VEA Vans: Railfreight Distribution ODA

Even though there were only 50 conversions of tube wagons to form the ODA air braked version, one of the wagons still managed to gain a coat of Railfreight Distribution livery.

Much like the VEA conversions the ODA looks pretty smart in a livery conceived some 30 years after it was originally built. This screen shot also includes a contemporary battery powered flashing tail lamp.

Let's Ride the Rails

A bit of an irresistible title I'm afraid!

A few weeks ago we were contacted by an experienced reskinner who expressed an interest in creating some reskins to form part of the scenarios we include with our Train Simulator expansions. With the scenarios for the Bullion Carriers under way the chance was taken to recreate one of Gateshead's allocation of Class 47s in the form of 47406 'Rail Riders' in original InterCity livery to use as the player locomotive.

The locomotive uses the class 47 included in the European Assets Pack/original routes and has a new texture, 3D nameplates and crest plus added ETH jumpers.

Although forming part of the scenario within the expansion pack the reskin will also be available to download from our website once the Bullion Carriers have been released. Don't take the screenshot as an example of the scenario though - it looks much different and you may have struggled to see the loco ....

VEA Vans: Railfreight Distribution VEA

One of the most exciting things about developing Train Simulator expansions is the little bits of history it can throw up. The story of the Vanwides and later VEA vans is no exception.

Not only did some 1950's built vans gain a new under-frame and air brakes to become the VEA vans featured in our expansion but at least six of them also managed to gain Railfreight Sector livery as the responsibility for Ministry of Defence trains passed to Railfreight Distribution.

Naturally, there was some variation in the way the livery was applied but the version we've chosen seems to have been the most prevalent judging by photographs. It must be said though that the VEA vans carried the livery well and it's a huge change from the all over brown they wore when originally built as Vanwides!

Bullion Carriers: Bullion Van Completed

With the textures and shaders finally completed it's great to see the bullion van in a completed form.

It seems to have been a very long unwrap and bake process with this one but the van and flats are finally with the testers.

If they come back from testing without any issues there will just the the levels of detail to add to complete the models.

Spring Survey Feedback

A big thank you to all the people who took the time to fill in our recent survey. We did promise a little bit of feedback about the results, so here we go.

Expansion quality

On the whole people are happy about the quality of our expansions. There were a few cases where issues were raised but these seem to be more isolated and quite often things beyond our control.

The one area where there was a wide spread of responses was the enclosed scenarios, both in terms of quality and if they were important at all. Please remember that the scenarios have always been included as a way to quickly use the expansion items in a scenario that is suitable for them but without (hopefully) requiring any additional downloads other than the expansion itself. Naturally this does mean that compromises have to be made to fit within that remit.

This said we have some ideas at the moment that should match the spirit of those scenarios while allowing them to be slightly more varied.

Expansion Price

On the whole people thought that the price of our expansions was about right. Naturally there were some who felt them too expensive but those were outweighed by people who thought them to be too cheap!

Don't worry there's no price rise being planned as a result.

Future Expansion Ideas

Thank you for all of the suggestions, some people wrote some very long lists!

Realistically we're never going to get to all of those ideas and some just wouldn't engage us as a team as they're outside our areas of interest and knowledge but thanks for the input nevertheless.

What did stand out was that the general themes and ideas running through matched up with what we already had on the internal ideas list so they should start to appear in the future - some in fact were already taking shape!

Production Speed

We know we're slower than we would like to be. Please rest assured that it frustrates us as much as it does some of you but that is the risk when you have a day job as well as your cottage industry.

What we can say at the moment is that there are changes taking place that should see some of the delayed things you mentioned brought off of the back bench and developed further towards release alongside an increase in production speed.

Unfortunately there is nothing we can actually tell you about this at the moment.

Age Groups

One of the most entertaining things from the survey is that the majority of respondents were older than most of the Fastline team which helps us feel young. It also means there is possibly an age group that we're failing to cater for at the moment. Hopefully some of the future ideas may begin to address this.

Conclusion

A big thank you must be given to all the people who took the time to write some very nice things in the last section of the survey. Getting dialog with our supporters and customers is always a challenge so it's great to get such positive feedback from so many of you!

In general, the survey showed that we're doing the right thing for the majority of the people who responded. There are a few little things we could improve and we'll be taking a look at them.

We really did read every single survey response but would like to reassure one respondent that we have now finished reading surveys and have got back to work ...