Share Your Desktop – April 2024

Middle of the month and time to join in with Clare’s Share Your Desktop Challenge😎👍

On the Gaming PC this month I have a screenshot from American Truck Simulator. This was taken on a delivery by ‘Chance’, our trusty Mack Anthem, of Utility Poles from Texarkana (TX) to San Francisco (CA)…

…We’re driving Interstate 40 in Arizona, between Flagstaff and Kingman. There are some fierce climbs and descents along this section of I-40 as we pass through the Sonoran Desert. This section of the Interstate forms part of the Historic Route 66. Because of the scale of the maps, the developers make compromises in road layout while trying to provide a convincing feel of what it’s like to drive along. Up ahead is the junction for Ash Fork and Prescott but the developers have ‘lost’ the section of road between here and the next junction – the Crookton Road – and the junction as modelled reflects the next one rather than the actual Ash Fork junction. The old Route 66 diverges from the current interstate at Crookton Road and passes through Seligman.

On the Photo PC we have a view that might eventually be a thing of the past…

…Taken in March, every unit in this photo is a member of Class 455. The Class 455 units that were introduced in the 1980’s were supposed to have been replaced by Class 701 units from 2019. I have written about the ongoing saga before but with 701’s now operating on the Waterloo to Windsor & Eton services, there was an assumption that the rollout would rapidly gather pace and we would see the last operation of services by the venerable 455’s before the end of the year. But, after a fanfare back in January, things seem to have stalled. A 701 is operating a single diagram each day. It is now projected that a full entry into service of the 701’s will take 2 years! I guess we should be thankful that the 455’s are robust machines and not given to tantrums😅