Gigantic Unused Branch Found On Maintalbahn!

Let’s get right to the point: The Gewerbegebiet Nilkheim-West (huge industrial area along with a ~1km long rest of the former Bachgaubahn branch line leading to it) that appears on the 2D map in the Maintalbahn route, but is completely unused in service mode, is in fact fully accessible and modeled to a very high standard.

Here’s a map so you know which area I’m talking about:


Let's take a journey along the branch:
We leave the harbor branch we all know near the site of the former Nilkheim station, which is represented in the game relatively accurately and nowadays home of a fishermen’s club (I believe). Just a few meters after, right next to the tracks, is the site of one of the few WW2 strategic bunkers in the area that is still intact (unfortunately not represented in the game, hence I didn’t take a screenshot of the place).

After going through some parkland full of trees belonging to some sort of historic castle that is situated between here and the harbor, we get our first glimpse at the gigantic industrial area. The huge Linde factory is visible on the left, and there’s also some nice rural distant scenery on the right:


Not long after, the Linde factory siding branches off to the left. In reality (verified using Apple & Google satellite images and Apple’s Look Around feature), this siding has long been overgrown, but is still somewhat intact and recognizable all the way to what appears to be the main entrance of the factory. On the other side of the street, where a gate locks off the rest of the line in-game, a bicycle storage area has recently been built on the former trackbed. Fun detail in the game: The scenery artist appears to have interpreted the hundreds of brand-new Linde forklifts parked all around the factory as large garbage containers! It’s honestly incredible how much care has been put into these factory buildings, they look really good:


Going back to the main branch, we find ourselves at a crossroads soon after: On the left, the siding passes some sort of equipment or junk yard (judging by the satellite imagery, there’s a small possibility it’s actively utilizing the rail connection to dispatch and receive stuff, but nothing concrete at all) and then continues to a warehouse, although the last few meters have since been replaced with a paved truck parking and staging area. To the right, the line continues all the way to a liquid gas company that still appears to make active use of the rail connection in real life:


On the last screenshot I have for you, the terminus of the line is visible close-up. The track used to continue all the way to Höchst, but it’s been many years since that was the case. I was able to find a decade-old discussion on a German online forum confirming that the liquid gas company makes regular use of the rail connection every 1-2 days, getting one or two tanker wagons delivered to hook up to their on-site equipment. That company apparently motivated whoever is responsible for the branch to upgrade it with concrete sleepers (instead of the old wooden ones), simplifying the track layout by removing switches to some of the unused sidings I mentioned above in the process. Even on the most recent Google and Apple satellite imagery, 1-2 tanker wagons are present on-site, confirming the continued active use of the line:


For those who want to learn more about the Nilkheim-West industrial area and have a translation software (many internet browsers do nowadays), I can recommend page 4 of this German PDF.

Conclusion:
From the very first time I looked at the Maintalbahn route map, I was fascinated by this huge area. Initially, I suspected it may have been utilized in the DB BR 204 add-on for the Main-Spessart-Bahn route that added lots of gameplay to the nearby harbor area. But from what I can gather, that is not the case.
So the question remains: Why was this area built to a very high standard (in fact, I’d argue it looks better than many of the industrial areas used in service mode throughout TSW) and then never ended up being used at all? The siding belonging to the liquid gas company is even named correctly in the game, confirming there were at least rough plans to do something with it at some point during development considering it’s so far away from the rest of the route regularly used by players.

Realistically, I know it’s wishful thinking to expect timetable additions to a route that has been out for a year. But considering the low amount of freight services on the route and the fact that the DB BR 363 locos spend most of the day waiting for their next job in a siding, it wouldn’t be completely unrealistic to dispatch one of them onto the Nilkheim-West industrial branch in the morning to deliver two tanker wagons, and then send them back to the freight yard next to Aschaffenburg Hbf (or the harbor sidings, depending on what makes more sense operationally) again later that day. This would represent the regular movement of the tanker wagons relatively well as part of the TSW timetable. I’m sure the developers have appropriate resources they can use to make the movements even more realistic than what I’m describing here.

Hope you enjoyed this journey of discovery as much as I did! Would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Update: I have made a great discovery - video footage of a service delivering and returning the liquid gas tanker wagons I mentioned above to/from the Nilkheim-West industrial area (timestamp is from 16:36 to 25:39). The voiceover commentary by the German video creator is excellent, he describes a lot of the processes that are necessary to access such a branch.

