Hello everyone, I know that the Surfline route has been both highly suggested and requested. I thought that I would put together an excel sheet showing what the prospective timeline would look like just for fun, and perhaps to drum up more backing for DTG to create this route in the future. For the purposes of this, I built out the whole timetable from Los Angeles to San Diego which includes the Amtrak Pacific Surfliner, Coaster, multiple Metrolink Lines, and Amtrak's Southwest Chief. Some of these services would be as short as 30 minutes and others as long as 3 hours. The overall route length is 128 miles if the whole thing were to be built. The only thing that would further knock this route out of the park would be getting that pesky BNSF license! Here is the link to the timetable: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11hpZu9ylXkFGRypVAZDRghgmetse5gPvQ08FS6twZQQ/edit?usp=sharing My opinion, is that this could be very feasible to build. If we look at the longest route in route miles it comes out to 64 miles for Clinchfield, with the upcoming Riesa-Dresden also coming in at 65 miles. This is essentially half of the route between Los Angeles and San Diego. If licensing is not an issue I think that DTG could essentially build this out as a double route; dedicate twice as much time to develop, include twice as many trains, and potentially even sell it at a higher price because of this. It checks several boxes doing this. It adds a long route that many have been asking for, and it will include several new, popular, and highly requested trains. If we set this route in a time period of say the 2010-2020 decade, all three railroads (Surfliner, Metrolink, and Coaster) utilized the EMD F59PHI locomotive which to my knowledge is the same model across all three. I know that DTG repeatedly states that there is no such thing as just a reskin. While I do believe this I think that making the F59PHI for Surfliner, Metrolink, and Coaster would be as close to just a reskin as ever before. Metrolink and Coaster both utilize the bombardier coaches that the Caltrain Baby Bullet had while the Surfliner uses a style of bi-level coach not yet in the game. That is only one locomotive and two different cabcars/coaches that allow nearly the whole timetable to come together. However, Coaster only had 2 on roster and therefore to effectively make a realistic timetable DTG would need to include their M-K F40PH-2C locomotives, which again to my knowledge, is the near identical to the upcoming F40 for MBTA on NEC (both of this are different model from the Caltrain F40). While being more than just a reskin, a lot of the base work for that locomotive would be done already. Lastly, there are tons of DLC options for this route. I did not include the GE P42DC and Superliner cars that would be necessary to run the Southwest Chief as it only appears on the route for 2 stations and 26 miles. However if made as a DLC, the P42 could substitute in for Surfliner service as it regularly does in real life. The Amfleet cars form the upcoming NEC can also substitute with P42s or F59s on either end as this occurs too. Similar to the P42 the GE P32-8 could be a DLC for substitution as well. Metrolink has been replacing their bombardier cars with Hyundai Rotem cars with their new paint scheme which could be included as DLC with either the F59PH (a cool older option) or the new F125 locomotive. Lastly the SC-44 Charger locomotive from Siemens is a new addition that has been replacing all the Surfliner and Coaster locomotives and would make a nice DLC. To close, I hope you enjoy the timetable and if you read through all of this I appreciate your time and input.
