In FlightSim, for ultimate realism, you can download airport plans, arrival and departure maps with all the SIDs (standard instrument departures) and STARS (Standard Terminal Arrival Routes] so that you can setup your plane to fly these via the FMC (autopilot) or by yourself in the event of a FMC failure. For those that don’t know, these charts give beacon locations, distances, heights and speeds so each pilot flies these via appropriate route at the right speed and height. These are always caveats with ‘not for real world use’ on these for the most obvious reasons. Train drivers learn routes by knowing all the junctions, speed change locations, rivers, bridges and all of the other features so that they know exactly where they are, what’s upcoming so they can drive accurately.. almost blindfolded. Couldn’t there be downloadable files with this information on so that we can learn routes in the same way? Yes, you’d need several versions for all of the different services but surely as all of these are mapped anyway, it wouldn’t be that difficult. The idea would be to learn a route well enough that you could drive without the HUD or any other aids. Caveated naturally with ‘not for real world use’.
Some of what you're looking for is in the Sectional Appendices, pdf copies of which are downloadable from here: National Electronic Sectional Appendix - Network Rail You don't get locations of signals, bridges, tunnels etc but junctions, speed limits, neutral sections and station locations are shown.
What you’re after is a ‘sectional appendix’. Most of them are public access from Network Rails site, there are some which aren’t public access & others published via the likes of TFL. I think NR’s public versions are generally the most upto date version, though you can probably contact them & get one for a particular year based on the date of TSW’s route.
