Welcome to the Weka Pass Railway!
The Weka Pass is a preserved historic railway in New Zealand and is now available as a the next free official layout in Rolling Line! This is also the first proper official layout to take place in New Zealand since the original "top of the south" layout the game launched with.
It's about time Rolling Line went back to its roots and introduced some New Zealand content!
This layout was a true community effort, and includes help from multiple community members in the form of scenery detailing, new props and new trains!
I would love to start things off by giving a massive thank you to:
- Ze Trackmeister - For detailing scenery on the layout. specializing on the suburbs, power station, rail sheds and surrounding areas!
- William Tremblay - For detailing scenery on the layout, specifically the farmland, vineyards and around the hills!
- Coconut Pie - For making the model for the Dg locomotive! (the crown jewel of the Weka Pass)
- Long - For making the models for the Da locomotive and the NZR coaches!
- Sweed - For making the models for the Ka steam locomotive and the animated rail-crane prop!
- Finn - For making the Frog Rock shed, as well as several other props!
- Mr Pink - For making the tractor model!
And a special thank you to the volunteers at the Weka Pass railway for the amazing work they do, and especially to Matthew Morison for showing me and my family around when we visited the railway!
So without further ado, you can now find the Weka Pass alongside the other official maps when choosing "New Game" on the main menu:
Just like the other official maps, I've made a top-down 2D map of the layout:
(You can view an HD version here!)
Oh, and yes, the Weka Pass does definitely have Easter eggs ːsteamhappyː
Lots of them in fact!!
Anyway, here are a bunch of official HD screenshots of the layout:
View HD version: here
View HD version: here
View HD version: here
View HD version: here
View HD version: here
View HD version: here
View HD version: here
View HD version: here
View HD version: here
The Dg locomotive
Along with the map itself, this update also adds the Dg locomotive.
The Dg is an old English Electric built diesel locomotive used around New Zealand between the 1950s and 1980s.
These locos are actually notorious for being plagued with engine failures, electrical faults and known for having cramped cabs... but they do have a lovely engine sound!
The Weka Pass Railway owns two Dg locos: 770 and 791
Thank you so much to Coconut Pie for making the excellent model for the Dg!
New props
As part of the Weka Pass map, this update adds a few various props.
These are:
- Tractor (make by Mr Pink!)
- A bucket
- Snappable piece of corrugated iron wall
- Miscellaneous scrap pile (made by Finn!)
- A taller variant of the NZ semaphore signal pole
As well as these, the new buildings used on the Weka Pass map can be found in the new "misc -> weka pass misc" drawer:
These are:
- The red NZR sheds
- Shed doors
- Frog rock shack
- Glenmark station building
Other fixes/features
This update also includes:
- Improved the collision on the NZR coaches. You can now teleport along the floor of the coach
- Narrowed the underside of the NZR coaches (just to make them look a bit more balanced)
- Fixed collision on one random silo prop in Picton on the "top of the south" layout
- Re-named flexytrack back to "gap-fill" track again
- Added some error-catching code to fix issues people were running into where the edit tool would not enable editing as it should
HD screenshot version: here
I'm so happy with how the Weka Pass has tuned out, and working with the community on this project has been a ton of fun. The Weka Pass has been talked about for over a year now, so it's amazing to finally have it released and officially in-game!
As for my future plans, the end of this year is going to certainly be busy...
I am going to be moving house in just over a month, and the rest of the year after is going to be a hell of a rush, so updates are likely to slow down for a while now, at least for the near future.
I also just yesterday received an Oculus Quest (thanks to the Oculus Start developers program!) and this thing is blowing my mind, it's incredible! Needless to say I am very excited to start developing for the Quest and testing things out with it.
I do in fact have plans to bring Rolling Line to the Quest eventually, but this is going to be a truly MASSIVE job, and will involve huge changes to the game before this is possible.
So it will likely happen one day, but not for a long time at least, but know that I am in fact very exited to work with the Quest in the future!
As for the meantime... maybe I could finally make the 6th issue of "Model Rolling Line" magazine...
That would certainly be a fun idea ːsteamhappyː
And thats all for today!
I hope you enjoy the Weka Pass!