Atomic Systems

I'm planning to make some activities for the FUDE 1.2 route - mainly involving steam locomotives and shunting with local freights, but with a fairly good mix of everything.

But what I need to know, and would appreciate greatly, is, if a few of those with the correct knowledge, and able to describe clearly exactly what classes of steam locos, and also diesels would most likely have been used in the main, on trains within the boundaries of the FUDE 1.2 route itself, so I can be as accurate as possible with the trains' locomotives I use in these activities.

I just want to be right about what I use here, because, being in New Zealand, I don't really know what would have been the case in locomotives around this area, except maybe the GWR ones ? But passenger stock used between London and Manchester, and on the secondary lines, as well as freight cars used... it would all help me greatly if I had a proper idea, and could check my downloads, and perhaps get more from the file library here as well, so I have all I need before creating the activities later on. A detailed reply would be much appreciated, thanks !

Regards...

Jim McDermott

Hello Jim

I suspect your question is impossible to answer, since FUDE doesn't represent any particular geographical location, or any particular time in history. It was designed to represent Middle England at some time during the fifties, sixties or seventies (and even stretching things a bit, into the eighties), allowing steam or diesel trains (or both!) to be run. Although it uses real place names, it does not provide a representation of a real route.

It has been around a for a while now, being developed from James Hunt's Modern England route. This was an early and desperately needed attempt to provide an electrified UK alternative to the default Settle and Carlisle route, long before the vast choice of routes available now.

FUDE has been described as a fantasy route, because you can basically run what you like and it shouldn't look too much out of place. If you were to specify a particular time period, you will find major anomalies in track layouts, signalling, architecture etc.

I hope you are enjoying using FUDE - that was the reason for doing it, of course - but I'm afraid you can't take it too seriously! I tried to include features which would allow a variety of activities - members of the community have produced activities ranging from end-to-end freight and passenger services to branch pickup freights and preserved railway operations.

Good luck with it - if you want to produce activities for other people to download and install, be sure to change the route Folder name to NEWENG - this won't affect your installation, but it allows the Activity Unpackager to work properly for them.

Please feel free to e-mail me if you have any problems.

Best wishes

Pete Worsley (FUDE Route author)

I think Petes covered it really, its more of a 'run what you like' sort of route . Personally I use a range of LM locos from the late 50s and early 1960s, but thats just me

I think Large Logo Diesels fit in quite nicely on this route. Class 37, 40, 45, 50 etc with Mk 1 stock.

Mick Clarke