Covering a distance of roughly 77 miles, these 3 lines are amongst the few places that retain the usage of GWR class 165's & 166's, with the line to Bedwyn being mostly 387s & IETs although a Turbo is used for the service between Newbury and Bedwyn, which isn't electrified. Proposed Rolling Stock Class 165 & 166 in Great Western Railway I'm sure we're all aware of what these units look like from Great Western Express, and I've included them in so many route proposals on here I wouldn't be surprised if GWR 166 is my most searched thing of the year. Nonetheless, the 166s are exclusively 3 car units, whilst the 165s are split 50/50 between 2 and 3 car units. They are capable of 90mph and can be seen literally anywhere and everywhere on the GWR network. Class 387 in Great Western Railway livery Another copy and paste job here, except this unit needs a repaint. Comprising of 45 units, the GWR Class 387's entered service in 2017, with their duties having gradually expanded since then. 12 of the fleet (No's. 387130-141) have been set aside to work Heathrow Express trains, reducing the GWR fleet to 33 units as of December 2020, due to a surplus of units created by TfL Rail taking charge of local services earlier that same year. Nowadays, these units can be found on services from London Paddington to Didcot Parkway & Cardiff Central, as well as local trains to Newbury. Class 800/802 in Great Western Railway livery Finally, a brand new train for the route, and no prizes for guessing that it's an IET. These ubiquitous units have 2 power modes and a top speed of 125 mph, as well as coming in 5 & 9 car flavours. These units operate all the top link express work, as well as a few services that start and terminate at Bedwyn, these being the 0512 Reading to Bedwyn, 1907 (1937 at RDG) and 2222 (2301 at RDG) Paddington to Bedwyn, with Bedwyn to Paddington workings being at 0534, 0600 & 2042. Additional IET stops at Paddington are at 0626 (starts at Bristol), 0651 (starts at Frome), 0729 & 0803 (starts at Plymouth), with southbound stoppers at 1918 (to Frome) & 1931 (to Plymouth). In terms of layers, the Class 66 will layer in from SEHS to provide general freight gubbins as well as stuff to and from the Hanson & Foster Yeoman Terminals at Theale. The London Commuter or East Coastway Class 377 would also layer in to the route for the small segment of line between Reigate & Redhill. Please do let me know what you all think of this below
Excellent Idea and it seems you were able to build the North Downs line. For a price of a Normal Route why not merge your Idea with BML & GWML as Train Sim World 3 London Region Network London Victoria & Paddington to Basingstoke & Bedwyn via Redhill & Reading?
This sounds like a great idea, this could merge GWE and BML together, which is a desperate extension thanks to the North Downs Line so yeah, good suggestion
Very good suggestion which includes the Basingstoke branch and the North Downs Line, both of which I have previously suggested. One I would be happy to buy.
As stated with previous suggestions including the B&H, need a Class 59 and stone hoppers to represent the Mendips quarry traffic.
Good point, I just didn't see it as realistic for Dovetail to include 4 pieces of traction with this, even if one of them is just a port from another route and removing a carriage on a few sets as well as the 387 just being a reskin.
The "Which new route would you most like us to add?" Question on the recent survey got me thinking about this and my suggestion follows similar lines to this suggestion. However, instead of including the three lines out of Reading, my proposal would involve updating the current GWE route to modern day standards and then including the roughly 60 mile section of track between Reading and Westbury via Newbury. The rolling stock would all remain the same as in your proposal, but there are a few reason why I think this route might be slightly more attractive. Westbury is generally a nicer place to end the route as it's a larger station than Bedwyn and the 800s call at it which means the 800s would get significantly more potential services to run; it would enable all the services between Paddington and Reading plus the 20 odd services from/to Paddington that call at Westbury. With your suggestion of the route ending at Bedwyn and with (I assume) Reading - Paddington not included, the 800s would only be drivable between Reading and Newbury on expresses (and the occasional train calling at Hungerford) and the rare Reading - Bedwyn stopper. Having the route terminate at Westbury means more opportunity to use the 800s power changeover from overheads to diesel at Newbury as well. Including the Reading to Paddington section of the route would mean the full route would come to around 90 miles. The main upgrades needed on the current GWE route would be the electrification and the new Elizabeth line stuff (potentially some platform extensions too?) but it would mean we'd get many class 800 services between Paddington and Reading, as well as all the 387 stopping services on that line, plus the 387 services that run fast between Paddington and Reading then semi-fast between Reading and Newbury. It would also open the doors for a potential future class 345 loco DLC, running the Elizabeth line services between Reading and Paddington (set the route before the 6th Nov 2022 and you wouldn't need to have any representation of the new underground Elizabeth line platforms at Paddington) Around Newbury, these days you've got the fairly unique situation where most services arriving at Newbury terminate there. The Reading-Newbury 387 stopping services use the bay platform 3, but the Paddington-Newbury 387 semi-fast services terminate on Platform 1. This results in situations where the train will arrive from Paddington, unload and then travel back down the line as ECS using the (mostly) disused Newbury racecourse loop track in order to get out the way of an incoming IET service from Paddington that stops at Newbury before heading to Pewsey & Westbury. once the IET has departed, the 387 then pulls back into Newbury to pick up passengers ready to head back to London. These services will also often pass through Newbury racecourse platform 3. The Newbury - Bedwyn services use platform 2 at Newbury but never pull any 'get out the way' shenanigans. In terms of freight, there seems to be Freightliner 66s on aggregate trains using the berks & hants line, so replacing class 59s for 66s in order to get more freight representation wouldn't be completely unrealistic. That's my suggestion anyway. I think the increased potential for class 800 services on this route would be it's main pull factor. Creating a brand new train and then only utilising it on a few services between Reading and Newbury (with the rare train to Hungerford and Bedwyn) seems like a bit of a waste imo. Especially considering the added gameplay of switching from overhead to diesel that extending down to Westbury would bring. The 800 series is so widely used these days that it could easily be reused in many future DLCs, having it's first inclusion be in a region where the models for other traffic (387 & 165) already exist means that the whole range of traffic can be represented by only modelling one new train class. Then when future DLCs in other regions come along, the class 800 has already been modelled so more effort can be put into creating a brand new region appropriate train for that DLC. Granted, this suggestion would mean that half of the route is technically already released in the form of GWE, but hopefully SEH and the IoW routes show that Extended/updated routes aren't off the cards entirely.
Tbh a north downs line would have to come with the ascot line aswell - I'm not letting one of my weirdly favorite trainspotting station just be a pass by
