Bossman Games have released their brand new SR Bulleid Light Pacific locomotive pack for Train Simulator 2021, and they have very kindly sent RailAdvent a copy to preview and review.

The pack contains members of both the West Country and Battle of Britain class of locomotives, with all 60 members in total being represented in this lovely pack, all with their respective nameplates and crests being recreated.

What’s included in the price?

For £19.99, you will receive all 60 members of the class, with 4,500, 5,250 and 5,500-gallon variations for the tenders recreated all in early / late crests and weathered / clean looks along with advanced and realistic driving and a number of scenarios.

First Impressions

Upon installing and loading into the game, you really get a sense of detail with this pack. The amount of effort gone into making this pack is immediately noticeable, with the high-quality liveries, to the detailed nameplates. I booted in a scenario on the Riveria Line In The Fifties (as I don’t yet have the AP Coaches – they are on the list to buy – these are needed for the scenarios, along with certain routes), and set to learning how to drive the locomotive. Whilst there is no tutorial for the locomotive, if you have ever driven a Bossman Games add-on, you will be right at home.

There is a manual that details the different keyboard shortcuts, which is a PDF which allows you to have it on your phone, or print it out to play and learn the controls of this superb locomotive pack.

It would have been nice to see the scenarios duplicated to have stock carriages as well as a version with Armstrong Powerhouse coaches which would have allowed people to just have the route add-on, but I am being really picky here. A quick clone of an old scenario, change over the loco to the Light Pacific, and you are good to go.

Optimisation and Detail

Bossman Games are well known in the Train Simulator community for producing high-quality and detailed steam locomotive add-ons, and the Light Pacific add on is no different. Running on either the KWVR route, or the Riveria Line in the Fifties, we didn’t notice any frame drops due to the detailed locomotive, or stuttering. What’s great to see here is that if you have a less powerful pc, you can turn on Performance Mode to help increase your FPS in the game, this is great to see and means more people can enjoy this addon.

This Light Pacific pack then is one highly-detailed pack for Train Simulator. The custom sounds, the whistles (there are three keys for variations!), and custom animations, everything about this pack is perfect, well optimised and enjoyable to play. I found no issues with any of the sounds or graphics, no glitches or anything, it is all high quality and just shows how much work Bossman Games putting making this pack.

With the entire Light Pacific class in one pack means you have no end game for this pack, fire up a free roam on your best route, and have a dabble with a weathered loco or why not make your own railtour scenario!

General Gameplay

Once you have learnt how to drive this add on, the locomotives are enjoyable to drive. There isn’t a tutorial, and the manual doesn’t have much information on how to drive the locomotives, but it does have all the keyboard shortcuts. However, with an auto-fireman, even beginners can drive this pack, and the more advanced features (like injectors, and manual firing) are intuitive to use thanks to the detailed cab layout of the locomotives that Bossman Games has produced.

Speaking of the cab, there are numerous dials and controls to click, turn and use to give this pack a nice sense of reality. The locomotives are quick drive compatible meaning you can drive the locomotive in a wide variety of weather and at whatever time you like.

The Light Pacific pack is also available in the scenario editor, you can place down any of the locos, and drive it with whatever stock you want, allowing your imagination to go wild, how about operating Braunton on a scenario on the North Wales Coast route?

With 36 different headboards, available using the H key, you can really top off your perfect scenario. Its nice to see some headboards from railtour operators included too!

Any bad points?

If I had to be picky with this pack, and this is really being picky, as previously mentioned, I would have preferred to see some scenarios using standard coaches, for those that don’t have the Armstrong Powerhouse variants, and the other thing in a perfect world I’d like to see is some sort of tutorial video on how to start driving the pack for those beginners.

Both of these nitpicks are easily solved though, a quick swap of the locomotive on another scenario will allow you to drive the locomotive with stock, and the controls are rather intuitive for the locomotive, so you will easily learn how to drive the Light Pacific (and if you have driven a Bossman Games locomotive before, then you will feel right at home with the Light Pacific).

Final Thoughts?

So to summarise this rather lengthy review, this locomotive pack from Bossman Games is really detailed, enjoyable and fun to play around with. Once again, the team at BMG have excelled to produce another highly detailed locomotive pack for those looking to add more to their library.

The Light Pacific pack is available through the Bossman Games website by clicking here for £19.99.

It perhaps would have been nice to see the price a little lower since the Armstrong Powerhouse coaches cost in total £34 to play the scenarios (and the routes needed to be purchased on top of that), but i can really see where this hard work has gone into this pack.

I would definitely get this locomotive pack and add it to your Train Sim 2021 collection if it is just to play around with in free roam / Quick Drive or start making your own scenarios with.

Want to see the pack in action? Make sure to follow the RailAdvent Twitch channel to see when I live stream the loco, go to twitch.tv/railadvent and hit the purple follow button now.

A massive thank you to Bossman Games for working with RailAdvent and sending a copy of this pack to us for review.

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