Stepford Express, or Express for short, is one of the four operators in Stepford County Railway. It links Stepford Central with many major urban areas, namely Benton, Leighton, Morganstown and a terminus at Llyn-by-the-Sea.
Stepford Express is classified as high-speed rail, due to the fact that it skips the majority of stations along its line that are operated by Stepford Connect. It uses rolling stock that are specially designed for high-speed lines, with speeds up to a maximum of 125 miles per hour.
A full journey from Stepford Central to Llyn-by-the-Sea (see here) takes about 23 minutes, while a faster, more nonstop version can do the route (see here) in 22 minutes. A much more nonstop route can make the journey in 17 minutes. The line is coloured pink on network maps as of V1.7. Before that, the line was coloured dark magenta .
Contents
History
2018
When the game opened, there was plans for an operator named High Speed. It was cancelled and fast services are now express. First traces of Express could be seen as far back as the 7th of January, where a new express line was built. The works included new Platforms 5A, 5B, 5C, 6A and 6B at Benton, passing tracks through Coxly and Bodin, and Platforms 1 & 2 at the Pre-V1.1 Stepford East abandoned, later removed to make way for the passing line. The platforms were shifted. Stepford Connect was rerouted via Angel Pass due to the cancellation of Metro and the old line that bypassed Angel Pass was allocated for Express. Works also happened east of Benton, where a linking line from Benton to the fast lines near Hampton Hargate was built.
On the 22nd of December, BanTech mentioned that Express would not be coming in V1.1 as they prioritized Airlink and not Express, hinting that Express would be coming in future updates.
2019
On the 11th of May, BanTech unveiled the roadmap. Under Q3 of 2019, it mentioned the Express line, which got people hyped because they would be getting Express over the summer.
Express wasn't mentioned again until the 22nd of September when BanTech announced that the Connect extension to Llyn-by-the-Sea, as well as the Express line, were delayed.
On the 29th of September, Mattyx2013 showed off Faymere and commented "This station will be served by Connect but is a cool place to watch Express trains pass at speed!". On the 5th of October, Charlie showed Northshore and commented "Fancy a wander on the beach? Connect and Express can help you out with that! Introducing Northshore". This confirmed to the public that Express was skipping Faymere yet stopping at Northshore.
On the 18th of October, Mattyx2013 showed Llyn-by-the-Sea and a Class 43 for Express, which got the public hyped up again and confirmed Express was stopping at Llyn. Finally, on the 25th of November, BanTech showed a picture of the Class 43 at Stepford Central.
On the 17th of December, V1.4.0 came out with Express, 4 routes (R075, R076, R077 and R078) and 2 new trains: the Class 43 and the Class 801.
2020
On the 22nd of Feburary, Faymere Green TMD was added and Westwyvern was upgraded having Express signs instead of Connect, making it the first station having Express signage. On the 18th of March, Stepford Central received its second upgrade of the year making it look very modern. On the 26th of March, an unconfirmed train was revealed, but the community quickly identified it as a Bombardier Voyager train and it was believed to be in use on Stepford Express. 2 days later, a photo of three Bombardier Voyager trains at Stepford Central was revealed. It was confirmed that two of them was a Class 221 and one of them was a Class 220 on Twitter. Both of these trains were released on the 15th of April, with 1 new route also being added.
On the 3rd of October, a sneak peak was released on the SCR Official Discord server of a small snippet of the map presumably for V1.7. At a quick glance, it looks like Express will be rebranded and going via Morganstown starting in that update and Morganstown will become the first station to serve all 4 operators in the game.
The sneak peek posted by tpx_jm.
On the 10th of October, Head of Brand Design tpx_jm released a sneak peek of the new express livery of the rebranded Express logo.
On the 28th of October, Managing Director Charlie_RBX posted a sneak peek of the upgraded Class 801 in the new Express livery.
On the 29th of October, V1.7 was released. Included in the update were 3 new routes (R080, R081 and R082) that run via Morganstown.
The new livery is currently available on the Class 801 and the HST, with the Class 220 and 221 being projected for possible future refurbishment.
2021
On the 19th of February, 1.7.2 was released, which brought along an upgrade of the Class 43 to NGv3, as well as adding a buffered HST variant and the first 7-car train, the 5-car HST variant, making it the longest train in the game. Unique stop markers for these trains have been added at some stations also.
Rolling Stock
Current Fleet
| Class Number | Image | Top Speed
(mph) |
Price (Points) | Carriages | Manufacturer | Train Family | Date Put Into Service | Routes Operated On |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HST (Class 43) |    |
125 | 3000
(800 per variant after unlocking) |
4 (Standard and Buffer)
5 (5-Car) |
British Rail Engineering Limited | InterCity 125 | 17th December 2019
(5-car and buffer: 19th February 2021) |
|
| Class 220 | 
|
2250 | 4 | Bombardier Transportation | Voyager | 15th April 2020 | ||
| Class 221 | 
|
Purchased along with Class 220 | 5 | Super Voyager | ||||
| Class 801 |    |
2250 | Hitachi | A-Train AT300 (Azuma) | 17th December 2019 |
Former
- None at the moment
Future
- None at the moment
Depots and sidings
Current
- Stepford Depot
- Coxly Bypass Siding
- Leighton Depot
- Faymere Green TMD (Northbound)
- Faymere Green TMD (Southbound)
- Northshore Depot
- Benton TMD
Former
- None at the moment.
