London Overground: Mildmay line — route add-on review

I apply the brakes as my Class 378 Capitalstar turns the corner into platform 2, Stratford. It's my terminus for today's journey along the Mildmay line. I lived in the East of England before I moved out for university; I found myself at Stratford maybe once every other month. Sure, the architecture and details of the surrounding buildings have suffered some abstraction, but the station layout and platforms are as I remember them. This is the closest I've been to home in a few months.

My attention quickly switched to the AI traffic. On the roads, it's the New Routemasters and hackney carriages; unmistakably London. On the tracks, first it's tube stock, layered in from the Bakerloo line DLC. Not quite the 1992 Stock, though a fun addition. Then it's the reskinned Class 710 with (branded!) Elizabeth line and (unbranded) Greater Anglia liveries, 9- and 5-cars long respectively. And is that a DLR train? Yes. Yes it is.

Train Sim World interrupts: 'service failed: train derailed.' I was in freecam, distracted, and my train crashed into the buffers. Oops.

Let's recentre. This week, solo developer Johannes (Incredible Trains) released his debut route add-on for Train Sim World, the London Overground Mildmay line. It's a 12-mile stretch between Stratford and Willesden Junction, with rich scenery, a busy timetable, and 18 stations to visit. A journey from end to end will take you 45 minutes.

If you already knew of the Mildmay line (formerly the North London line), you will know that this is not the full route. In reality, it splits after Willesden Junction to Richmond and Clapham Junction. This is not the case in Train Sim World, and it's something to be aware of. Add-ons have been extended before — Rivet Games revisited their Fife Circle Line to add the Leven branch — but Incredible Trains is a one-man team, so anything of this sort would be a nice surprise but not expected.

What we do have is superb. The section between Stratford and Willesden Junction comes alive with eight services per hour. That's plenty of Captialstars for a start, but you can also spot other rolling stock along the route. There are a handful of empty coaching stock (ECS) movements with the Class 710 from the Suffragette line, plus freight with the Class 66. Then, where the Mildmay line crosses other lines, you can see AI traffic such as the Class 700, Class 801, and Class 390, among others. It's a masterclass in add-on layering, which is where rolling stock from one DLC can be seen or used in others and vice versa.

The scenery does well to capture the city, from its towering skyline to the little details. There's a lot to spot as you drive, from engineers working on lineside equipment to people grabbing lunch at a rooftop cafe. Except for a few places where it clips into the cab and station assets, the foliage along the line is some of the best we've seen so far. I really can't emphasise enough how great the route's visuals are — all of this goes a long way to making you feel as though you are in the driver's seat, at the helm of a busy London Overground service through the capital. I played on a mid-range PC and there were a few frame drops, but I was never frustrated by performance.

If you've driven any of the Electrostars from other TSW routes, the Class 378 Capitalstar will seem familiar. It behaves in much the same way. (Newcomers need not worry — there is a tutorial to get you on track.) The train's exterior is detailed and the London Overground livery is well implemented with high quality textures. I enjoyed seeing official Transport for London (TfL) posters lining the interior of the train, too.

However, the sounds of the Class 378 seem to be a remix of existing Electrostar train sounds. These are OK, but certainly not the best that Train Sim World has to offer. Running sounds are a bit quiet within the cab, even with the windows open, so you might turn up the volume, only to be deafened by the next (slightly distorted) AWS ping. The horn lacks reverb for the first few uses in each run, as well. It doesn't put me off driving the Class 378. Rather, it's a case of 'could be better', as, ultimately, it does sound like the right type of train. Still, if this is particularly important to you then it's worth watching a playthrough video or two to make up your mind. It's fine, it just didn't excite me like the visuals did.

Most route add-ons come with around five scenarios and the Mildmay line is no exception. These are services with pre-programmed events, included by the developer. I tried the route learning scenario, which takes you on a non-stop tour between Stratford to Willesden Junction. It's a nice introduction to the route, which also shows you how to get the unit going from cold, though I had some issues with getting the train to accelerate. It was as though I was fighting the brakes — the train would decelerate when the power brake handle was below P2. Though, once I managed to get moving, pop-ups in the bottom left of the screen introduced me to landmarks to watch for and upcoming speed changes.

If scenarios are not your cup of tea, or you finish all of them, there are over 650 timetabled services to jump into next. I tend to prefer service mode and I've completed a fair few runs over the course of writing my review. Even so, I can't seem to recall seeing any passengers getting on or off my train. The train management system (TMS) in the cab doesn't seem to function, either. So when you start a service, the game will decide whether to enable saloon lights, but you can't toggle this later. Then, the virtual stop marker doesn't always align with the position of the physical stop marker. How important these are to you depends on how you play. For me, I spend most of my time in the cab with reduced UI, so these are minor issues that I hardly notice. But in general, I think these could be fixed with a patch. Granted, there is room for improvement, but not drastically.

This wasn't going to be a perfect route, by virtue of cutting the Mildmay line short at Willesden Junction, but what Incredible Trains is offering is an experience that is both enjoyable to explore and immersive to drive. I was impressed by the modelling of the Class 378, the scenery including stations, plus the use of layering to bring every corner of the add-on to life. Train sounds don't raise the bar and some aspects of gameplay are due some work, but the effort that was put into these 12 miles is tangible. It's good fun and I can't wait to see what Johannes works on next.