Berks and Hants to Bristol and Penzance V3

The Berks and Hants to Bristol and Penzance route (BHBP) merged High Speed Tracks’ The Railways of Devon and Cornwall (RDC) and Martin Masterson’s South Western Expressways to Reading (SWER), two well established TS routes. The route develops and vastly extends DTG’s ‘Riviera Line’ and Just Trains’ original ‘South Western Expressways’.

BHBP route has well over 300 miles of main, secondary and branch lines across southern and south west England:

• 219 miles of main line from Reading to Penzance along the Berks and Hants line via Newbury, Westbury, Taunton, Exeter, Plymouth and Truro.
• 37 miles of main line from Bristol to Taunton via Cogload Junction
• 21-miles of main and secondary line from Bristol to Bath and Westbury
• 28 miles of secondary line from Exeter to Axminster
• The secondary line from Newton Abbot to Paignton, and the Paignton and Dartmouth heritage railway onwards to Kingswear
• The Exeter to Exmouth branch
• The Exeter to Barnstaple branch, including the Dartmoor Railway from Coleford Junction to Okehampton and the currently disused line onwards to Meldon Quarry
• The Plymouth to Gunnislake branch
• The Liskeard to Looe branch
• The Totnes to Falmouth branch
• The St Erth to St Ives branch
• The South Devon Railway heritage line from Totnes to Buckfastleigh

BHBP will always be a work in progress. The aim is to reflect the up to date, contemporary railway. It will always need updating and will never be finished!

BHBP V3 has fully detailed scenery from
• Reading to just west of Bodmin Parkway
• Just east of Par to Burngullow (just west of St Austell)
• Just east of Truro to Penzance
• Taunton to Bristol, and from Bristol on to Westbury via Bath.
• Exeter to Honiton, Exmouth, Kingswear, Copplestone and Okehampton
• Plymouth to Gunnislake
• Liskeard to Looe
• St Erth to St Ives
• Totnes to Buckfastleigh

What’s new in V3:

• Scenery between Liskeard and Bodmin Parkway has been added in full.
• The South Devon Railway is now complete.
• The Dartmoor Line between Coleford Junction and Okehampton now has the correct new speed limits, and the revised foot crossings and GSMR equipment are now in place.

BHBP west of Whiteball Tunnel (Devon and Cornwall, basically) works with the AP track enhancement pack. UK Pro signals are used in large parts of the route and these will work with the AP signals enhancement pack if you own it. At present JT signals are also used in a number of areas and these will not work with the pack.

The future

The first priority is to complete the scenery on the Cornish Main Line. The next section to be completed will be Bodmin Parkway to Par. When the main line is finished we will complete the Falmouth and Barnstaple branches and the West of England Line to Axminster.

A first iteration of the line from Reading to Paddington has been completed and awaits merger with BHBP. Merging is a complex process and our merging expert is a very, very busy man! When he has time it will be done. The Reading to Paddington extension is based on Keith Ross’s 2011 improved version of Kuju’s original route from Paddington to Oxford. It has completely new scenery from Reading to Taplow and Old Oak to Paddington. In between it’s a wired version of Kuju’s original route and is really showing it’s age – we will steadily improve it to BHBP standards.

Required routes and assets

RDC and SWE-R used assets from a significant number of different sources between them, so BHBP’s required assets list is quite long. There’s no way around this for now, but the combined route offers hundreds of miles of main, secondary and branch line track, allowing lengthy, varied and totally immersive true to life scenarios.

BHBP just won’t work at all without your having:

Train Simulator 2020
DTG – The Riviera Line
DTG – The Riviera Line in the 50s
Just Trains – South Western Expressways (from the Aerosoft website – see important note below)

BHBP requires the first iteration of the South Western Expressways, NOT the current version on JT’s website that extends the route to Reading. The first iteration is still available at the Aerosoft website, here:

https://www.aerosoft.com/en/shop/train-bus-truck/dovetail-games-train-simulator/routes/2167/south-western-expressways

BHBP will not work with the later iteration on JT’s website.

BHBP may work – but only just in some cases – without your having the routes and assets shown below. BUT there will be milk bottles galore and big gaps in the scenery.

Payware:

Steam
Brighton Main Line
Town Scenery Pack
Platform Clutter Pack
West Somerset
North Somerset
WCML North
European Loco and Asset Pack (Not required if you had Train Simulator before Sept 2012)
Bristol to Cardiff

Just Trains:
Western Main Lines (none of the route extensions are needed)
Bristol to Exeter
Newcastle to Edinburgh

Alan Thomson Simulation (ATS)
ATS OHLE Pack

Freeware:
DP Simulation:
Barnstaple to Exeter

Chris Trains:
NS Station and Object Scenery

Vulcan Productions:
VP Grass Pack (Download V3 of the pack towards the bottom of this page)

Major Wales:
IET/EMU Stop Sign Pack

UKTS requirements are included in the installation zip.

We strongly recommend that you get hold of and install all of the above required routes and assets before you install BHBP