One route I would absolutely love is the Sicilian Line from Messina to Syracusa. Its a beautiful route with stunning seaside resorts as well as industrial (the oil refinary just north of Syracusa). For added game play we could have the train ferry and the shunting movements on and off the ferry. For an addon we could also perhaps see the run down and neglected branch to Noto. It would be a shorter line than the ECML route even with the Noto branch. What do you all think?
Just wanted to add some context: This is a map of the railway in total it would be 183km, which is (sadly) too long for TSW. I'd say we should either get Syracuse-Catania or Catania-Messina. I'd still prefer a route originating in Palermo (since that's where I live) but any Italian route would be fantastic. (The most modern) Rolling Stock: ALe501 "Minuetto" Cab ETR 104 "Pop" E464 coupled with MDVE, MDVC or UIC-X coaches (regional trains) or UIC-Z and Grand Comfort coaches for IC trains E464 hauling an "IC Night" set with its IC livery A typical regional train on the Palermo-Messina route, I can't imagine it being too different from the suggested route A very similar train from the cab-car end (UIC-X cab car) - the car with the doors near to the centerline are MDVC the one with the doors above the trucks/bogies are MDVE
If you do the whole route the journey mode would be Chapter 1 EMU Driver Chapter 2 E464 Driver Chapter 3 UIC-X cab car driver and the Final Chapter being Chapter 4 Shunter Driver
How long would Palermo to Messina be? Ive not yet done that route in real life only the Milan to Syracusa trennotte so I dont know that line at all, does it follow the coast most of the way or is it inland?
Trenitalia's website says it's 232km, I've done the whole route a couple of times, both in the IC towards the mainland in in some regionals, the whole route follows the coast closely, with some points being on the sea, it's gorgeous.
Even though the length of the suggested route makes it a bit unrealistic, I'd love to see Italy in game, and this section does seem particularly scenic. For me the E464, its UIC-X cab car, and the ETR 104 (largely due to its similarities to the Dutch ICNG) would be the most interesting trains.
Yes, the problem with Palermo-Messina is that there is not point where you can cut it, it's just a single corridor, but Messina-Catania (without going all the way to Syracuse) could be feasible. E464 is an absolute must for every passenger italian route, until very recently it was in charge of a major part of our Regional trains (we build more than 700 of these), now these new EMUs are starting to replace them and we are trying to convert these to do other things (one of the projects is to permanently couple two of them togheter and use it for freight), but I digress. Across Italy we have a ton of different coaches and cab cars, and they should make sure to use the correct ones for the route at hand, right now the UIC-X one seems the most common but until a few months ago these was also quite popular here Another interesting fact is that until the latest EMUs (Pop and Rock) all italian rolling stock used largely the same cab layout (a lot of modern rolling stock '90s - 2010s even have a standardised cab). But as I said before Pop uses a more standard power/brake lever (similarly to the german EMUs). Interestingly enough our trains have have unique controls which are different from everything else I've seen, in a few words, we have 2 "throttles" one that is used for manual control which sets X tractive effort, and another throttle used to set the max tractive effort to use while using cruise control, and the set speed is done using a lever which can be set in 3 positions (speed up/down/neutral - a bit like the Talent's speed set), so it's going to be interesting how they would implement that.