Future
- None at the moment.
Stations
Current
- Stepford Central (♿︎)
- St Helens Bridge (♿︎)
- Benton (♿︎)
- Elsemere Junction (♿︎)
- Morganstown (♿︎)
- Leighton Stepford Road (♿︎)
- Leighton City (♿︎)
- Edgemead (♿︎)
- Westwyvern (♿︎)
- Northshore
- Llyn-by-the-Sea (♿︎)
Former
- None at the moment.
Future
- None at the moment.
Routes
Trivia
- Matty's sneak peek of Starryloch showed a fragment of a purple-coloured train, which aroused speculation that it could be an Express train. It was later revealed to be the Class 43 HST alongside the long-waited Llyn-by-the-Sea sneak peek.
- This is the only operator without a train belonging to the Electrostar family (ie. Class 377, Class 387) on its fleet.
- A significant portion of the tracks have been or are already in use. Before Angel Pass was given a service, Connect trains used the express middle tracks between Coxly and Benton. Platforms 1-3 at Stepford Town (Stepford Central) and Platforms 1-2 at St Helens Bridge were formerly used by Stepford Connect. Also, Airlink trains uses the Express tracks between just west of Hampton Hargate to Leighton Stepford Road since the Five Million Update.
- The 5 car Class 43 holds the record since v1.7.2 for the longest train in SCR, beating the Airlink Class 185 (Double) by one carriage.
- The Class 801 is exactly the same as the Class 802 running on Airlink, with the exception of class numbers, liveries, fully electric, rather than bimode, and different operators.
- The maximum speed was also different before v1.7 when the Class 802 had its speed changed to 125mph.
- The routes with least station skipping is R079, which doesn't skip any stations stopped at by Express.
- Stepford Express serves the least amount of stations of any operator on the network, at 11 stations.
- Stepford Connect stops at every one of the 11 stations that Stepford Express stops at. 4 of those 11 have Connect and Express share platforms (Leighton Stepford Road, Leighton City, Edgemead and Westwyvern), with Llyn-by-the-Sea having this feature removed in V1.7.2.
- A Class 91 (InterCity 225) was actually supposed to run on the line, evident in a showcase of future SCR trains made by former PDV OverheadWires, but due to his resignation in 2019, the units were never completed. It is currently unknown whether this project will be started again.
- This is the only operator in SCR where all trains share the same maximum speed of 125mph.
- This is the second operator to feature First Class sections in trains, the first operator is Airlink.
- This is the only operator where all trains were Next Generation from initial release.
- The colour of this franchise was planned to be orange, but it received a dark magenta colour scheme upon release. The orange franchise is Airlink.
- There are platforms for Express at Millcastle Racecourse and Millcastle, however, no services call there. This could be changed in a future update, either with services or the platforms being removed.
- Currently the two Waterline - Express interchanges are Benton and Morganstown.
- This is the only operator in SCR to have no trains with double doorways and commuter-style trains.
- This is also the only operator to have no trains with 3 coaches or less.
- This operator used to pass at least one station on every route on an in-use platform, but when V1.4.6 was released, R079 was added, and that route doesn't skip any stations on in-use platforms, so now only Airlink has this trait.
- This is the only operator with trains without functioning cab doors for Guards.
- It is also the only operator without a train where the local door being the second door of the last car of the train. The Class 801 does not use its dummy door in its first class compartment so it is not counted as a functional door.
- Before V1.7, this was the only operator where tracks do not split off in different branches. The tracks now split in V1.7 with routes via Morganstown. Airlink used to have this trait until Airport Terminal 3 opened.
- This was the last operator to get a rebrand, after Airlink.
- This operator serves the route with the most stations being skipped; R081, which only stops at 3 stations covering a total distance of 24.3 miles.
- This is the only operator where all their routes are named instead of their two terminating stations. This is probably because all Stepford Express routes start at Stepford Central. Waterline also has this trait with R015 being named “Morganstown Shuttle”, the only one to have that name variant.
- This is the only operator for having no unique stations it exclusively calls at.
- The least used station on the line is Elsemere Junction with only one route stopping there (Westwyvern Express)
- However, Elsemere Junction isn’t shown in Stepford Express’s spawn page as a passenger. This was the case for Leighton Stepford Road for Airlink before v1.7. This bug might be fixed in a future update.
- This is the only operator to not serve the Airport Zone.
- Prior to 1.7.2, Stepford Express had no headquarters. After 1.7.2, it got its own headquarters, at Llyn-by-the-Sea, as part of the latter's upgrade.
- This is the first operator to have all their trains being made/converted in/into NGv2 or NGv3. The HST and Class 801 are NGv3, while the Class 220/221 are NGv2.
