Stour Valley Railway Route for Train Simulator Classic
Download today and start living the history of the line!
The Stour Valley railway was originally opened in 1849, running between Marks Tey and Sudbury before being extended to Shelford in 1865. There was also a branch that ran from Long Melford to Bury St Edmunds and a Branch between Bartlow and Audley End via Saffron Walden.
In addition, there is the Colne Valley route that ran from Chappel & Wakes Colne to Haverhill via Halstead.
The route between Long Melford and Lavenham was closed in 1961 and between Lavenham & Bury St Edmunds in 1965. Parts of the Colne valley route between Haverhill and Halstead was closed in stages between 1961 and 1965. The Saffron Walden branch was also closed in 1965 along with the remainder of the Colne valley route. Finally the route between Sudbury and Shelford was closed in 1967.
I have recreated a route based on track layout maps and ordinance survey maps from the 1920's with minor amendments to track and to replicate the late 1950's early 1960's mostly from photos. I have not included the rationalisations that occurred in the years immediately before closure, but have include the 1930's changes.
Therefore the route is roughly based on the late 50s early 60s the scenarios are mostly using diesel locomotives from that era. Plus a couple of fictional scenarios using modern rolling stock.
I have not made any attempt to roll back the GEML route back to the 1960's and have no plans to do so either.
Users will find a "time slip" between Marks Tey & Chappel when they use any scenario that uses that part of the route.
The simulation covers all the above mentioned routes, the southern end from Marks Tey is based on the DTG Great Eastern Main Line (GEML) route and the Cambridge end is part of the Cambridgeshire & the ECML - by Neil Cunningham who has kindly allowed me to merge the track in the Cambridge area into the route.
All signalling on the route uses custom assets and use scripting developed by AndiS, who has kindly allowed me to bundle into the assets download.
I have just completed the Bartlow Audley End section of the line and this now means that all of the route is mostly complete but much of the distant scenery and towns/villages are still incomplete and will be worked on in a future release.
The in this release, the trackside scenery and signalling on all sections of the route have been completed, there are no plans to develop Bury St Edmunds Station at the moment, may come back to that after all the other work is completed.
The next release will focus on more scenery and improving textures of assets used.
The route was re-uploaded on 19th June 2024, with updated track, scenery and building assets.
Progress to date on the route
As of 29th February 2024
Dependencies,
The route needs the following assets to work correctly, most can be obtained from the UKTS website.
The route requires the following DLC's and additional routes to work correctly, may not need all of them, but these are installed on my system.
- GEML (Great Eastern Main Line DLC ) DTG
- ECML (East Coast Main Line DLC)
- TSA (Train Sim Acadamy)
- Cambridgeshire & the ECML - by Neil Cunningham
- Fife Circle DLC (for scenery - but you could probably use TS tools to swap out if you have another DLC with "vegetation_2019" )
- AP Weather enhancements
- BR Class 105
- AP 105 sound enhancements.
- AP trees
- CLass 66
- Class 31
- JT Mayflower line
- AP Wherry lines and upgrade (for tracks)
List of assets installed during the route building process, as discovered by TS Tools prior to packing the route, the most important asset being the PRB, SVR assets that are the ones created specifically for the Stour valley route.
The download already includes the signalling scripts with permission from AndiS.
