GLASGOW SUBWAY COMING SOON!
Glasgow Subway is coming to Train Simulator Classic, 28th April. We spoke to Alan from Thomson Interactive to give us an insight into them and their latest upcoming route.
Welcome Alan! For those who are unfamiliar with your work, please tell us a bit about yourself and the background to Thomson Interactive.
I’ve had a pretty varied, and sometimes quite exciting career. After leaving school in the 1980’s I was desperate to start work in my first job as an in-house British Rail photographer for the Scottish region. Railways had been a passion for me for as long as I could remember, inspired mostly by my father from a very young age. I then went on to work in the computer graphics industry from the early 1990’s and worked for a number of UK based design and multimedia agencies. By 2010 I had been developing products for Train Simulator for a few years while running my own design business and decided to “take the plunge” making rail simulation development my sole interest and setting up Thomson Interactive Ltd in the August of that year.
Thomson Interactive has built a solid reputation over the years, with many high-quality routes including the first Swiss TS routes released on the Steam store. Which of your routes are you the most proud of?
That’s a very difficult question to answer! With every product I’ve developed I have tried to design new features to enhance the players’ experiences. West Highland Line Extension was the first with a fully operational RETB radio system. Then WCML Trent Valley had on-board passenger audio announcements and random traction faults during scenarios. Both of these routes were created in partnership with Keith Ross who did a superb job of route building. Then in 2015 I decided to explore a completely new territory by choosing to develop a range of Swiss narrow gauge routes operated by the Rhaetian Railway (RhB). This gave me a clean sheet as everything needed to be built from scratch including track, signalling and rolling stock for these incredible metre gauge lines.
After the first survey trip I realised that the cramped tunnels that feature so prominently would not look realistic if modelled to accommodate the standard in-game overhead line height. So I designed a variable height catenary system for all these Swiss RhB products starting with the Albula Line. The Arosa Line then added request stop functionality. I’m proud of all of these new features so it is very difficult to pick just one, but from a purely visual point of view Bernina Pass stands out. I’ve been incredibly lucky to have had as much support from the Rhaetian Railway during development and I will never forget sitting with the driver on the survey trip from St. Moritz to Tirano on that crisp sunny morning – that will be very hard to surpass.
You have a very exciting, and rather unique, new route coming April 28th – the Glasgow Subway. This is a route that you have a personal connection with, tell us about the real-life route and what features we can look forward to in the Thomson Interactive release.
After becoming semi-retired in late 2020 I thought I’d be spending more time away from the computer screen but with Covid-19 lockdowns I found I had lots of spare time to start working on another project. This time I wanted to work on something that I had a direct connection with over the years – the Glasgow Subway. When I was primary school age, and before the 1977 modernisation of the subway, I have vivid memories of travelling with my mother from my home in Renfrew to my grandparents who lived in Scotstoun on the other side of the Clyde. This was a journey we made almost every week, taking a bus to Govan then the Subway to Merkland Street (now Partick station). The subway vehicles were the originals, at that time nearing eighty years old and full of character. The rippled glass and three brass bars at the seat divisions were just at my eye height and the red leather seats bounced with every “shoogle” the train made. At my young age it was a mixture of mild fear and extreme fascination, a magical underground world!
After the three year closure my father took me in to Glasgow one Saturday to experience the modernised subway which was almost unrecognisable. A mixture of high tech and late 1970s cream, brown and beige ceramic tiling. Everything seemed automatic and futuristic. This modernised subway is the experience I have tried to capture in Train Simulator with the new crossover chambers and lines to the surface depot that were introduced from 1980. Driving these trains also gives the player choice as the route has been developed to feature A.T.O. (Automatic Train Operation). Auto mode allows drivers to press a button to move from one station to the next with the A.T.O. system controlling every part of the journey including evaluation of intermediate signals between Govan and Ibrox and stopping in the target platform. In Train Simulator the player can either enable this automatic method of control or try to drive in manual mode. However manual driving is a real challenge due to the nature of the route and short platforms, but great fun all the same!
It is quite a departure from the usual TS style of route. What new challenges came up in research and development?
Research was very challenging due to lockdowns, with operator assistance and surveys out of the question. Luckily there is a huge wealth of reference material out there on the web and many weeks were spent simply scouring the Internet for any snippet of information that could help. Lots of books and videos purchased too. The station models were difficult to produce due to the combination of curved station walls on curved track combined with the curvature of the track humps posed a problem that took some unusual techniques to overcome. The scripting of the A.T.O. system also threw up many obstacles that were only overcome after many iterations.
What elements of the route are you the most pleased with? What are you most looking forward to seeing the players getting to grips with?
I’m really happy with the look of the passenger interior as I think I’ve managed to capture the cramped feel of the trains. I’ve set up the passenger views as part of an “extended driver cabin” – the same method used for the Class 350 on WCML Trent Valley. The trains also feature an audio system that allows you to announce each stop using the cabin PA button. I’m really looking forward to seeing how players cope with the different driving modes. My main hope is that others can experience the same fascination that I have for this wonderful little underground railway.
Thanks Alan, we are all looking forward to the release. Finally: if you could go back to any time or place and ride on a particular train or just watch it go past, where and when would you go?
That’s an easy one, I’d love to go back to 1971 and walk to Arkleston Road bridge outside Paisley and watch the trains with my father again. He has been the inspiration to all of my railway projects. That is where and when it all started for me.
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