The version of the route which is included in the package is named "Loop Line Lite".
The full route is named "Loop Line" and this is available as a seperate download from this website.
Potteries Loop Line was a short steeply graded route of 7 miles length which ran through the three northernmost Potteries towns, Tunstall, Burslem and Hanley. It linked these with the rest of the conurbation which is now known as Stoke-on-Trent.
During its heyday it had an intensive passenger service and it also handled considerable coal traffic from three large collieries to which it supplied the main rail access. In addition there was an integrated iron and steel works at the south end of the Loop plus one of the largest merchant coke works in the UK at the north end. Coal and china clay to the potteries and the shipping out of the products of the brick works, foundries, tileries and an oil refinery all added to the variety and frequency of rail traffic.
The line is depicted in 1938, 15 years after the original owners The North Staffordshire Railway had been amalgamated into the LMS. The frequency of the passenger services had been cut somewhat due to competition from the buses of Potteries Motor Traction. However the volume of goods traffic was at its zenith.
The passenger services on the line declined quickly after WWII and with the diversion of the coal winding from the Sneyd, Hanley and Chatterley Whitfield collieries to the Wolstanton site in the 1960s the coal traffic ceased. The line was closed as a through route in 1966. Significant sections of the original route have been totally obliterated but some sections can be traced because they have been converted to footpaths.
A document with the background to the construction of the line along with a description of the route and a guide to the train services which ran on it is available from the documentation downloads page.
This version of the Loop Line has been developed for lower specification computers and was deemed more appropriate to be packaged for the average user's machine.
In order to create this version all scenery further than 200m from a railway has been removed and a number of peripheral baseboards have been deleted.
This is the full version of the route with longer scenery distance and all assets included.
NOTE: you will need an above average specification machine in order to run this with acceptable frame rates.
