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April 2025 Newsletter

Recording Trips

Just before this newsletter hit the press, we took a trip to Tees Dock courtesy of David Adams at Freightliner, a keen simmer, who very kindly organised a day of sound recording with a couple of class 66s. Our existing recordings are almost 10 years old now and in the intervening period, we've learnt a lot, so it was great to be able to improve upon these. We were fortunate in that both an original spec (tier 0) and low emission (tier 1) loco were available so both of these were recorded. This new audio will be used in our forthcoming Class 66 Enhancement Pack 2.0 and the intention will be to supply separate engine sound sets for both tier variants of the 66.

The Workbench

Not long after sending last month's newsletter, we got to the stage where we had pretty much done all we could with the Class 66 Enhancement Pack 2.0 that didn't involve new audio. In anticipation of the aforementioned trip to Tees Dock then, we temporarily paused work on the 66 and switched back to a project we know a lot of you have been looking forward to; the 'Valenta' variant of our HST pack.

As has been mentioned previously, the last thing remaining to do on this pack was the cab. With the acceptance that our mythical Magic Cab Man was not able to supply the goods this time around, we set to work on doing the best we could in-house and well, the end result is better than we ever imagined! Learning new skills and taking what we could from the existing modern 'MTU' cab, we integrated this with a much enhanced version of the original 'Valenta' cab by Dovetail Games. The culmination is pretty much a new cab in all but name. It looks immersive and features just as much functionality as our HST (MTU) Pack such as opening cab doors and Automatic Train Protection (ATP). There are also a few era dependent variations to be had such as an analogue or digital clock, type of driver's seat and also DRA/TPWS. Check out the screenshots below to see what has been achieved.

At the time of writing, the HST (Valenta) Pack is complete barring scenarios so despite us now having the audio to complete our Class 66 Enhancement Pack 2.0, we expect the HST (Valenta) Pack to be the next thing you see from us. With copious liveries, lavish functionality and spine-tingling audio, this is the defining HST pack in our opinion. Selecting notch 5 with the cab door open as the engine grunts into life with the scream of the turbocharger and the howl of the Marston cooling fan is something sure to take you back in time to when these beasts ruled the rails. Stay tuned!

Blast From The Past