Blue Mountains route

NR 53 at the head of an intermodal train with plenty of Australian gum trees in the background in the Blue Mountains.

The full Blue Mountains route runs from Sydney to Lithgow which is just about over the mountains. Mike's route details the section from Penrith, west of Sydney at the foot of the mountains to Lithgow, a distance of approximately 100 km, rising to about 1100 m.

As you'd expect, the route has been prepared with Mike's own tool, Route Riter, so follow the instructions in the readme, remembering you must have the six default MSTS routes available for the InstallMe.bat task and XTracks version 3.5 or later installed.

Updates

A Countrylink XPT set approaches Valley Heights in the Blue Mountains.

On 29-May-03, Mike released an update patch, bm2patch.zip (9.2Mb, from Train-sim.com), to add the famous Lithgow Zig-zag section; this brought his route up to version 2.

In October, Mike released version 3, and quickly afterwards, Blue Mountains was upgraded to version 3.1.

You have three choices to be able to drive on version 3.1. Install the:

• full version, AU_BlueMountains3_1_Full_MSTS1_Setup.exe (43.4Mb, 10-Oct-03);
• update patch from version 3 to version 3.1, AU_BlueMountains3_1_Patch_MSTS1_Setup.exe (2.36Mb, 10-Oct-03);
• upgrade from version 2 to version 3, AU_BlueMountains3_1_Upgrade_MSTS1_Setup.exe (18.6Mb, 10-Oct-03).

You'll find these files on the Blue Mountains download page at Australian Addons for MSTS.

Once again, ensure you have the six default MSTS routes available before you begin installing.