I am looking for a decent route that goes mainly through London, ideally underground or a combination of underground and overground. I would prefer a route that shows some of the main London buildings and attractions like Big Ben, Westminster, Hyde Park, London Eye. Are any of those visible in any of the UK routes going through London?
I would say Portsmouth Direct - London Waterloo to Portsmouth would probably cover most of those at least (not Hyde park though - and of course to say the obvious in that you can't see "Big Ben" but you can see Elizabeth Tower though - just me being pedantic ) Oh course there is that "uber secret" building at Vauxhall that you aren't supposed to know about
Most of the routes in to the centre of London terminate at dead end stations. There are a few lines that go around London, West London Line, St Pancras to Blackfriars and the new Crossrail line are 3.
It's fine if they are dead end stations, I don't mind. What's important is that they depict London buildings. Are those all workshop routes? I never heard about them before.
West London Line is in "North London & Goblin" St Pancras to Blackfriars is in a workshop route "South London & Thameslink" Crossrail - isn't made in TS1 as far as i know.
Thanks, I will check them out. Indeed I couldn't find anything about Crossrail line for TS and I don't have TSW so yeah..
They might depict the London stations but they don't go far from the station they won't have other buildings. Basically if you cannot see if from somewhere on the route it does not get modelled South London Network at London Bridge The Station & the Shard and track level. Look beyond the nearby buildings and there is less buildings and scenery You cannot normally see them so no need for them to be built
Workshop routes cannot introduce assets. They can reference missing assets, but only from Steam packs. Your idea is sensible, I suppose - being able to observe trains from a distance, looking at detailed scenery. Overall the main purpose of this game to enable driving trains - in several old DLC it's explicitly stated, driver's eye only. Railfan scenario locations might be slightly more detailed. Adding excessive scenery is generally impractical, both from a revenue perspective, occasional licensing, as well as performance of the game. Sometime around 2014 several routes were released with a fairly slim modeled area, clearly due to how expensive the rendering of certain assets has been (Köln-Koblenz, Miami-WPB). Even though by that time (since 2011) it was perfectly possible to have nice, wide views. Indeed as mentioned the new Portsmouth route has nice details around the London terminus. Also, for various reasons I find German routes to feel slightly more detailed / modeled, partially when they use cheaper assets (2D trees). If you don't insist on London, I'm sure certain JT/AP routes would meet your ideals, there are some wonderful screenshot locations popping up in threads. Also North London line has many nice views. That said, termini and near main lines tend to be busy with trains, which are performance hogs by themselves, calling for minimalist scenery to offset. So if anything, London "should" be under-modeled. Summary: Just trying to lower your expectations.
Why do you need anyone to create large areas of land and all the separate assets required if nobody will see them? Its not a Flight Sim.
If you can't see it from a train window, either as driver or passenger, then there's little point in adding it to the route. Unless someone decides to fly out and look around (*impossible in the real world) the extra assets would never be seen. *Except if you have a drone with you
I just prefer it like that, I like well decorated routes. Some of my favourite routes in the game are also the most decorated and diverse.
Fair enough, I am building a route and have already made the decision that if it can't be seen from the train, it won't be added, possible exception being towns and villages where the scenery would be similar to the images shown earlier.
So even though you cannot see something from the railway and there is no way of knowing if it is there you still expect the builders to put it in to the route? If they did that the building of the route would take longer and you would have to pay more for the routes. Or if you really want it make it yourself and add it to your version
Danny is too modest. He doesn't even mention South London to Brighton in his recommendations. Unless I'm blind. Which is a possibility. The West London Line was brought up, and a Career 378 scenario from Clapham Junction to Willesden Junction is on the Goblin Lines DLC. Which is itself a huge map to Stratford and Barking from Richmond. The 172 braking is something to get used to. Remember to ask DTG for the North London Line scenarios that they forgot to include in the package and have not fixed to this day.
https://classic.tswmaps.com/ This website above may be of interest to you as it shows maps on a google map of the route itself and where it runs to and from
It seems to only show routes released thru Steam unlike the other version that has most routes including freeware. And some of the info is a bit strange https://classic.tswmaps.com/wcmlSouth is operated by the Rhaetian Railway (Swiss Narrow Gauge System)
Take it up with the author then I didn’t make it. God forbid I help somene and surprise surprise you appear to contradict someone else’s work.
I think everyone here is trying to be helpful. If a map showing the UK TSC network doesn't include a number of freeware routes I think it's a good idea to point out that other routes that may be of interest are not included. As for scenery, each tile of scenery populates as your train approaches it, the more scenery, the longer that tile takes to load and more stutters you'll have. I suspect more TSC users would prefer a realistic in-cab experience with as few stutters as possible rather than an accurate representation of every town and city along the way. As far as I know it's the same in TSW.
yeah different game engines. Althought TBF it is only really 1 or 2 routes i find that are bad in TSC for the loading that cause a micro stutter. And apparantly that is down to AI spawning in the distance.
Thank you all for your insight so far, I am slowly but surely discovering which route I'm interested in having. Also, there is actually a map showing all routes on TS regardless who made them.
I've not been able to find a map that's up-to-date. There was one in Google Maps a few years ago but some of the routes on that are no longer available. I think it would be a superb idea though, I like to buy a few routes near to each other and build a small network rather than have lots of unconnected routes. The UK network is fine as I used to work on for British Rail, but Germany, Switzerland and Austria are a unfamiliar to me, so it would be nice to see what's available.
This map is quite good as it shows payware and freeware routes. And if you pan the map it covers other routes around the world - even if you might not be interested https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/train-simulator-classic-neu2023_940885#5/52.335/8.130
