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Ignoring the usual 'Dovetail hate train' ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, if you want a tl;dr of this add-on. I can summarise it in one word. OK.

Now don't get me wrong it's a good route and fairly well made, but there's a lot left to be desired.
• Manchester Piccadilly model is pretty good, but the concourse area is poor.
• Why, why, WHY does Glossop - Hadfield need to be a part 2 of a scenario? COME ON. Just allow us to do the whole thing from Piccadilly to Hadfield in one scenario. Same thing with the ECS movements. The ♥♥♥♥ is the point of having a 4 minute scenario?
• Having a single scenario where you play as a guard is a major letdown. However, the concept does work. If this could be expanded to other routes as another way to play, this would be great for those who want a laid back scenario to play.
• Assuming you have all the other required add-ons, the route feels very busy, even without all the Pendolinos, Voyagers, Civity's and Desiros you'd expect to see at Mann Picc.
• Overall route quality seems fairly solid. Nothing glaringly bad about from those bits and pieces at Manchester.

Admittedly, this review is probably a bit more brutal than it should be. But overall, compared to the disaster that was the Midland Mainline release, this is pretty good. Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but £18 well spent in my eyes.

Having played full blown railway simulators this is a bit of a different direction for me. The game looks like a very simplified version of SimSig but with a lot more Freedom.

I've briefly played the Rush Hour and Endless modes but they didn't appeal to me much. It's the timetable mode where this game shines for me. Having the editor as well gives this game so much more replayability.

I've made a few maps based off real world stations/schedules in the UK. There's a few quirks where you need to use your imagination a bit to get the layouts correct and the editing process can be a little tedious at times, but there's nothing worth complaining about.

There's still some additional features I'd like to see, but it seems the developer has either read my mind or already had them on the drawing board so I'll be waiting for those in due course. The game is still early access (when I wrote this review) and it'll be interesting to see what direction the dev takes it.

All in all, not a full blown signalling simulator, but definitely something to play when I need to relax.

I don't usually review DLC I buy for Train Sim, but this an exception. I'm only going to repeat what I said on a forum.

Route is modelled well, some glaring errors at Redditch but nothing too awful.
323 model is adequate, sounds are good, but they haven't been translated well on the model.
Performance is fantastic, I've had no issues and I'm not on a beefy machine.
Soho LMD could have been added, but it's a bit of a distance from BHM so that's a fair critique.

Compared to DTG's recent epic failure with WCMLS, this is a very good effort. It's very hard to find fault unless you want to get into specifics.

All in all, it's a nice little route, pricing seems a bit steep compared to other products and it has a fair share of things to praise and criticise. Probably not a route for a die-hard enthusiast though.

I could write a whole essay on this but I'll try and cut it down to a reasonable size

Whats good?

• Good variety of trains and routes
  
• Good array of 3rd party addons (I LOVE the Just Trains Chiltern Mainline)
  
• Plenty of third party reskins that can fill in for trains not available on Steam (e.g. Class 360 Heathrow Connect, GWR livered rolling stock.)
  
• Plenty of replay value because of being able to create your own scenarios and different routes to run.

What sucks?

• Crashing unexpectedly, running out of memory for no reason.
  
• Lack of rolling stock to make scenarios more realistic. (e.g. 150/153 Sprinters for SWC add-on, requires 3rd party)
  
• DLC prices can add up for those who want the most realistic experience.

Regarding the DLC argument I've seen so many times, I'd much rather quality over quantity of DLC for this game (The BR Class 460 is amazing for that.) Although it wouldn't hurt to add some AI-only models for the missing trains like Just Trains does with the London Underground.

Admittedly, I've dropped well over £400 on DLC for this game, but I think it was money well spent, less of the crashes would be much better though.

tl;dr: 7/10, Not great, but not terrible either, it's somewhere in the middle.