Welcome to another route that has the potential to make a great 'Rush Hour' style route when I did that thread a while back. This will be last suggestion I do for the time being, mainly because of the imminent release of the first Rush Hour route, Boston Sprinter. Plus the fact I've pretty much gone through all the most popular routes that feature in that thread that eventually got the most votes, and I want to eventually move on and get ready for the upcoming routes that we are getting, and eventually make those pdf timetables for those routes. For this last suggestion, we are going to focusing on a busy metro line set in North London. We already have a London Underground line in this game with the Bakerloo Line, so maybe it's time to follow it up with a London Overground line? Specifically, the North London Line, running between Richmond and Stratford. As always, before we begin, let me go over what I said last time. Now as always, if you haven't already, go check out the thread which features all the remaining routes that featured in that thread which also features a poll where you can vote for which routes you would most like to see in TSW2 and who knows? If a route suddenly gets a ton of votes and becomes as popular as say, South London Network or East Coast Main Line South, I may do a in-depth post on that as well. You can go check it out by clicking here. But regardless, let's get into talking about the North London Line The Route Itself This route, like all the suggestions I have made so far, is based on the route that was made for TS Classic all the way back in 2015. This is actually a route that I have personally played with back then and, to be honest, I actually quite enjoyed it back then. It wasn't all that long, but at the time, it was the closest thing you got to a London Underground route back then and I do remember making small AI railfan scenarios in the editor at certain stations along the route (Mainly those near a tunnel to give the illusion of an underground station). But when focusing in TSW2 and factoring in service mode, this route would actually be a good fit for this game as the route has quite an extensive timetable with lots of services running down the route every day. Plus, it also has a couple of features that we haven't seen much of in TSW2. Once again I have made a map of the route to showcase what I think this route would look like in TSW2. Even if it's not that big, it's still worth sharing to give you a idea of what this route is like. Map of the Whole Route Section around Willesden Junction Section around Dalston Kingsland/Junction So out of all the suggestions I have made on this forum, this is the smallest route that I have suggested so far, being at only 18.5 miles (29.8 km). The main route between Richmond and Stratford being at 17.5 miles (28.1 km) with the remain 1 mile (1.6 km) of length focusing on either the tracks in and around Willesden Junction or the small spur to Dalston Junction. But despite it's small length, it does pack in quite a lot of stations, 24 to be precise and 1 main depot (Willesden TMD). You know what I would best compare this route to? It's kinda like a outdoor version of the Bakerloo Line that we already have. I say this because it has roughly about the same length, have around the same number of stations and the fact that the grand majority of the services are self-contained, as they wouldn't ever leave the boundaries of the route, apart from maybe a few services bound for Clapham Junction and also the freight layers on this route, but more on that later. But unlike the Bakerloo Line, which has around 3 main depots, this route only has one. The depot in question is Willesden TMD, which is used by London Overground to store and maintain trains that operate on not just the North London Line, but also the West London Line, the Watford DC Line and the Gospel Oak to Barking Line (also known as the GOBLIN), which is why you can see that the tracks leading into the lower level platforms and subsequently into the depot are represented on the map. Another section also represented here is Dalston Junction, which was reopened as part of the East London Line in 2010 for services only terminating here and then subsequently in 2011 for services carrying on to Highbury & Islington. It was represented on the TS Classic route, so would make sense to include it on the TSW2 version too, as it allow East London Line services in that small section up to Highbury & Islington, or maybe that part will be blocked off and those services would just be AI traffic, who knows? But probably the most interesting aspect of this route, and one that puts this route above the Bakerloo Line, is the fact that this route runs through three different power supply methods. Starting at Richmond, the route starts out along what is the District Line as far as Gunnersbury, which is on fourth-rail power. After that, the route turns to a more conventional third-rail route, this isn't really a problem for the locos running on the North London Line as they are usually only run on third-rail power any-ways. But then at Acton Central, the route changes from DC third-rail to AC Overhead power lines, which involves the raising of the third-rail shoes and raising of the overhead pantograph, similar to what happens at Ebbsfleet on Southeastern High Speed. The route continues like this all the way to the end of the line at Stratford. One last thing I would like to mention here is here as well as the Bakerloo Line, this route also