Route Peak Forest Railway: Ambergate – Chinley & Buxton Feedback Thread

Ah, nice. Thanks. That looks exactly like what I was looking for.

 

Has anyone managed to get gold on the Buxton midland -Manchester central 09.13 local ? I keep getting silver, but I think I can improve my braking a bit.

 

Am not seeing any other active Peak Forest (feedback) thread, so I think replying to this one is the right move.

So I’ve just done the semi-fast Manchester-London service in the third Journey chapter, and it’s actually only drivable to Matlock. No biggie, I figured, because I’ve been hearing that Ambergate wasn’t a super huge station and many trains didn’t stop there. But then, my train got taken over by AI and actually stopped at Ambergate, with a full passenger boarding sequence and everything.
My question: Is there any explanation why we can’t be in control all the way to Ambergate and have to hand over to AI earlier?

 

Not sure, actually. I’m pretty sure the one time I stayed on board as a passenger after Matlock, my train did not call at Ambergate just as expected. Maybe this one was erroneously cut short for the player? There are a couple of trains in the timetable you do drive to Ambergate, as far as I remember, so I guess a mistake might have crept in.

 

If so, that mistake is very unfortunate. You can count the amount of services that end at Ambergate on one hand. In fact, there are only 4 according to WonterRail’s PDF timetable. So each playable service that would normally serve Ambergate, but is erroneously cut short at Matlock, essentially reduces the available gameplay at Ambergate in the timetable by a massive amount.

Edit: While the amount of playable services terminating at Ambergate is still quite low, I’ve discovered that the timetable service selection often displays wrong info. There are quite a few services that go all the way to Ambergate instead of terminating at Matlock like the selection screen states. The longer service durations are a good giveaway though (15-20min longer than services that actually end at Matlock). I recommend using WonterRail’s PDF timetable, which seems to have the correct data.