This Paris suburban route is a masterpiece ! The TS route includes about 290 kms of tracks. The real route joins like a crescent the south east suburb to the south west through Paris, and, for ten years, this crescent is also linked to the north west. Anyway the route has today 8 branches and the itineray is common to several regular main lines (especially the main line from and to Paris Austerlitz), affording a lot of possibilities to create commuter, express, shunting and freight activities
The installation is very easy. Just remember to use Route Riter to reduce the size : after downloading, the route is about 750 MB large, but after running the INSTALL.BAT the size grows up to more than 2 GB ! So think first to manage enough space and use RR next (and don’t forget that this operation is also a tempory space consuming function !).
To explore this route, we are going to start a northbound journey on the C2 and C1 branches. Our consist is a Z20900, a dual voltage EMU, required to run on all the itinerary (the north of Paris is fitted with 25 kV AC and the south with 1,5 kV DC) We start in Massy Palaiseau, a station that many of you know, as it appears too on the RER B and on the LGV A routes. The RER C2 branch runs on the « grande ceinture » line (circular line around Paris), which is used for freight trains or empties passengers coaches.
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Further the C gives up the Grande ceinture and rejoins the main SNCF regular line to Paris Austerlitz station. There is a dense passenger traffic to and from France south west (Orleans, Toulouse, Bordeaux …)
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The C goes along Les Ardoines RER sidings and work shops, then a mile before Paris the Ivry large coaches sidings were are assembled express consists. The Bibliotheque François Mitterrand station is the first Paris station. It’s located in a new rebuilt district. Just after this station, the main line goes up to it’s Austerlitz terminus, while the RER C enters a long gallery, dug along the Seine embankment which will allow the line to cross Paris. In Champ de Mars Tour Eiffel (we are on the top of the crescent), the line is divided in 2, one going up to Versailles. Our consist goes out in the open air to cross over the Seine. Unfortunately, in order to improve the frame rate Patrick didn’t reproduce the Tour Eiffel. Perhaps for a coming version ?
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The real sight
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(copyright Le Train. Not for commercial use)
The C runs on the former Petite Ceinture line through the fashionable Paris 16 th district. Since the reopeneing of the Petite Ceinture, its trenches have been covered to improve the environment and the C runs again in the open air only when leaving Paris in Porte de Clichy station. Some miles further we pass the split point between the 2 different voltage currents.
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The C now rejoins a suburban line coming from Gare du Nord station. We can see some other commuter trains (notice the new Transilien blue livery) or regional train (this odd consist in Picardie region green livery where the engine is in the middle). The C3 to Argenteuil divides from our line as the C1 goes on up to Pontoise, its terminus.
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Now some shots of an other service coming from Versailles and bound to Paris aboard a dualvoltage Z8800
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And another along the C branch coming from Dourdan with a Z6300 consist
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Of course you can design express passengers activities like this one on the main line to Austerlitz crossing the Etampes station, or freight activities like the one below on the Montparnasse main line (the real line has 4 tracks)
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A lot of thanks to Patrick Fabard