passes by two other routes that have already been featured in TSW/TSW2. The first route being Great Western Express at Acton North when the line crosses over the Great Western Main Line and Southeastern High Speed when line comes within view of St Pancras Station between Camden Road and Caledonian Road & Barnsbury, plus the route comes close to where Stratford International is located on the route around the eastern end of the route. It even passes by two more routes that I have personally suggested in the that I did talking about potential 'Rush Hour' style routes. These being East Coast Main Line South in that same area around St Pancras that I've just mentioned and the Great Eastern Main Line at the eastern terminus of the route, Stratford. Maybe one day it would be cool to combine all these routes into one big super route, but that's a pipedream for a day that route mergers are possible. So enough talking, lets get into showing some real life pictures. Pictures of the route in real life Richmond Gunnersbury Acton Central West Hampstead Finchley Road & Frognal Gospel Oak Highbury & Islington Dalston Kingsland Dalston Junction Stratford Available Locos Now unlike a lot of route that I've suggested before, which usually come with at a minimum 2 locos to a maximum of 4 to 5 locos, this route would only come with 1 loco, and I have a feeling you could probably guess the loco that I am referring too. London Overground BR Class 378/2 Yep, I think you kinda knew that these were going to be included with this route. Besides, what would an London Overground route be without them? So these units were originally introduced way back in 2009 to replace the old stock that originate from Silverlink. They were originally built as only three cars units, but where lengthened to four cars in 2010, and then between 2014 and 2016, they were lengthened again to five cars in order to increase capacity on the routes they served. For this route, they would of course come in the five car variant and would operate three types of service on this route. One service, starting at Stratford, would run the entire length of the line to Richmond, the second, would go as far as Willesden Junction and then turn off towards Clapham Junction and a third, starting at Dalston Junction, would run the small section as far as Highbury & Islington. The services on the North London Line both happen about 4 times an hour in each direction, while the East London Line services on the short section happen around 8 times an hour in each direction, with would lead to a very busy section between Highbury & Islington and Canonbury with lots of trains, coming in and out of the station every hour. Freight Services on this route As well as being a busy rapid transit line, the route is also a vital freight line for services travelling through London to various parts of the country. For this section, this would come in the form of additional layers from two others routes in TSW2. These routes being: East Coastway: This would add services using the EWS Class 66 and JNA Wagons Great Western Express: This would add two types of service. One using the FKA Container wagons and another using the HKA Hoppers. Both of these services would use the DB/EWS Class 66 available with that route. What makes these services interesting is that they have variety of service patterns. While most of these services would start at Willesden Junction, some would only go as far as Gospel Oak before going down the GOBLIN, some would keep going to Camden Road before turning onto the East Coast Main Line and some go all the way to Stratford. I mean, some freight services even join the route at Canonbury via the spur of track going towards Finsbury Park alongside the Northern City Line and would carry on all the way to Stratford. These would keep these services interesting as they would all be starting and stopping in various places instead of all of them just running the same length of route all the time. Future Loco Add-Ons Now out of all the route suggestions I have done so far, this route is one that I have had the hardest time trying to work out what else could be added to this route in future. The thing is here, this route would pretty much have everything that usually runs on this route in real-life and even if there are locos that run here that are in this game yet, I don't think this would be the best route to make the loco for. But even throughout this suggestion, there's is still thing I need to address here... ...so what about the Class 313? You see, this is the loco that used to run on this route before they were all replace by the 378's, and we kinda do have this loco at the moment with the 314 that comes with Cathcart Circle and we definitely getting it with the loco add-on for East Coastway (Which funnily enough, this is where those former Overground units ended up once they were withdrawn from that network and moved over to Southern in 2010). So the question is, would you do this loco for this route, and if so, how would you go about implementing this loco onto this route? Well for me, I personally would. Since I don't really want to waste the opportunity here. Plus, I have a idea on how you could add this loco to this route. LO Silverlink Livery/Timetable Pack To explain my thinking here, this would be a timetable pack, similar to what we go with Diesel Legends of the Great Western and I kinda imagine this coming out around the same time as the route. What I would contain is the BR Class 313/1 in Silverlink livery