Atomic Systems

Wow, I had no idea the Snowdon Mountain Railway was available too, I'll have to have a play with it sometime!

With some time to myself over the next few days I might play about extending the scenery towards Waunfawr, although I'm not promising anything yet! It wouldn't add much operational interest unless I go all the way to Caernarfon but it will be some steps in that direction.

Meanwhile I've had some good news behind the scenes, so discussions are underway regarding release. It looks like it might still be a while off but things are progressing...

More as and when, thanks for the continued interest!!

ThePhantomPhish

Hi everyone,

It has been a while since the last update but things have progressed behind the scenes. There have been developments regarding how to release the route but the details are still being sorted out and there is a lot to do to get it up to a good enough standard to go public... Recent progress includes:

I have been looking at the earlier stages of the route and discovered a few things that are now below the standards I have recently worked to, so there will need to be a bit of rebuilding... at least two sites have mis-alignments from the real world and dubious gradient profiles, so a re-build will hopefully sort both those issues out. The town of Penrhyndeudraeth also really shows how basic my skills were when I started, so that needs more tidying and detailing.

There is also a strong possibility of custom assets being created which will hopefully (if all comes to fruition) reduce the amount of DLC dependency in order to get the route to run as intended, which will hopefully be a good thing for anyone lacking certain assets, maybe even finally removing the need for the Phorum Peninsula stuff!

Finally, the scenery has crept North (painfully slowly) on the extension, and there is about another three miles of driveable railway above Rhyd Ddu... but at the moment it peters out around Plas-y-Nant which is (operationally) a useless final destination. I'd need to get to Waunfawr for it to become a useful bit of railway again - although the lakeside views of Llyn Cwellyn are starting to look quite 'Snowdonian' (no screenshots yet though as it isn't totally distant-scenerised).

So, loads more to do, and hopefully a lot of developments will occur reasonably soon, as always I will update as and when I can! With Clear Creek now released, and the Corris route on the horizon, the time seems right to do the rest of the necessary work required to try to get the Ffestiniog Railway into Train Simulator!


ThePhantomPhish

Glad things are progressing better than some routes which turned out to be vapourware, I for one look forward to having a chuff or two when finished!

Hi everyone, me again...

Just by way of a quick update, my recent focus has been on my early work around Minffordd. Having built a lot more railway since I started nearly two years ago, I cast a critical eye over the first couple of miles and could see that what I thought was fine then actually looks terrible to me now!

So - I have been re-working the bottom end of the line quite a bit over the last few weeks, including a total rebuild of the track between Minffordd & Penrhyn which was aligned incorrectly, had an entire farm and level crossing missing, and awful gradients. That is all now sorted (it is still a steep climb but much better graded than before!) and I have started looking at the distant scenery around Minffordd for anyone that likes driving from a helicopter. Temptation was to do the whole of the peninsula in that area but that would be overkill... no-one would ever need to see Portmeirion in Train Simulator unless someone created a milk-float style mini moke route but that is way beyond the aim of this project!

I realise it is pretty much a year since I went public when the route was 'nearly finished' but hopefully the finally finished product will be far better for the work I am doing now.

More news as and when... but definitely not vapourware, this one, it will be done and released eventually!!


ThePhantomPhish

I just revived my long-dormant account to express my gratitude for your recreating these lovely routes, and my excitement at the possibility of soon running them. Excellent, excellent work bringing these railways to life, they are very much welcome!