Hello everyone. I don't usually post suggestions but I am so desperate to both have this, and Australian content in the game in general. I have already suggested this but I want to make it a better suggestion with more detail. The Kuranda Scenic Railway is a tourist passenger train that runs in the north of Queensland through thick rain forest on the side of a mountain range and valley in Australia and runs on a gauge of 3ft 6in (1,067mm). Beginning at Cairns, it is about a 30 kilometre (30 mile) trip to Kuranda by rail, and takes around the time of 2 hours. Yes that is a long time to go just 30 kilometres, but that's because it winds through an incredibly beautiful mountain range right next to a huge valley. There are 4 trains a day, 2 services from Cairns to Kuranda and Kuranda to Cairns. 2 services to Kuranda are 3K30 8:30am Cairns - Kuranda and 3K32 9:30am Cairns - Kuranda. The 2 services to Cairns are 3C61 2:00pm Kuranda - Cairns and 3C65 3:30pm Kuranda - Cairns every day unless maintenance is taking place or it has rained very heavily the previous day. The train technically begins from the Portsmith Railway Yard where its stored overnight a short distance away from Cairns Railway Station. The railway is operated by a fleet of Queensland Rail 1720 Classes, some painted into the special blue Kuranda Scenic Railway livery with artwork on the side as seen below. These locomotives were built in 1966 and have been running the Kuranda Scenic Railway for a few decades now and may be on the way out soon, talks are ongoing with replacing them with battery powered locomotives instead which I am not a fan of, I love the 1720 Classes and they are having a great and long service life because of this railway! The Kuranda Scenic Railway is one of the last places where these 1720 Classes are in service with most being used for freight purposes, being used by either Aurizon or Watco but now many are sitting in yards waiting to be scrapped unfortunately. You can find out more about them on the wikipedia page here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queensland_Railways_1720_class but information is quite limited on that article and out dated now, especially the disposition section. The Kuranda Scenic Railway is a part of the super large Tablelands System, that runs from Cairns to Forsayth. Forsayth being far out to the west. This section, the Cairns - Kuranda section is deep in history too. It was finished in 1891 and its end goal was to reach the town of Herberton in the Tablelands to service tin mining there but it reached there in 1910 when the tin had run out. Since then the section of the Tablelands system running from Mareeba to Herberton was closed down in the late 1980s but has since seen new life under the Atherton-Herberton Historic Railway! The stories of how this railway built is absolutely crazy. To clear out some sections, they dangled men down by ropes to mine away at rock!!! Multiple people died building tunnels and falling, truly a fascinating but tragic history to how the railway was built for this section and definitely would not have been something attempted today due to how ambitious and dangerous it was to complete. The Kuranda Scenic Railway is also one of the only remaining railways in Queensland to still use semaphore signals, except for Cairns Railway Station. But one of the only remaining working signal boxes in Queensland is at Kuranda Railway Station and is used to switch the points there with a lot of semaphore signals around. There could also be an additional loco DLC made for this route if it ever gets made which could be the Queensland Rail 2000 Class used by The Savannahlander which is an additional tourist passenger train that runs all the way from Cairns to Forsayth and back to Cairns and this means, it travels up and down the Cairns - Kuranda section too. There are 2 stops in between Cairns and Kuranda and back for the Kuranda Scenic Railway. From Cairns, the first stop is Freshwater, a very nice looking railway station where the train stops for about 7 minutes to pick up more passengers while it's still in the very straight and fast stretch of track (for the Kuranda Scenic Railway at least, it goes about 60 km/h in this section). The next stop is close to the end of the journey just before Kuranda, at Barron Falls Railway Station. An absolutely gorgeous lookout spot for a huge valley with a massive waterfall seen below. and here's The Savannahlander at Cairns Station. It begins its Journey from Cairns to Forsayth on a Wednesday at around 6:30am, and gets back at Cairns on Saturday at around 6:30pm but time varies for this train on its return as they stop or slow down often for tourists. This photo has the train facing the Portsmith Railway Yard direction. The Savannahlander usually runs as a pair of 2 Queensland Rail 2000 Classes. The Savannahlander has 3, '2026' and '2028'. Their other one is one of four PLDT (stands for Passenger Luggage Driving Trailer) variants of the 2000 Class that don't have streamlined fronts. This one is numbered '2053' and is sometimes in 2 car formations but usually is the middle car of a 3 car long consist on The Savannahlander. And if you want to make an interesting scenario for the route, you can only have 1 of them running a service but its out