Note: This project is in its very early days and everything in this post is heavily work in progress. The current state of the route is nowhere near complete, so please remember that when looking at any screenshots posted as these will not represent the final route accurately. Myself and my friend have been working on our local route together, the section between Ramsgate and Dover Priory. This is going to be released as a free extension to DTG's Chatham Main Line: London to Dover and Ramsgate route. There has been some interest for it on the ATS Facebook group so I've decided to make a thread about it here to provide updates and more information as Facebook isn't the best place to do this. As of this post the trackwork is almost complete; see the track plan below. The track has been laid using real gradients (or as close to them as we could). In summary, the extension will include: Ramsgate to Dover via Deal, with every station along the line modelled, including the new Thanet Parkway station. Minster station to allow for the few trains that reverse at the station to be run (as well as other interesting scenarios such as the time when Minster was used as a terminus for trains from Canterbury and Dover). Please note that the trackwork on the map goes quite far beyond Minster, but we do not plan on adding scenery here. Scenarios for the route. Custom assets for every station on the line as well as various landmarks such as Deal's art deco signal box and possibly the Discovery Centre near Sandwich. The route will also include the BRLocos asset pack which we have contributed to and itself includes assets of varying quality, including a very basic distant model of the Cotes Des Dunes ferry which will be added near Dover on the route. (Unfinished) A bench model for Thanet Parkway station. It is worth noting that, before we show any more screenshots, that I explain that the route started as being two routes. The first was a diorama made quickly of Deal station by me, and the other being the extension itself mainly by my friend. At the time the diorama was made, scenery work on the extension had not begun and so the diorama was a quick demonstration of what the scenery could be like. As a result of the hasty nature of the diorama and the basic scenery on the actual route the screenshots of Deal (currently the only place with 'proper' scenery) I have used screenshots from both versions; the final version will be a combination of both of them and hopefully will look a lot better than where we're at now. As a rule of thumb, the scenery on the diorama is better but with less focus on realism, while the extension has custom assets and will eventually be closer to the real thing. The screenshots will have a tag that says which version it's from. And with that out of the way, here are a few screenshots of Deal: (Diorama) This shows the approach into Deal from the south. (Extension) This shows the view from the junction between Blenheim Road, Queen Street and West Street (the road to the station is unnamed). The scenery here is closer to the real thing than my version. (Diorama) The view from the path that connect London Road to Platform 2; this path is what gives the station step-free access. This bit is not very accurate but the foliage density is something I'm quite proud of. Also note the trees on Platform 1 behind the fence; I couldn't find the exact trees used there so I picked something close to them. Further ambitions: Everything beyond this point is hypothetical and not confirmed. Our long-term plan is to go beyond the extension and extend the route from Dover to Ashford. At that point, we may try to merge the base route and London to Faversham so we can connect Ebbsfleet and Ashford, allowing you to run the former 'Kent loop' high speed service. Another potential idea is to extend the route to Paddock Wood, at which point you can swap to the brilliant SE Network route being developed and complete the journey into Charing Cross. While we'd love to work with Vaffelen and potentially combine our projects once complete, I doubt TS would actually be able to run the route as it would almost be the entire Southeastern network. While we have no plans to fill in the gap between Ashford and Minster via Canterbury West at the moment it is something we'd potentially consider in the future, and on a similar note we had a project building the Marshlink that was put at the back of the queue with other projects taking higher priority. A potential idea using that is to add the Marshlink line (we'd likely be starting from scratch anyway so it doesn't matter) to the long-term plan so players wouldn't need to change routes to get from Ashford to Hastings. As for the Marshlink Line project, we are aware that another is/was in development by another user and we have spoken to them; he encouraged us to continue building ours. While this route deserves a thread of its own (although as it is not in active development I won't be doing this) the plan was to build Ashford to St Leonards in the game. The current build is just St Leonards to Ore, but this version is dated and we do not plan on continuing with it at this stage. Anyway, that was a huge tangent - sorry about that. Again, this last section is purely hypothetical. Currently, our only ambition is to finish Ramsgate to Dover. I'll be updating this thread when needed, and you can give your thought and feedback here as well. And as a cheeky request, if you have any photos of stations on the line or other useful materials (cab rides, line diagrams, etcetera) feel free to PM them to me as they will undoubtedly be very useful when making the route. Thanks for reading!
As en ex signalman who worked Martin Mill, Deal and Sandwich boxes (and an ex Deal resident) I am very interested in this. Deal was the first box I passed out in.
