Get ready to transport yourself back to the bustling 1980s railway scene with Just Trains' latest add-on for Train Sim World 6 - West Coast Main Line: Crewe - Preston. Coming 18th June!
Following on from West Coast Main Line: Preston - Carlisle and Blackpool Branches: Preston - Blackpool & Ormskirk add-ons, Just Trains' West Coast Main Line: Crewe - Preston promises to be another cracker. With period accurate 1980s signage and stations and the option to drive both the electric and non-electrified you can sink your teeth into a route that is well over 60 miles in length!
Just Trains also have a in-depth development update on their own website that you can find here as well as a rather cool timelapse video showing off the timetable included in the route! You can check that out here:
Set in 1986, the Crewe-Preston add-on covers one of the UK's busiest rail corridors. Starting at Crewe, furnished with yards, depots, carriage sidings, and the famous Crewe Works, the road heads north through Warrington and Wigan to Preston. Beyond the main line, dedicated freight branches serve Haaydock Park, Fiddler's Ferry power station, Bickershaw Colliery, and Deepdale, each adding some truly amazing and distinct operations variety.
The route is jam picked to the gills with period-accurate detail: four-track running on key sections, busy TMDs at Crewe and Wigan Springs Branch, freight loops and marshalling yards throughout, and a timetable full of light engine movement, MGR coal trains, Speedlink freight, and high-speed expresses. Cool points of interest include Dutton Viaduct, the Acton Grange girder bridge spanning the Manchester Ship Canal, and Crewe's 1985 remodelled station allowed trains to exit at up to 60 mph!
Born out of the mid-1960s drive to electrify Britain's most important main line, the Class 86 was no prototype experiment. BREL built a hundred of them, making it British Rail's first serious commitment to electric traction at scale. For decades these machines were the backbone of the West Coast Main Line, hauling everything from crack expresses to heavy freight beneath the wires.
If one locomotive defined the diesel age on British railways, it's the Class 47. Brush Traction's Falcon Works and Crewe turned out 512 of the things, enough to make it the most numerous main line diesel Britain ever saw. Versatile, dependable, and seemingly indestructible, the "Brush Type 4" has hauled passenger expresses, freight, and parcels trains for over six decades, and a stubborn number refuse to die, still turning up on the main line, heritage railways, and even reborn as Class 57s from 1998 onwards.
Stubby, purposeful, and unlike anything else on the network, the Class 20 has always looked like it meant business. With its cab perched at one end and its nose riding heavy, it cut an immediately recognisable silhouette from the earliest days of dieselisation. It was never the biggest or the fastest, but it proved phenomenally tough, outlasting countless more modern designs and still appearing on the main line and heritage railways today, decades beyond any reasonable expectation.
The Class 08 shunter was the unsung workhorse of the BR network for generations. Introduced in 1952 as the standard-issue yard dog, they pottered around goods yards, station sidings, and depots the length and breadth of the country. The decline of traditional shunting has thinned their numbers on the national network, but the Class 08 refuses to vanish entirely, still earning its keep in industrial sidings and on heritage lines.
Tees Valley Line: Darlington – Saltburn-by-the-Sea Route Add-On (for the Class 37 ‘Tractor’ diesel locomotive)
West Cornwall Local: Penzance - St Austell & St Ives Route Add-On (for the Seacow and Turbot wagons)
Spirit of Steam: Liverpool Lime Street - Crewe Route Add-On (for the 16t mineral wagon and 20t brake van)
BR Heavy Freight Pack Loco Add-On (for the Class 40 diesel locomotive and 12t van)
BR Class 20 ‘Chopper’ Loco Add-On (for the PGA wagon)
BR Class 31 Loco Add-On (for the Class 31 diesel locomotive and PCA-V cement tank wagon)
Blackpool Branches: Preston - Blackpool & Ormskirk (for the Class 142 ‘Pacer’ Diesel Multiple Unit and TEA wagon)
Northern Trans-Pennine: Manchester - Leeds Route Add-On (for the Class 45 ‘Peak’ diesel locomotive)
West Coast Main Line: Preston – Carlisle (for the Class 87 electric locomotive, Class 101 Diesel Multiple Unit, Class 47/4 diesel locomotive, BBA wagon, Mk3a coaches, Mk2a coaches and Mk1 BG coaches)
BR Class 86/2 & Mk2F Coaches (for the Class 86/2 electric locomotive, Mk2F coaches and Mk1 RMB coach)
Peak Forest Railway: Ambergate - Chinley & Buxton Route Add-On (for the ICI hopper wagon)
Cargo Line Vol. 5 - Nuclear (for the FNA wagon)
Scenarios, Collectibles and Mastery Challenges will also be available, as per most Train Sim World route Add-ons.
Just Trains' are running a Crewe - Preston preview livestream at 20:00 tonight! Check it out here:
Train Sim World 6: West Coast Main Line Crewe - Preston will release 18th June for Steam for £29.99 / €35.99 / $39.99.
WCML: Crewe - Preston is an Add-on for Train Sim World 6. If you've not yet upgraded, you can still do so in a number of ways.
Upgrading via Train Sim World 6: Deluxe Edition will give you access to three brand new routes: Riviera Line, Morristown Line and Leipzig-Dresden.
Find out more about Train Sim World 6 by following @trainsimworld on Twitter/X, Instagram, Threads, Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok.