I like to play Tharandter Rampe, I eaven let a LMS Jubilee struggle the track up to Klingenberg-Colmnitz and I needed a lot of steam, and I crept with 6km/h the "Rampe", but I am not a Steam loco operating expert. In real life a second Loco would push the train up the "Rampe" and would uncouple in Freiberg, be serviced and send back to Dresden. If Dovetail would introduce a Steam route in Germany, I would myself wish a DLC moving the time of the "Rampe" back to 1910. Using Dresden-Freiberg as the main route would be awesome! If you look at the track layout plan for Dresden Hbf from 1910, with the upper round table and the 4 ! round loco sheads in "Altstadt" is one dream of having a go as a steam afficinado and the track layout plan from Freiberg is showing the additional service point for the pushing loco right next to the main building. An additional feature is on the opposite side of the mainbuilding in Freiberg. There you find a series of tracks and roundtables to shunt manually single wagons for the post office. Originally those tracks might be used in the 1870ies to load horse carriages to the train by special designed wagons, but later they were used by the "Deutsche Post" until the 1990ies! So here my additional suggestions: 1) Introducing manual shunting with wagon shoes and iron bars to push single wagons 2) Introducing tank locos (they were originally used in Saxony for the steep landscapes) 3) Open up the route for Freiberg - Halsbrücke, Freiberg - Holzhau, Freiberg-Langenau and maybe Freiberg - Nossen Reasons: - idyllic landscapes, scenery and stations - most of the early track layout plans are preserved (1910ish) and even so, track layouts are mostly unchanged until 1965, where there exists a huge amount of layoutes especially for that area - most of the landscape are already done with "Tharandter Rampe" - huge possibilities in regard of freight, as Freiberg was a mining town, with all the processing industries (coal, ore, wood, food, you name it). If all my suggestions are extreme wishes, would you consider to add the possibility to choose a pushing loco of players choice in Scenario Planner, which would actually help to climb the "Rampe" with an LMS Jubilee, where the passengers can enjoy the ride and not get bored? ;-) Best regards, NSB-Steve.
Why not set this in the German Democratic Republic era where you have DR Baureihe 65.10 DR Dampflok 18 201 23.10 52.80 DR UIC Y-Wagen Städteexpress Rekowagen charge up the ramp. At the same DR Baureihe 211 242 Holzrolller electric locomotives pretty much a standard DR German Democratic Republic set up from the 1960s all the way to the reunification
I never said it couldn’t be done. As I wrote, the track plans from 1965 differ not a lot from the 1910 plans, the only reason is that some infrastructure does not exist anymore in the 60ies, as for example from the 4 Loco sheds in the Bw Dresden Altstadt, only 2 remains after 1945, but there came a third shed with a “Schiebebühne” later. If you look at the track plan of Bw Altstadt in DYG “Tharandter Rampe”, you will see only 2 round loco sheds with a “hole” in between. Going back to 1910s plan would make the scenery more harmonious in a steam era nostalgia way of thinking. Edit: Your choice of locos, is actually a good reason to place it in the 60ies.
