LIRRs Cannonball meets a train of M7s on the Babylon Branch.
The Long Island Rail Road is the nation's busiest commuter rail system, transporting almost 3 billion passengers and commuters a year. The Montauk Branch is the longest branch on the LIRR, taking commuters 117 miles from New York City to the sandy beaches of Montauk and the Hamptons.
Route Overview
The Montauk Branch starts out at two terminals: one being the great Penn Station in Manhattan, where dual mode and electric trains originate, and the other being Long Island City, a smaller terminal where diesel trains originate. Diesel trains, which are used on the Montauk Branch, cannot go through the East River Tunnels to Penn Station. Because of this, some of them start at Long Island City instead.
Just past this is the massive Jamaica Train Station, one of the most important stations on the LIRR.
After Jamaica, the Montauk trains can run on two lines to get to the next major stop; the Main Line, which is a quick run through Central Long Island at maximum authorized speed and down the diesel-only Central Branch, or the Babylon Branch, an elevated electric train line that runs along the south shore of Long Island. These train lines meet in Babylon, NY.
Electrification ends in Babylon, but diesel service continues through the woods of eastern Long Island and out to the beaches of the Hamptons and Montauk. The overall distance between Penn Station and Montauk is 117 miles.
Why the Montauk Branch?
The Montauk Branch is one of the most diverse, interesting routes on the Long Island Railroad, taking you from the urban streets of NY to the woods and beaches of Eastern Long Island. Lots of new and different equipment and rolling stock would make it a very interesting route in Train Simulator. One other note is that the Montauk Branch is the route of LIRRs famous Cannonball, which would really make for a good scenario.
Stock
The trainsets that should probably come with the route are the EMD DE/DM30AC locomotives and C3 coaches (shown above), as they travel on the Montauk diesel territory as well as electric territory. The DE30AC locomotives are straight-diesel locomotives. The DM30s, however, are dual mode, meaning that they can travel into Penn Station on select trains.
The are also EMUs that could be added in DLC. They are as follows:
Budd M3 EMUs, shown above, have been on the Long Island Railroad for a long time and are going out of service soon. They could be counted as an addon. Shown below are newer M7 EMUs, which could also be addons. I think that this would be an amazing Train Simulator route. Thank you for reading my route proposal, I hope you enjoyed my description and I hope you consider adding this awesome stuff!
