Tuesday 28 June 2016

Glorious Devon Exeter to Plymouth 1958 - Now Released!!


The eagerly anticipated route from Team GD60 which consists of Tristan Peat & Mike Traves, plus help and reference from many members of the community.

The section of the former Great Western Railway that runs across the South Devon Banks to Plymouth from Exeter and its branch to Kingswear is one of the most famous and picturesque locations in England that has captured many people's hearts.

“Glorious Devon” recreates the area as it would have looked in the late 1950's, pre-1964 after which the Beaching changes took effect. Significant research has been undertaken to achieve the closest possible authenticity, recreated in digital, for the Rail Simulator game. A period of great transition for Britain's railways, from much loved steam traction – Manors, Halls, Castles and Kings, to early classic diesel hydraulics – Hymeks, Warships and Westerns. Colour light signals were just making an appearance around Plymouth and the diesel shop at Laira was in the first stage of construction. The iconic Intercity House at Plymouth North Road station had yet to be built.

Glorious Devon offers great potential for scenario writing, from local passenger services, to inter-regional expresses to London, the Midlands and beyond. Although the location is predominately rural, freight services were varied too, including coal distribution, livestock, milk, fruit, fish and china clay.

There is much to discover, from rail connected docks to stations long since closed but now brought back to life.

The route comes with several excellent scenarios. Please read all documentation included with the download for reference to requirements for both the route and scenarios.

Enjoy Glorious Devon!

The route can be downloaded by following this link.








Thursday 23 June 2016

Birmingham Cross City - Work In Progress

Some of you may have seen a video that I posted a couple of weeks ago (which can be seen below), showing a journey from Barnt Green to Redditch. This was basically a proof of concept video, firstly to see if the route was viable to create with a minimum addition of custom assets, and secondly to gauge reaction from the community, it also gave a complete platform to work from should the route be realised.

I've subsequently decided to commit to and release a phase one version of the line, between Redditch and Birmingham New Street. It's hard to define a period in which the route is set, infrastructure wise the layout is from around the late 90's, but station signage and surrounding scenery will reflect the current period, this crossover should allow a broad period for the use of rolling stock without it looking out of place.

I'm not putting any timescales forward on release of the first phase, i've been bitten on the arse by this previously and the past 12 months have been as testing as they can be, with illness and then the passing of my mother, things are only starting to really get back to normal. Progress has been fantastic so far though, so i'm hoping further progress towards a release won't be glacial.

Below are a selection of screenshots and the aforementioned video.