DHR2 The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (Extended)

DHR2 The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (Extended)

Welcome to the 2025 edition of one of the pioneering routes of the Trainz franchise that many of us loved and admired when it was originally released to the community. Prior to adding my own comments to this route description (which includes an essential-reading note about the route's asset collection), here are some comments from Bill Slack, the project lead for the original DHR:

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Modeling the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway was first discussed in 2005 in a conversation between Peter Pardoe-Matthews (Narrowgauge) and Bill Slack (Hiballer). Peter had just seen a video of the DHR and immediately saw the beauty, and the complexity, involved in creating this for the Trainz program.

They both cast around, looking for others who shared the desire to build something of lasting value. Dave Drake (DmDrake) came aboard, envisioning the “look and feel” of India. A few others joined in the discussion on the Trainz Forum and soon there were a total of ten persons willing to give it a try.

John D’Angelo (Johnda1237) became the scribe for the group, taking notes on progress and releasing short notices in the Forum. Following a month of tossing around ideas, they settled on a rather nebulous time period which would encompass the years from the turn of the Twentieth Century to approximately 1950 and construction began.

Bill put together many separate topographical maps and created a master Digital Elevation Map (DEM) of the entire run from Siliguri to Darjeeling, a distance of around 53 miles. Once the whole mountainous region was completed, the painstaking job of laying rails where they belonged was undertaken.

To aid in the effort, The route was broken into ten separate portions and members of the group took on to work on as their own project. As those ten separate “chunks” were completed, they were passed to Bill who fitted them together into a single, master, route. As an aside, you will notice the changes as they occur while riding the rails up, or down the mountain range.

The technology of the Trainz program was restrictive when using the TRS2004 software, so when a newer version came out, the DHR was shifted to use that game version. It took the crew of the project almost three years to complete the route to their satisfaction. The first public release came in early 2008, originally for the TRS2004 platform, and a second soon followed for the newer version.

Since that release, Bill and others have kept adding more functionality and some content to the current version of the DHR and released it for later updates of the Trainz software. With increases in computer technology, the DHR was updated to reflect those changes by adding more distant content from the right of way, increased viewability of vehicles, houses, and especially the people who live on this model railway. In 2019, the 2-foot gauge trackage was converted from the old style track to procedural track which created proper frogs and movable points on switches.

Whenever possible, photos were used to create the look and feel of this tremendous railroading effort, both original and model. All rolling stock, including motive power was created by Peter. The animated waterfalls were graciously donated by Michael Sutton (SirGibby) from his payware colleciton.

Others who contributed to this project are:

Noel Brettoner (nbrettoner) Scenery Detailer
Peter Hilton (ShadowLine) Builder, Scenery Detailer
Richard Knepp (rick1958) Scenery Detailer
Ted Stuckey (Samabay) Scenery Detailer
Andrew (Andy) Turnbull (Dermmy) Scenery Detailer

We hope you will enjoy the very latest version of the DHR, now available on the Download Station. Look for “DHR2” in the name. Note that other content marked DHR2 are updated versions of content and should be used with the DHR2 route to get the full effect of the simulation.

The route has been built using “real scale.” which means that the route actually contains 54 miles of track, climbing from 315 feet at New Jalpa

DHR2 The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (Extended)