Sent to Coventry?

Am I right in thinking that there is no MSTS or OpenRails route which passes through Coventry?
Thames-Mersey has the start of the Birmingham line at Rugby but only a mile or so.
Bristol-Birmingham allows one to get to Birmingham from the south west.
Other routes include the line between Birmingham and Stafford and it is possible by switching routes to get from Derby to Birmingham.
But Birmingham to Rugby via Coventry seems to be missing.
Or have I missed a route?
I must admit that I have very few commercial routes, so it is possible that one of them fills the gapo.
Jonathan

G'day Johnathan,

I have often thought about why this section of line has not been done before.

If it was a 'stand-alone' route, the line would be relatively short (by comparison with some of the other main line routes), BUT, the real problem is, whilst the Coventry area is relatively straight-forward, it is the two ends of the line that are the problem - both Birmingham and Rugby are massive station areas and would require a LOT of work to make them anywhere near realistic.

Even if Thames-Mersey was extended from the existing station at Rugby, there is the time needed to re-make Birmingham all over again. The same problem with extending Black Country, Birmingham is done, but re-making Rugby would take too much time. I think this is the reason this section of line hasn't been done before - I did consider doing it myself, but the three options I state above deterred me from doing it !!!

Regards, Brian Bere-Streeter

Hi

This route has been made and is called 'West Coast Mainline'(WCML) by commerical EB( Europeanbahn).  The route goes from  Euston to Birmingham with the Northampton 'Loop' included.

I believe this route can still be purchase by existing retailers.  

Jonathan David wrote:
Other routes include the line between Birmingham and Stafford

I've missed out on that one. What is the route called?

Thanks

Thanks for the information about the commercial route.
The freeware routes which cover the line from Birmingham to Stafford (and much further in several directions) are the iterations of the Black Country route for the BR, Post Grouping and Pre Grouping periods.
Perhaps the answer would be to persuade the authors of Either the Black Country route or Thames-Mersey to extend it to meet the other. That would mean creating the Coventry area but no need to recreate Birmingham new Street or Rugby. but that is pie in the sky, especially as there is already a route covering the line.
Jonathan
I have discovered that the company which produced the West Coast route closed down in 2012. The route is available on a website (I suspect illegally) but it needs a registration number to install it. That appears to have been on the packaging.

Thanks for that.

I see there are two Black Country route versions for the 1920s and 1930s era on UKTS, but I could not find a 'BR' version! Any ideas?

Hi Gary,
The 'original' Black Country route was 'Black Country 1' by Don Hinton which is set in 1960s.  It's an extended version of the same author's Cannock Chase 5 route.
It is, hopefully, still available on DVD (as a min-route) from UKTS.  As far as I know, it was never available as a download.

Cheers,
Ged

Hi Ged

All the CDs that were donated to me a few years ago and I missed this one! I have seen the Black Country route on UKTS but never knew it covered the area between Birmingham and Stafford and in BR times too( the CD version).

Thanks