already as they too are worth the money you'll spend on them.
Do you have the heavy freight pack for Northern Trans-Pennine? That really adds that extra immersion. Like I say I highly recommend Tees Valley and I personally rate it more than London Brighton.
What are you playing on? Pc, next gen console (ps5, xbox series s/x), last gen (ps4, xbox 1)?. As a base, bml comes with around 1200 services I believe with just the 387 and the 377. Number goes up to around 1400 with additional dlc (pc, ps5, xbox series s/x only). You need gwe for the 166 and 43 (ai only, extremely rare). Ecw for the 66 and the 313 dlc (only 2 services cuz the dev working on timetable ran out of time). Sehs gives you the 375 and the 465 (ai only). There's also a static 08 at Brighton (don't know which route). It's expensive to get all the dlc. Even with nothing else bought, it's still a ton of services. There's around 5000 total ai services with around 1200 playable done by 1 man which really is impressive in the history of tsw. And ecw released before bml. Route mergers aren't possible since dtg don't have the tech so we won't be seeing mergers for a while. Also for ecw and bml to merge, you would need additional track to go from lewes to the bml. Tees valley is lovely. You get the 37, 101 and 08. Then you can purchase the 20 and 31 as dlc. They are all really well done locos. Nice mix of freight, shunting, passenger runs. Other uk routes. I'll just list them all and give a short summary since idk what you have. Gwe: 66, 43 hst, 166. You get commuter, high speed and freight runs. The gwb pack adds an additional timetable. It gives you a 52, 08 and 101. You also get layers from tvl, tvl dlc and ntp. Expensive if you want the full experience. Wcl: 150/2, 37. You also get the st ives branch. So the 150 can either do full length mainline runs or do short branch runs. The 37 adds in a couple freight services. The bad thing about wcl is the 150 which doesn't have good sounds or physics and fictional scenery. It's not a wow, amazing route. Iow: class 483, nice short full route. Scenery isn't that great. It's very noticeable (2d trees right in front of you). And the 483 has wheelslip when taking off and driving in the snow is not great cuz the train can barely move. Island line 2022: newer 484, new scenery, new track, new stations since the route got rebuilt to accommodate the new train. It's much better in terms of looks and driving. Bakerloo: 1972 stock, got a new timetable with 600+ services. When it first launched, it had like 100. So it's really a busy rush hour route now. The same guy who built bml made the new timetable. 1938 stock: it's not great but if you want railtour services and older stock to run on bakerloo, you can. But I wouldn't recommend this. Poor sounds and stuff West somerset: heritage railway, slow, even though it's 20 miles it takes 90 minutes. It comes with a 47 and 09. You can get the 33 and the 52 with it which just sub in. Ntp subs in and so does heavy freight pack and tvl I believe.
I really don’t think WCL is that bad. As a St. Austell native for pretty much my whole life (up to this year) I think they did a pretty good job, especially as far as stations are concerned.
If you close your eyes to the constant Electrostars, the traffic levels on BML with Joe's genius real life timetable generate an immersive experience of a busy railway. However the Thanksgiving and Christmas Steam sales are imminent, if you are on PC, so probably worth waiting to see if there is a nice discount.
Not sure what platform you´re on. But if you´re still on PS4, don´t go for BML. The only british route I´ve regreted to purchase. It´s a friggin´ slideshow around the busy stations. The AI traffic might be exciting and immersive, but clearly too dense for PS4 to handle. Trains are too frequent and too long. Loading times are considerably longer as well. You´ll find the dense AI traffic being the major culprit when you create a "naked" scenario with only your train, you´ll find the (no doubt beautiful scenery) flowing smooth and easy. And there´s no setup slider which could help you tone down the traffic, let´s say to 50% or something. (I´d imagine this being a basic feature, but hey it´s DTG world!) ECW, on the other hand, is a marvelous route. I just love it and spend lot of time there, even on foot.
The scenery is nicer on Eastcoastway but it's a far bigger route and a far busier timetable on London Commuter