of the ordinary and very rare but it happened recently when the 2000 Class in the consist broke down and had to be left behind. Another major land mark is the Stoney Creek Bridge and the waterfall right next to it as seen below (however from this angle the waterfall cannot be seen, its on the other side of the bridge). This photo is heading down to Cairns. However this isn't the only landmarks, there are interesting rock formations, more bridges and waterfalls such as the Freshwater Bridge, a low level bridge just after Freshwater and passes over a 2ft (610mm) gauge sugarcane railway and an amazing Horseshoe Bend as you begin the climb to Kuranda just outside of Redlynch. Just after that, there is the small but abandoned Redlynch Railway Station. And just before the Stoney Creek Bridge as you're heading up to Kuranda there is the abandoned Stoney Creek Railway Station now overgrown and has some old water tower pieces and station signs remaining from the steam era. This route would also be challenging if done right, its a railway that gets very steep with the steepest gradient being 1:50. According to the Kuranda Scenic Railway itself, there are 55 bridges, 98 curves and 15 tunnels built by hand on the railway. You can find more information about the railway itself on the Kuranda Scenic Railway website here: https://www.ksr.com.au/pages/default.aspx I should also mention that Hi-Railer / Road-rail pickup trucks (called utes here in Australia) do special runs from Redlynch to Kuranda or Kuranda to Redlynch before each train to make sure no landslips have occured on the railway. And there is also even another extra additional DLC option I haven't mentioned. For a few years in the early-mid 2000s, the company that currently runs the Savannahlander used to run a steam train service from Cairns to Kuranda and back to Cairns using a South African Railways 24 Class 2-8-4 locomotive numbered '3620' and in 2003 was converted from coal firing to oil firing. It arrived in Australia in 2001 however was out of service on the railway by 2005 due to experiencing issues on the tight curves of the railway. (From my knowledge it was causing the tracks to spread). '3620' has since been transported to the southern state of Victoria and since been running down there. However the old coaches the steam train used to pull are in the Cairns Kuranda Steam depot (the company that operates the Savannahlander) can still be seen at their depot in Aeroglen, its also where The Savannahlander is stored and also their Cairns Rail Cement Train which is a small fleet of Emu Bay 11 Classes originally built for Tasmania but now operating for Cairns Kuranda Steam to shunt cement wagons from a freight train hauled by Pacific National from their terminal in Woree, which is nearby Portsmith. The cement wagons are taken from Woree, transported to a siding in between Cairns Railway Station and Portsmith and are transported back and forth. I reckon this would be such a good introduction to Australian DLC for the game as it's a short route to build (33 kilometres, 20 miles) that is also challenging with stunning scenery and also other opportunites for The Savannahlander, Cairns Rail Cement Train and the South African Railways 24 Class 2-8-4 locomotive. As well as the Kuranda Scenic Railway being a very popular railway. To finish my massive post by now (sorry about that ) there is an excellent video that one of the drivers of The Savannahlander posted recently of the run from Barron Falls Railway Station to Cairns Station if you want a good look at what the railway looks like from a drivers perspective. Here are some time stamps for the landmarks I have mentioned in the video: 0:04 - Departing from Barron Falls Railway Station however the waterfall cannot be viewed from this part 5:29 - Surprise Creek Bridge 10:24 - Tunnel 15, the longest tunnel on the railway. 12:53 - An absolute excellent point where you can view all the way down to the northern area of Cairns, imagine driving past that, would be absolutely stunning. 14:00 - A another amazing point where you can look down into the valley below. 16:50 - A distant Stoney Creek Bridge and the waterfall next to it can be seen from there. 19:22 - The approach to Stoney Creek Bridge and the water fall next to it. 21:25 - The abandoned Stoney Creek Railway Station 40:50 - The Horshoe Bend, it looks absolutely amazing with the Kuranda Scenic Railway train going around it. 46:51 - The abandoned Redlynch Railway Station. 47:22 - The point where the railway crosses over the 2ft (610mm) gauge sugarcane railway operated by MSF Sugar's Mulgrave Central Mill. 47:49 - The low level Freshwater Railway Bridge. 48:55 - Freshwater Railway Station. 57:12 - The Cairns Kuranda Steam depot, where 3620's old coaches can be seen as well as one of the Cairns Rail 11 Classes next to the Savannahlander shed at 57:43. 1:04:54 - Cairns Railway Station. I am sorry for how long this post got, but I am so passionate about this railway. If there was any route I would want in Train Simulator Classic, it would be this one, The Kuranda Scenic Railway.
Well at this point you may be the best 3d modeller around for Australian stuff because you are the ONLY Australian 3d modeller for Train Simulators! LOL Seriously though great work, so happy to see it!
