Time for a challenge?

[sem34090]

In light of recent developments, and the seemingly inevitable fate that we may mostly have to remain indoors for the duration I have been wondering if, soon, a TS challenge, perhaps a route-building one as was held a couple of times quite a few years ago. Something to maintain social contact, albeit virtual, and to occupy the coming weeks.

Anyone else think that this is the least bit sensible? Of course, developments might very well overtake such an idea but I thought it to be nonetheless worthwhile mentioning it.

[TOMMO79]

I'd be up for it but I'd rather be at work doing some real route building, Hopefully that will remain the case. Something for the evening at least.

[Oldpufferspotter]

There's nothing like a bit of route building for making the time fly by.
I do fictional routes based on or inspired by real railways of the past. The only route that I tried to keep as close to the prototype as possible is the two and a half mile Easingwold Railway (from Alne on the ECML to the town of Easingwold). It took some time as I tried to build the old timber buildings in Easingwold yard. Sort of successfully.
I gave up on strict prototypicality (did I just make that word up?) when I cloned that route and altered and extended it to form the North Sunderland Light Railway, using the existing scenery with slight alterations to make it look as though it's a different place.
That then set a pattern for me. I wanted to extend the route to Bamburgh, which would have entailed a reversal at Seahouses. Then I remembered that the Bishops Castle Railway had a reversal out in the wilds at Lydham Heath, so if I'm going to have a reversing station anyway why not clone the North Sunderland and convert that to the Bishops Castle. So I did.
Then I cloned the Bishops Castle and made the East Kent Light Railway (Shepherdswell to Wingham [Canterbury Road] and Eastry [Sandwich Road] out of it. And so it goes on.
I do try to make the stations and rail infrastructure as close as I can to the real thing in the photos available on the internet, using the available default assets. I do have some standards!!
Brendan Moran's Edenderry Branch (from the first Route Building Challenge all those years ago) has been added to with the addition of two extra stations and more scenery, cloned and merged with my own attempt at Enniskillen station (with the Sligo Leitrim and Northern Counties yard on a very sharp curve as per the prototype), to form some sort of Irish light railway route. Enniskillen ended up at a far lower level than the Edenderry route, so on leaving Enniskillen the line has to climb mostly at 1 in 50 for the first couple or so miles to meet the level of the Edenderry trackbed a bit before Carbury. Edenderry itself has of course disappeared altogether.
I haven't shared these routes because they are not that brilliant by modern day standards and I use assets from forty or so other developers, and I don't know whose assets are whose any more! Anyway it's all done in Rail Simulator which is now rather archaic.
It's all good fun though but...