Hi to all,

Following completion of the Blackfoot 2 Template package, but waiting for the route and stock to be released before uploading, I have taken a look at other routes for my next project. I have turned my attention to a new country still without any templates: South African routes. Joppie Saayman has released since 2006 multiple routes. I had the occasion to examine all routes to find out their candidacy for template making. All of them could be good candidates. However, two of them have retained my attention: The Garden route with its mix of coast line, mountainous and heavy graded areas and the Western Cape metro route.

I have decided to work on the most interesting one to start with, the Western Cape metro route. The route is located in the Cape Town area in Southwestern South Africa and stretches 20 miles to Kraaifontein to the East and 22 miles to the south at Simonstown, all double track mainline except for three miles between Vishoek and Simonstown. If you are familiar with the area, some parts of the route stretches along the coastline to the ocean and mountains are also present in the area too.

I have already started on the template, all sidings have been marked. The route has about 65 serviceable sidings and has multiple but small yards and will be my first template with all electric motive power. Also the user of the template will have his hands full in coping with plenty of passenger traffic along all directions and along both main lines. The player will have to slow down, wait for trains ahead or trying to avoid stalling the trains behind. And believe me, some reds come pretty fast but glad the electric trains have good braking systems! In South Africa, or at least in this area, passenger traffic has priority over freight. The passenger traffic has been set according to exact departure schedules found in the routes docs files. So there will be some realism here. This template is not for big load runs but rather for smaller jobs. But don't worry; you will have plenty of fun trying to make your work inside all that traffic.

I am including some shots of the test run done on both mainlines. Also take note of the signalling panels in South Africa. Some of them have an upper panel over the conventional Green-yellow-red panel. Five (5) white dots light up when indicating a change of track.

More to come as it gets updated