The first of two route suggestions: A daft and silly yet hilarious route to suggest, the "shortest line in Britain" (Yes, actually just barely shorter then London's Waterloo & City Line), the Stourbridge Shuttle, running non-stop between Stoubridge Junction up to Stoubridge Town roughly every 10mins. To accompany this is the simply adorable Class 139 Parry People Mover in either its original London Midland livery (see file 1) and/or the already existing (for Class 323) West Midlands Railway livery (see file 2) Unlike most routes, this shouldn't take quite as much effort as normal due to the route being a 2-Stop back & forth shuttle that doesn't even stretch a full mile (0.8 miles to be precise). I really hope one day, we can get this little beauty into TSW!
If you do more than five consecutive round trips, a looney alert will be sent to the NHS and the men in white coats will arrive to take you away! Seriously this would probably fit within the paradigm of (say) a Great Malvern to Birmingham route via Stourbridge which would need a Class 172 as well as the Class 139. And don’t forget George, the famous ginger cat at Stourbridge Jn!
Its like requesting the Reigate branch as its own route. It would be nice as a small branch of another main route to add some variety to the route.
The problem is that it uses its own unique train. Even though it's so small, it requires all the physics and sounds, so its unlikely to be considered by DTG. I might have hope for a JT release, looking at the heap of content they gave with their route, but even then, considering the norm of 1 train per route, it may be a bridge too far.
Stourbridge is my home town and I have fond memories of the "Dodger" in the '70s and early '80s. Didn't take it very often (we lived pretty much half way between both stations so there was no reason to except for the ride) but the line passed Redhill School which I attended for the last three years I lived there. Google "Class 122 crash Stourbridge" to find out about an incident the aftermath of which I remember vividly. I had the pleasure of riding the same "Bubblecar" on the Weardale Railway in County Durham not far from where I live now. The line is quite steep so accidents could be spectacular. Someone was working on this for TSC set in steam days when the line carried on a little further to a canal but the effort seemed to peter out. As part of a route representing the Old Worse and Worse railway I'd be all for this reliving journeys to and from New Street to see Dad at work in the days when you could sit right behind the driver but on its own it would be severely limited.
I am all for including the Stourbridge shuttle as part of a route which covers the Snow Hill Lines, but absolutely not on its own.
