Designed and built by Rivet Games, West Cornwall Local covers the westernmost portion of the Cornish Main Line from Penzance to St Austell, plus the St Ives Bay branch line. This means stretches of single lane track mixed with the double. WCL is a beautiful little route, lots of rolling hills and steep ups & downs and an absolutely idyllic stretch that hugs the coast at Carbis Bay on the way from St. Erth to St. Ives.
WCL is set sometime in the late 1980s or early '90s when British Rail was being broken up and privatised. It features the BR Class 150/2 'Sprinter' in Regional Railways livery for passenger services and the iconic BR Class 37/5 in Railfreight grey livery hauling freight with 'Seacow' and 'Turbot' trucks/wagons. The trains look amazing as usual, with some insane levels of detail, but all is not well with the sound…
While the 150 sounds fine to my untrained ear, aficionados say it's too quiet and doesn't rev high enough on acceleration. The 37's growling engine, associated pump sounds, wheezes, whines and squeaky brakes sound fine until you get to full power, at which point it sounds messy and reverberates. The difference between the quality of the sound of the Class 37's horn and the 150 are mention-worthy too. The 150's sounds great but the 37's sounds synthesised and clipped.
Also in the sound department I have no idea why you'd choose a sleepy-voiced gentleman from the Northeast to voice the tutorials for TSW2's most Southwesterly route, but his relaxed voice undoubtedly suits the ambience of the area, while being as geographically incorrect as possible, I mean, what a shame they didn't get the late and great Jethro to do it.
With TSW2's layers feature, if you own the routes, you'll also be able to run Classes 47, 45, 40, 101 and 08 from Northern Trans Pennine, the Class 37 in Railfreight Sector livery, and the Class 101 and 08 in British Rail blue from Tees Valley Line on West Cornwall Local too.
Okay so there’s the good and the not-so-bad, now to the awful. The 37 also has another problem, the slow speed control (you'd use it to make loading trucks easier) only works in reverse, which makes it pretty much useless. No this doesn’t matter one iota in general play but how did it get through QA? We also found a bug in the 6H06 St Austell - Penzance service in the 37's Journey & Timetable mode which makes it impossible to finish because of a red light that doesn't change, even though you set the switches as required! This occurs on Xbox One and Xbox Series X so I imagine it happens on all formats, and I fully understand the frustration that some TSW2 owners have shown with recent DLC when coming across this sort of bug, and this little beauty only occurs after an hour or so's gameplay–I’m pretty sure it’s right at the end of the service!
Nevertheless West Cornwall Local is a charming route with plenty to do and a nice variety of passenger and freight, and I'm hopeful that Rivet will iron out the wrinkles over time.
Special thanks to Lick PR , Dovetail Games and Rivet Games for the review code.