OH:Emmaru Railways

Emmaru Railways Co. Ltd. (ja: 株式会社円丸鉄道, Kabushiki gaisha Enmaru Tetsudō), also known as Entetsu (ja: 円鉄, Entetsu), is a private railway company operating mainly in the southeastern parts of Harlon. Being the only private railway company in Harlon operating outside Stenford Bay, Emmaru Railways is known for its fast commuter rail services that reach many places around the server faster than metro trains. Emmaru Railways's Harlon headquarters are in the MaruMart at Stratford station.

Network

Emmaru Railways is a firm believer in a mesh network, and that can be seen in its network in which there is a lack of a hub station. Instead, most of the network comprises of lines that connect nearby towns to one another and to places of interest on the other side of town, without passing through the city centre to avoid crowds. Track sharing is generally avoided to increase the frequency of lines, but it is used when there is more than one place of interest in a single direction.

Emmaru Railways also operates a bus division known as Entetsu Buses, which provides bus services that ply unpopular routes or routes that are not served by trains. Currently, Entetsu Buses do not operate in Harlon since it was deemed unprofitable.

Besides operating on Harlon, Emmaru Railways has operations on two other servers.

Emmaru Railways is part of the EnPan Pact, a group of companies headed by panas_d and Mineshafter61. Its sister company is Lipan Railways, a company that has since departed Harlon due to the failure of the Catford Trams project.

Products

Besides train services, Emmaru Railways also carries out rail maintenance for other railways and sells server plugins and signalling solutions. One prominent success of these ventures is the Emmaru Light Signal, a two-block glow-when-red lamp that displays 2 to 4 aspects depending on the block displayed. This signal type has been adapted and used by many railway companies across the three servers Emmaru Railways operates in.

The TpBus and OldThrottle plugins are also made by the resident developer of Emmaru Railways, Mineshafter61.

Stations

Emmaru Railways serves 7 stations in total, with the newest one being Stenford Bay, opened in early 2021. The lines have stops at City Airport, Stratford, Eastgate, Penrith Central, Stenford Bay, Penrith Riverside, and Stockholm Street.

Caption text

Stations	Transfers
Stockholm Street	O5, Circle, H&C, Celcius
Eastgate	O41, O42, O45, H&C, District
Stratford	Celcius
Penrith Riverside	Millenium
City Airport	None
Penrith Central	Millenium, O1, O5, O44, O45
Stenford Bay	AST

Depots

Emmaru Railways owns two depots: the Copenhagen Street depot and the Stratford Temporary Depot. The Copenhagen Street depot spawns trains on the E3 line while the Stratford Temporary Depot spawns trains on the E1 and E2 lines.

History

Early days

Emmaru Railways ventured into Harlon on the 29th of October, 2019, starting a rail line between the then-closed Stratford station and Stockholm Street station, via Eastgate station. The rail line was the first to be signalled (although signals were never turned on), and it brought some development into Stratford. This line, now the E1, was called the Stratford Line, after the temporary terminus. The line was planned to be extended to Cockfosters. It served only 3 stations: Stratford, Eastgate, and Stockholm Street. The line was operated using brand-new C13 trains, now sold off to other countries.

The next rail line to be opened was the Penrith Line (now the E2), plying the tracks between Stratford and Penrith Central. This line took over what was planned to be called the CoastConnector. Like the E1, the E2 had future plans to be extended to Cockfosters, but another branch dictated by the original CoastConnector plans was also considered, this time extending the line to Epping. It served 4 stations: Stratford, Eastgate, Airport Parkway and Penrith Central.

Replacement of Airport Parkway with Penrith Riverside

Airport Parkway closed soon after its opening, being replaced by Penrith Riverside station due to the rise of development. The original Airport Parkway station is opposite where the current Overground station is. Penrith Riverside is now the station nearest to new factories in Penrith, and is frequently used as a goods transfer point despite its passenger-oriented platform arrangement.

Stockrith Line controversy

By legislature, Emmaru Railways had to operate another service between Stockholm Street and Penrith Central that pays drivers more than twice of what was given on the E1 and E2 lines, causing great controversy over this line between the Harlonian Government and Emmaru Railways. This is what was known as the Stockrith Line, now the E3. To Emmaru Railways, the Stockrith Line was extremely unprofitable as it was seen as a duplicate of the E2, only taking a huge detour around (the closed) City Airport to serve what was a ghost station. Therefore, Emmaru Railways boycotted this railway line by decreasing its frequency to 1 train per hour during weekdays only and increased the frequency of the other two lines.

However, the popularity of the Stockrith Line continued to soar after the Harlonian government encouraged people to ride it. This plunged Emmaru Railways Harlon into losses month after month, causing the company to abandon all trains as a whole and to focus on its convenience store and supermarket chain, MaruMart (or its supermarket variant, MaruMarché), instead. When Emmaru Railways's first contract ended in October 2020, Mineshafter61 desperately tried to find another company to take over the franchise, but no one wanted to start another railway company, leaving the contract stuck to Emmaru Railways. Despite the losses however, Emmaru Railways replaced all of its ageing C13 stock with brand new C28 stock, fitted with toilets and less doors to make it look more like an express train service.

Turning point: Extension to Stenford

Things started to change when the E3 was extended to Stenford. The extension of the line to the most densely populated part of Harlon turned the net loss of the E3 into a profit. This profit promoted Emmaru Railways to start campaigning for Alstow to be built, which will allow the E1 to be extended into Cockfosters and the E2 and CoastConnector to be extended to Epping, and at the same time, complete a few of HarlonTransit's long-standing projects. This created the Alstow Planning Committee, which was a committee that would work to build up Alstow.

Demise

However, when New Harlon was announced, the hype was shifted from Alstow to New Harlon. Given the sedentary nature of most Harlonians on town planning and opinion matters, Mineshafter61's plan for Alstow to be a community-input town never achieved fruition. This caused the dissolution of the Alstow Planning Committee, and with it, the cancellation of the northern extensions to Cockfosters/Epping.

New Harlon was also announced to have a nationalised railway, i.e. no private companies. This also means the closure of Emmaru Railways Harlon.

As of 24 May 2021, two of the ten C28 stock (Emmaru Railway's rolling stock) have departed Harlon. The rest of the C28 stock will depart Harlon before 15 July 2021, where the last Emmaru Railways service will run from Stratford to Stockholm Street, then to Stenford Bay, and then back to Stratford, before its final leg from Stratford to Penrith Central before being hauled by a specially-imported K81 locomotive onto the container ship that will take it to Parkston Yard, <censored>.