DHR2.5 Darjeeling Himalayan Rwy DLS ONLY

DHR2.5 Darjeeling Himalayan Rwy DLS ONLY

DHR2.5 is a new version of the classic Darjeeling Himalayan Railway Trainz route - but built with DLS only assets and released in mid 2026. Due to idiosyncracies and imperfections of the 'Replace Bulk Asset' function in the Surveyor module (which was used to a great extent for the creation of this route) this route might 'remember' third party assets that were previously present on the original DHR2 version. These may show up as missing dependencies of unknown origin in Content Manager. These assets can be ignored. All visually required assets are now available on the DLS and have received their own improvements in the course of upgrading and uploading them for this DLS only version.

The all-important base session for this route can be found on the DLS with the name:

DHR2.5 BASE SESSION DLS Version



---------previous DHR2 description
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

DHR2.5 Darjeeling Himalayan Rwy DLS ONLY