with London Overground stickers and a three car version of the Class 378 to represent the time that the 313 operated during the early days of the Overground. The timetable featured with this pack would be an older version of the base timetable (which would represented around 2019-2020 time), it just has no East London services at that wasn't open quite yet and it has two less services going out towards Clapham Junction at off-peak times (More services during the peak). But most importantly, it would provide a place to drive the 313/1 on this route in service mode without messing up the modern timetable which features the five car long units that run on this route today. Okay, so with that out the way, is there anything else that can genuinely be added to this route other than that? Well, I did think of one thing, but that would kinda depend on whether it actually runs on this route and whether it would require the route to be extend for it. Allow me to explain. London Overground BR Class 710/3 This loco was recently introduced to replace the stock that ran on the Lea Valley, Romford-Upminster and the aforementioned GOBLIN, as well as to relieve the 378's working on the Watford DC Line, allowing them to cascade over to other parts of the Overground network. The thing is with these units is hat, as you've probably already just read, they don't actually work on the North London Line. …or at least not yet. You see, six new units are currently being built under the classification 710/3. These are five cars units that, when they eventually enter service, will help out on both the North and West London Lines. Which means soon, we can have this be a Loco Add-On for this route. Or maybe the best option is to make that GOBLIN extension and have this be featured as the star loco of that section, who knows? Let me know what would be the best option for bringing these locos to TSW2. Conclusion …and so with that, we conclude this little extra thread series talking about some of those more popular routes that featured on that thread talking about what routes, currently not in TSW2, have the potential to make a great 'Rush Hour' style route. To be honest, I have enjoyed myself writing these small pieces talking about each route in more depth and I have to thank you all for not only voting in that poll, but also to some to you to offer feedback on how certain routes can be done better to not only make them true to what I think a TSW2 version of a route would be like, but also be more ambitious and come up with ideas that maybe some of the existing routes don't take advantage off, and from going through what we have just gone through, we have certainly ended this on a good note. North London Line has to potential to be one of busiest routes out here and a route that brilliantly fits the 'Rush Hour' mould. It has a lot of traffic running down it every day, has potential to add extra freight services and would also pass by a lot of routes that have already featured in this game. I enjoyed myself with the TS Classic and if a potential TSW2 can be anything like that, it would certainly live to being one the strongest and most hectic routes on TSW2 when talking about routes that have a lot of traffic running along it. The question from all this is, will I ever do another route that featured in that thread? Well, that will depend on whether a route is suddenly popular enough to justify me doing another independent thread about it. But one thing I can guarantee is that I will do another thread like that one day. You see, I do have a lot of routes that I had in the pipeline when coming up with what to feature in that post, but since I also wanted to do a poll about which routes you would most want to see in this game, and the fact that the poll feature in this forum is limited to 25 options, I had to cut down to just the 25 that made into the thread. But I don't just want to leave them be, I will be doing another thread just like that focusing on the route that didn't quite make and once again put up a poll on which of them you would most like to see, but that will probably come once this whole 'Rush Hour' thing is over. For now though, lets look forward to the first Rush Hour route, Boston Sprinter, coming out this Thursday. For the final time, if you have any ideas for this route, or you feel like there's something that can be differently here, let me known in the replies down below. I have nothing else to say here other than, thanks all for reading and I'll see you someday for another suggestion down the line. Image Sources: https://ramboll.com/projects/ruk/richmond-branch-train-protection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunnersbury_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acton_Central_railway_station https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2018/12/14/west-hampstead-overground-stations-new-footbridge/ https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3287662 https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4136990 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Highbury_&_Islington_stn_Overground_high_eastbound_April_11.JPG https://www.geograph.ie/photo/4300892 http://vipauk.org/transport/tube/over/east/dj.html# https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:London_Overground_platforms_at_Stratford_Station.jpg https://www.flickr.com/photos/24772733@N05/36262156783 https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/730772 https://twitter.com/Andym13/status/1377730205754798084
