Blue Sparrow

The Blue Sparrow is a planned Greater Elysian Railways (GER) express passenger franchise that will provide luxury high speed passenger transport around Greater Spawn and to Avalon. Trains are projected to reach speeds of up to 150km/h (41.7m/s or 93.2mph)

History

The Blue Sparrow's inception lies within the GER April 2024 Modernisation plan, (WHICH HAS YET TO BE RELEASED).

Operations

The Blue Sparrow is a semi-separate GER franchise, meaning it has little connection with standard GER commuter trains. The service runs from New Seananville to Avalon and back, only stopping at major stations, and skipping most minor ones. Whilst primarily running on GER track, the service extends to Avalon over track owned by the Avalon Rail Corporation (ARC). However, expansion beyond this is limited due to the gauge issue: Blue Sparrow stock and services utilise 1435mm/4ft 8.5in gauge track, whereas the Socialist Railway Network uses 1600mm/5ft 3in gauge, and the Rack-Dorn & Tuath Railway uses 2140mm/7ft 0.25in gauge. This makes running standard services across these lines impractical. Multiple solutions to this have been looked at, those being: Dual Gauge track, Variable Gauge stock, or separate stock for each gauge (although this last one requires separate stock for each railway and hinders interoperability).

Stock

Blue Sparrow trains are to be made up of fixed 6-Car units, formed out of two diesel locomotives (one each end) and 4 coaches between them. The locomotives are multiple unit controlled so that they both are controlled as one, and have a small quantity of passenger seating inside. They are based off British Rail Blue Pullman sets that ran from 1960 to 1973.

Trains are formed as so:

• Locomotive
• Bar
• Coach
• Coach
• Bar
• Locomotive