From what I can gather, this is what’s going on:

• A shunter loco drags a single tanker wagon from (presumably) the Hauptbahnhof area to the harbor, runs around it and then drags it back from the harbor to the junction with the Nilkheim-West industrial area.
• The tanker wagon is pushed onto the industrial branch.
• Since only one track is available at the liquid gas company, I’m assuming a little part of the siding heading left at the junk yard I mentioned above is utilized to “park” one of the tanker wagons temporarily in order to allow the “fresh” wagon to take the place of one that was already there.
  
• Not long after, the shunter is back at the junction with the “used” tanker wagon that was replaced by the new one at the liquid gas site in tow.
• The tanker wagon is pushed towards the harbor area, and the loco returns soon after, heading towards Aschaffenburg Hbf with the tanker wagon and tons of other wagons in tow.

This means that two separate services in the morning and evening wouldn’t even be necessary. It could all be carried out within a single, long service - replacing an existing tanker wagon with a new one, starting and ending at the Aschaffenburg Hbf freight sidings. Would be so cool to have this in the game!

 

I have run trains on that branch in free roam .just spawn a shunter engine .ive found other branches and spurs on other routes as well you can do it also on MML i spawned a class 66 and could get access into the large ratcliffe power station area, also spawned a engine and accessed the branch to the power station in RSN

 

on HSC i found you can access the spur and yard trackage in Johnstown Pa across the river .there was a YT video someone did they showed how. You spawn a engine or a small train and go tgh the bridge pier that blocks the way it looks like you cant do it but train just rolls right tgh .then you can go across steel bridge over the river and explore all that trackage spurs the guy even showed you can back run your train tgh some of the gates on spurs in routes like antelope valley etc .

 

I’ve explored many of the unused sidings and yards in TSW, it’s something I love doing. Many of them have a very low level of detail, where it’s clear that the area was never meant to be used for gameplay. What puzzles me about the Nilkheim industrial area is its amazing level of detail. A human genuinely spent a lot of time manually placing assets, down to street lighting poles and junk/rubbish.

 

i am pretty familiar with the Johnstown Pa area that trackage across the river is oriigonally the Conemaugh and Black Lick RR was a Bethlehem Steel railroad there mills used to line all along that valley in TSW they still have some of the large building s left the steel mills themselves were torn down but you can take gondolas flatcars and place them in spurs ..i also grew up in pittsburgh area and would railfan some at Johnstown amtrak station and yards back when Conrail ran i live away from that area now ,

 

The Tees Valley Line also has several rather unused sidings, namely the Port of Tees area, but Tees Yard as well. As mentioned above, it’s not uncommon for routes to have under-utilised sections of line. Spirit of Steam is another, with miles of sidings which don’t see any services.

 

A similar layout exists on MSB.

As you can see, it is not a fully detailed area.


This would imply that the area was actually detailed for the Maintalbahn, but not made accessible. It would, of course, need a model of the appropriate Gaskesselwagen to make it a viable set of sidings to use. Perhaps https://forums.dovetailgames.com/members/dtg-lukas.4744/ might be able to provide some insight on this for Maintalbahn, I think he was involved in the development... (apologies if I have that wrong).

 

My bathroom tiles have that design, blimey

 

Amazing, thanks for sharing this! One of my theories was that they detailed this for Main-Spessart-Bahn, along with the whole Aschaffenburg harbor area, because Rivet’s DB BR 204 add-on was meant to fill out the area with gameplay. And then plans changed and they left out the Nilkheim industrial area.
But your discovery implies that this was all made exclusively for Maintalbahn. I really hope the likes of DTG Matt or DTG Lukas can reveal why this branch was cut from the final release. Considering the relative simplicity of the tanker wagon delivery/return service(s) and the ease of integrating them into the rest of the timetable because the BR 363s spend a lot of time parked and waiting for their next task, my current favorite theory is that the whole thing was cut because they couldn’t manage to put the tanker wagon into the pack. Perhaps they had to reallocate dev time/resources late into development and the polishing/improvement of the tanker wagon to (then-) TSW4 standard was abandoned. That doesn’t explain why those services weren’t just added as a layer though. Would really love to hear from the devs, it’s an interesting topic!

 

Thanks for the response, Matt!
Perhaps Lukas will see this at some point. I recall that he worked on the route a lot, so maybe he knows more.