(Re)-Introducing Main Station Hubs
A main station hub is a hub where a station connects directly to the mainline. In the old days it was common to call these hubs PH’s, which stands for Principal Hub. After a while this naming convention was forgotten and people simple labeled it with just their name. In more recent games people have started to call these hubs Sideline Hubs, which is a false term as main station branches connecting to the mainline do not match the criteria for SLH’s. Because of the confusion caused we decided te re-introduce a term similair to the old PH, but instead we chose for the term MSH as this is less confusing. The image below clarifies the line hierachy.
Usage
The term MSH should only be used for hubs where either pax or cargo stations connect directly to the mainline. These stations are usually major drop or pickup stations, as primary cargo pickup stations are usually connected using sidelines and sideline hubs.
Differences between MSH’s and SLH’s
In recent games station hubs have been called SLH’s, this is false usage of the term sideline hub. A SLH is a hub where a sideline connects to the mainline. Only primary cargo pickup stations are connected to this sideline. An MSH is a hub where a main station line joins the mainline. To this line should only be connected a main station. Unless the plan says otherwise the line leading to the station should be as wide as the mainline from which trains enter the stations. This might be a different width than the mainline to which the track joins.
Naming
MSHs use the same labeling style as BBH’s and SLH’s, say I built the first MSH, it would be labeled as:
MSH01 / Mark
That’s prefixed with a space, no space between the hub type and the number, but with a space at both sides of the forward slash.
Roger!
well mark didnt we allready have a name for these hubs?
it was just not used, they were called PSH (primary station hubs).
this term never realy caught on in PS, but was used in PZ.
since PSH was allready used why change it?
Primary station hub souds like a very poorly chosen name to me, as primary station means a primary cargo pickup to most people. Besides, I never heard that term before, either on the PZ or PS, so it can’t have been that widely used. Also there is no documentation about it.