It seems that after my announcement was delayed, some people became very hot under the collar about it. Now, although I can obviously understand why it would be frustrating for some to see that I have had to hold the route back, some of the comments I have received are completely unneccessary, bordering on vicious in some cases. It never ceases to amaze me that certain members of the community have this feeling that despite receiving free content, they feel as though they are
owed and consider their self importance over the feelings of those trying to provide them with content.
• Yes, I started a countdown and in hindsight, probably shouldn't have. However, I didn't envisage the issues I was going to run in to.
• Regardless of release dates, I am providing this route to everyone for free and it has to go out on
my terms, plain and simple. Don't send me any further drivel about how I am wasting
your time and money.
The reason it has been delayed is for various reasons. As much as the first release will be an uncompleted "Open Beta", it still has to meet various criteria for it to be fully useable where the only remaining issues after release should be the placement of remaining scenery and possible fixes to the enormous amount of custom assets. The main criteria it has to fulfil is that the route works without issue from a network perspective.
I also inexplicably laid the final section using the wrong track rule and on doing the final track switch from the old default Newcastle to York track to the WCML track, it has set in motion no end of problems. Given that this final section covers around 14 miles to the Northern terminus but also extends in two sections that seperate then meet again which doubles the amount of track, it also has several secondary passenger branch lines, an airport interchange branch and three TMD's that have around 60 track miles, its quite a large job to put right. As the terminus also has 11 platforms with two of them on a seperate through line to the West, its also a very large signalling job.
I am still fine tuning and exporting a large amount of custom objects and these now amount to over 200 all new assets that will be distributed with the route. As you can appreciate, this is a large scale effort and is not just a case of releasing a route with miles of track along with replacement of assets that you have already seen in other routes.
The line has also been vandalised. :D (See Screenshots Below)
So, the top and bottom is that I won't do any further countdowns or release dates as apart from the fact that expectations build, it upsets me if I cannot fulfil it as well. All I can say is to keep an eye on this blog for further updates and what should hopefully be a surprise announcement when the route goes "live". Of course, it will still need to have an initial degree of prior testing from my beta team, so if they start showing advance screenshots, you can probably hazard a guess that the route is close to being ready for download.
