What are the chances

I have to disagree. That’s not busy at all

Could a compromise be made with regards to the Harrogate loop tho with it being both a single SIM as well as being part of York North South in much the same way that Royston is available both as a single SIM but is also available on the current paged version of Cambridge?

Eg it would be added to either Leeds East West or York North South not both and also be available on its own so you could run York North South and Harrogate together or Leeds East West and Harrogate together.

I am aware it is not ideal but could it be considered as a compromise to the OP's idea above?

ajax103 in post 145261 said:

Could a compromise be made with regards to the Harrogate loop tho with it being both a single SIM as well as being part of York North South in much the same way that Royston is available both as a single SIM but is also available on the current paged version of Cambridge?

Eg it would be added to either Leeds East West or York North South not both and also be available on its own so you could run York North South and Harrogate together or Leeds East West and Harrogate together.

I am aware it is not ideal but could it be considered as a compromise to the OP's idea above?

I like this too. It would be interesting and could even be in the same vein as the Derby Lines on Staffordshire, an option to have on or not.

The issues about adding an additional section to an existing sim would invalidate all the current TT's available,
....
To add the Harrogate loop to York would involve completely redoing all the timetables from scratch, which makes older user supplied TTs no good, of which there will be more TTs to be broken.

Therefore the only option would be for a standalone Harrogate loop sim that chains at both ends.

Maybe this is a terrible idea, but could it be done with a sort of "portal" piece of track, that checks the train's timetable, and forwards it if it contains Harrogate locations, and otherwise treats the train as dropping off the sim like it would do now.
In the other direction, it would act as a portal, sending any trains coming from Harrogate, as well as generating new trains like the current entry point.
Then again, seems like it should just be a chain with a new sim.

Dionysusnu in post 145269 said:

Maybe this is a terrible idea, but could it be done with a sort of "portal" piece of track, that checks the train's timetable, and forwards it if it contains Harrogate locations, and otherwise treats the train as dropping off the sim like it would do now.
In the other direction, it would act as a portal, sending any trains coming from Harrogate, as well as generating new trains like the current entry point.
Then again, seems like it should just be a chain with a new sim.

That is almost how 'era' works as seen from the outside. Timetable knows the era, and sets the portal (invisible points). If 'Era 1 = no Harrogate' was the default it would simply work for all existing timetables.

Anyone wanting to write a 'with Harrogate' timetable just sets it for 'Era2'. The edit to extend trains would not be much work if done as spreadsheet xml on the Harrogate line source, and still quite possible starting from the whole WTT file.
Equally there is no compulsion to produce both.

While some like chains for multiplayer, are many single players going to want to run with added chaining ? I don't, as I'm single screen.
Even with the better tools about now, creating chaining timetables is a lot more faff vs a one-sim, and one sim does avoid doing the re-entrant rules to play unchained.

How many more of these simpler passing box 'glue' areas are there that might benefit from a similar approach ?

Bill