An interesting video has just popped up on Youtube, filmed at Middlesborough and Thornaby in 1988. This isn't my video, the uploader has a lot of interesting videos from British Rail days. It does show that generally DTG have captured the route well. There are some interesting variety of wagons shown and class 143 pacers in Provincial and Tyne and Wear livery. Also class 101's (two car units please note), one with an ex Scottish region vehicle. I would still like to see a class 143 DLC for the route but I think it is very unlikely to appear now.
Honestly I couldn’t think of much better line to trot about on in a pacer than TVL, it’s weird that DTG went with 2 freight DLC’s for the route instead. Someone in their office definitely has a sweet spot for the 101.
It’s almost as if someone at DTG saw that exact video somewhere and said “make that” quickly followed by “not you” to the pacer.
Love them or hate them, we pretty much need a well modelled Pacer in the game. Not just for routes in the North East but later when they were transferred to Canton mainly for the Valleys and Maesteg, then when Wales and West split in two the allocation to the West Country for Bristol and Exeter local services.
Yes I sub to Soi, his videos are excellent and show a fantastic remembrance to how not only the railways were but busses & planes at various stages through the 80's, 90's and into the 00's and beyond. I saw this video about a year ago and thought the same about DTG saying that the 47 needed to be in TVL as well as the pacer and various other locos and wagon types, they are sorely missed Matt has said that the the old BR blue stuff isn't a popular seller. Which is a damn shame (especially to us old ones born in the 1970's) I think alot of the younger lot want the modern plastic crap. That trundles around the network. Me i was bought up on a diet of BR corporate blue grey 33/1's & 47, 4tc's and other slam door stock as well as a healthy dose of NSE class 442's. Im not saying that we ditch modern but we can / should also embrace the BR glory days of the 80's and 90's. Incidently Saturday at my local station (Poole) we had 3 railway tours pass through. Which for Poole is a lot. Whats so special about that?, you say. Well we had a total of five class 47s through Poole. One double headed, one top n tail and the 3rd one on the rear with Clan Line at the helm. It kinda bought back to the memories of how many class 47's we had a day start and terminate at Poole on the Inter City services in the 70's 80's, 90s and 00's. Also the smell of diesel in the sir made a welcome break from the staple diet of SWR Class 444's & Class 450's. I must say I do look forward to the announcement of British DLC as I hope that it will be more BR blue Grey era dlc. Regards Hentis
Yes that is my era too, the main trains I saw were Tyseley's first generation DMU fleet, which is really what got me into DMU's. Something very much under represented is most sims, although I remember MSTS had a fair collection of them by the end. I do get to see some good railtour action being just up the road from the Severn Valley Railway, often see class 50's out and about. I suppose we have to take Matt's word for it, however in model railway circles the BR period seems very popular and it seems an era very much talked about in forums etc. I would have thought there are many rail enthusiasts of our era looking for new ways to relive the "old days". They did release two BR period routes in a row which seems a long time ago now so I do hope the next route is from that period and hopefully it will prove to be more popular than Matt expects.
I grew up in South Yorkshire in the early 80s. At the weekend we’d get the 101 DMU on the Barnsley-Huddersfield line as far as Denby Dale or one of the the rural stations on the line, and go walking. I was always in the front seat, behind the Driver - of course - and they always had the blinds raised. On the way we’d pass through the hulk of Penistone station - once a major interchange on the Woodhead route, which had closed a few years before. The sizeable station, with multiple platforms, numerous good roads, 1500v DC overhead gantries - all was still there, but abandoned and rusting away. A small area of platform was maintained, for the hourly 2-car DMU to stop. A couple of passengers would get on and off, then the Driver would flick the brake handle to the right, push the gear handle into first, and open it up. The windscreen wiper juddered back and forth across the windscreen, the speedometer needle bounced around the 20 mark, and we rumbled and screeched our way through the decrepit pointwork and began the climb into the hills. I had many great experiences in the last decade of BR - many much more glamorous and involving hanging out of windows behind 31s, 37s, 47s, 86s, 87s and many more. But I’m not sure anything quite stuck with me as powerfully as those DMUs rumbling around what at that time were the sorry remains of a once great railway system, usually with only a handful of people on board. Thank goodness our railway revived the way it did, and I wouldn’t go back to it being as it was then for the world - but it was incredibly atmospheric and makes today’s railway - for all its success - feel terribly plasticky and characterless. The NTP and TVL routes capture that era really well. It would be wonderful if they could fix the signalling system on NTP, restore the proper xx:xx:00 and xx:xx:30 timings and put in schedules for the freights, but other than that there’s really nothing I’d change about them. I’d love to see another route from that era.
I'm also a fan of Soi Buakhao's channel In amongst my childhood memories were Class 47 night freights. If I couldn't sleep, I'd be at the (open) window, waiting for the first rumblings of that engine through the chilly night air. Then it'd pass and I felt like I'd seen something fascinating. Where I lived, Class 115s exclusively ran the NSE services, apart from on one occasion (that I can remember) when stock shortages meant drafting in an NSE-liveried Class 47 and some coaches off either the WML or the SWML, for a Marylebone-Aylesbury, just prior to the introduction of the Class 165. That probably gave a Class 50 a stay of execution for a week or so
I think the class 101 is unique in TSW2 and comes across a bit 'Marmite' for some. Me I love it but I would love to see the Mighty class 121 and also the 117. It is the bread and butter trains that makes the Railways come alive imo as well as the more famous ones like the HST. I bought a class 121 oo gauge model a while ago and it wasn't cheap but it is a lovely model.
DTG have so many empty feeling routes. They have the opportunity to make the game 'come alive' in so many different ways but it seems they don't want to.
I agree a Pacer would be good but with the original interiors that looked and felt like buses, not the refurbished models.
