I would like to discuss the feasibility of a route that would involve travelling over the Irish sea to Northern Ireland. I think this would be a great addition to the roster in train sim world not only as it provides a scenic route with lots of options yet simplistic timetables to travel on but also adds opportunity to add future expansion into the Republic of Ireland for example or the infamous Enterprise services that run between Dublin Connolly and Belfast Lanyon Place. I think a good starting point would be a route that would cover the Bangor to Portadown branch as this would provide players with a route that has a variety of services and would include the main crucial stations such as Bangor, Lanyon Place, Great Victoria Street, Lisburn and Portadown. This is an adaptable setup as it would provide the basis for expansion of the route as mentioned before to Newry for example or perhaps the section of track leading to Larne Harbour. The rolling stock would include the class 3000/4000 DMU's and also the opportunity to expand to see the Irish Class 201 that operates the enterprise services to Dublin. Please put forward anything else I have either missed or something you would like to point out and I hope Dovetail would look into this as a potential route for the future especially seeing as they are looking to expand to different regions. There is a plentiful supply of resources that could be used to build this route too with timetables remaining fairly consistent over the years. NIR I am sure would love to see the promotion of their trains and railways across the world and would not hesitate to provide details if and when it came to building a route.
Keep posts like this coming, Ireland needs to be recognised here. Been left alone for far too long, Translink have been emailed by a player in the past and they did indeed say they'd be more than happy with the idea. Being my home network, and my career path choice, it would bring a great advantage to me for the future.
I agree and the easy part is that all Translink trains use DSD AWS TPWS and Driver's remainder appliance. However, the Track gauge is 1.6m which requires the training centre to be dual gauged with the inner pair being Cape Gauge 1.067m that is compatible with Rhb Metre gauge so that it's future-proofed for Japanese Australian QLD and Western Australia routes which will use the inner pair of tracks existing trains (1.435m Standard Gauge) will use One track of the inner pair dual gauge with the outer Irish gauge track. Here's what the training centre tracks must look like In the training centre, the goods wagon will be a standard gauge DB Kjils from KWG using this set up
I got the Video 125 cab ride from Belfast to (London)Derry for Christmas and that is a fantastic route. Some great urban scenery including the concrete flyovers leaving Belfast. A bit of fast running to Antrim, then a nice run on rural single track (mostly still jointed rail), with the scenic climax being the coastal stretch. Bonus was the old Thumper (we must have one of those) on the Coleraine to Portrush branch.
I personally do not use the training centre and I don't think it would be necessary to add additional track for different gauges. It may be wrong of me to assume that those using the training centre perhaps would not pay particular attention to track widths. I have no game development experience but I imagine it would be more of a challenge to add new areas of different track on an already built area than it would be when building a route from the ground up with a new track gauge. I am not disagreeing with you, all I am saying is it would not bother me personally to not have changes made to the training centre to facilitate a NI route. These changes perhaps would be a pull factor from making such a route.
Yes Training Centre doesn’t hold water as we already have metre gauge with the Arosa Line and if DTG ever added a narrow gauge as in 2ft or 2ft 6in route that wouldn’t go there either.
Good point but for the devs they said all TSW 3 routes use training centre for rolling stock basic tutorials, Therefore Training Centre must be dual gauged
I have also just remembered that over lockdown Translink posted a number of "virtual train ride" videos on their social media. The extended versions available on their YouTube cover most if not all routs on the network and see a drivers eye view along the journey which I think would make up a good chunk of the graphical resources Dovetail would need for a NI route.
Would be greatly limited in terms of routes, rolling stock and and be limited to a maximum of 4 routes with a fleet size less than 50 with no freight and infrequent services I just don't see the gameplay. The given its broad gauge with limited uses else where in world I just can't see it being commercially viable to boot. Sorry buts it's no from me.
No but there's switching and some tough grades with heavy loads to tackle. Other than maybe a handful of depot moves, anything on NI Rail would be straight forward passenger runs. And the big thing Clinchfield has over anything NI is that the assets can (and have been reused) across multiple routes.
I must say I have to disagree with you. You said it yourself, "reuse". I think players would like it if there was something built with new assets even if it did take extra time. As for "straight forward passenger runs" that you mention this does not vary in any other way to any other passenger route that's in the game. Take Birmingham city cross for example. It covers a point to point route that has one type of passenger train and a service pattern that is mostly the same throughout the day. Despite this, I find this to still be quite an enjoyable route to drive on and given the steam reviews are mostly positive it seems the player base would agree. An NI route would provide the two DMU's while they may be similar it can be compared to say the 387 and the 385. While these trains are basically the same, they both feel like they have got qualities the other doesn't.
Building assets takes resources, when you have to build a whole new track gauge that takes up a lot of the budget. Its been done before with Arosa admittedly, but with Swiss alpine routes there's a lot of demand and lot of different routes so the cost can be spread out more. Even without more narrow gauge the signal and building assets got reused in Luzern. As far as BCC is concerned it has far more traffic then most NI Railway routes where traffic is 2 TPH mostly. Look at it from a business perspective, a dev wants to do a UK route, are they going to go for NI and build a whole new track gauge, or are they going to do a route on the mainline where the track gauge is already built?
Well as I said earlier, seems some sections of NIR are quite scenic which I guess is where the interest comes. However as with discussions about Southern Irish (Eire) routes, sadly you need to look at the commercial interest in developing payware for TSC (0) and MSTS (1 - I believe cross border from Belfast to Dublin) to see it's probably a non starter.
