Feature Freight Hauler - Feedback Thread

It seems to me that after running Freight Hauler from Dusk to Dawn that the AI trains do not reset and continue the following day. This is no different then it has been for Free Roam since its inception. This bug may be considered a feature if you want to run FH without AI trains to content with. It is also another means to enter into Free Roam with static trains already dispersed on the route. Just start FH one evening and continue into the next day. Whenever you complete FH you might be able to start FR from there.

After 12hours and 100 miles traveled I'm still working on my deliverers, 19/39. I think the second half will go quicker.

 

Finally completed my first freight hauler session on Tri-Rail!

Cars Delivered: 16
Time Spent: about 5 hours
Distance Driven: 58 miles
XP Earned: 36,352 (!)

I also learned how to activate the derails. You must be able to get a path approved past the next signal after the derail, and it will open up. There is even a special animation showing it open. Thanks to Harmsway for giving me some ideas to try.

I have also found that the best way to keep getting paths, without losing your freight hauler progress box, is to delete your old loco(s) before spawning new ones. If you don't delete your old loco, you might start a new free roam session when sitting in the new loco. You don't want to do that. If you spawn a new loco, and then delete the old one, the new loco will be harder to set up for some reason. In any case, save frequently.

I enjoy the gameplay freight hauler provides, and Tri-Rail is a great route for it. That's why I kept playing, even though it was frustrating. Some documentation to start would have been nice, but maybe this thread will help others.

Will I keep playing? Probably not for right now, because even just 16 cars took 5 hours, and that is probably the minimum amount of time one could expect to spend. The game very seldom lets you start with anything less than 20 cars. I usually don't have more than 1-2 hours to play at a time, and I like to be finished when I stop, so I can choose something else next time. If there was more than one save slot, then I would be more willing to start a session, because then I wouldn't have to finish that session in order to play something else. Of course, shorter sessions also limit the frustration when impossible situations occur, such as cars stuck on bumpers. And, we are not getting more save slots anytime soon.

Suggestions:
Fix timer so it doesn't reset
Enable cam movement when progress box is displayed
Fix "Scheduler" mode so that it works as intended
Make sure all cars can appear as empty or loaded; many appear as empties only
Make sure cars don't spawn on bumpers or in inaccessible areas that are game-breaking
Let the player select the number of cars, 1-50
Let the player select total delivery zones, 1-max # of zones (1 zone only could be to switch a large yard)
Enable more different types of cars and liveries (why are there no CSX cars???)
Enable freight hauler on key legacy routes (I suggest BPE and NYT)
Make a mega freight-hauler specific route (may have other services that are AI for immersion purposes)
For each route with freight hauler, create a screen to display number of successful freight hauler completions, most cars delivered/time spent, least cars delivered/time spent, etc.
Provide documentation!

Hopefully others will share their freight hauler experiences and suggestions here as well. I look forward to that.

 

Can someone show me a screenshot of the completion screen for freight hauler? I'm curious, I've spent like 12 hours on it on both us and UK but haven't been able to complete it without the game breaking, and it's honestly just getting old now.

 

Well I was really looking forward to the Freight Hauler feature. I love Derail Valley (may I say that here?) and to have a similar feature was a reason for me not to get the free update but the one with the three new routes. Until now FH is a disappointment.

I have played several FH sessions on the UK route, that was quite ok.

But on the US route I made 2 sessions so far, each about 3 1/2 hours long, with saves of course, and each session couldn't be finished !
First of all, there was a wagon to fetch at N29th Street Track 1, which exploded when I tried to couple him.
And the second time I was trapped behind one of these derail devices which let you in but not out of a siding. So the only solution would be to respawn a loco. But this is Train Simulator World, not Harry Potter !

I will now have a nice, bug-free journey through the Polish countryside in Simrail. And I will come back to TSW7 when there's a decent update that eliminates these bugs...

 

The path setting system is broken. It randomly gives up on setting a train for your path, but half the time when it does that, signals still come off, but you have to retry setting your path or despawn and respawn a loco, which breaks signals. It should not break signals when a train is deleted.

 

When you delete a train because the game broke, it needs to always revert everything in the path to how it was before the path was set. When you set a path, it needs to always display it as an objective. When you reach the end of the path you set, the signals and switches always need to revert back to how they were before.
And get rid of the long wait times for signals, if there's no other trains around. It's too anxiety inducing thinking the game broke (it probably did).
This way the mode won't be so broken.

I also definitely agree with the person above that you shouldn't have to respawn so many locomotives.

Signal L 783 always gets stuck on green outside of Neville Depot if you pass it.

Another edit (I know nobody asked) but in my experience right now, my train, after about a couple paths set, with all the freight hauler wagons and the logo moving around, will not clear the signals I pass until I reach the end of my objective that I set. It first started when I was running backwards (with the wagons in front of the loco) but now running for longer it's just always like this, causing a traffic jam at Leeds as I go to Skipton to get to the quarry.

 

Not much help there either. Come on, can anyone tell us if or when we can use that otherwise great freight hauler feature ?

If you can't fix these derail "signals", what about simply deactivate them? Its very frustrating spending 3 hours gameplay and then getting stuck on these devices of evil !!!

 

Ah, good to hear that someone's looking for that ! THANKS !

 

Anyone ever had wagons spawn somewhere else than Nuremberg in the German route?

 

I've seen them spawn in Fürth and Würzburg quite frequently and once in Kitzingen.

 

The last I checked GodMode Mod still does not work with TSW7, at least not in Freight Hauler Mode. Why is this important to this thread. Because if you set up Custom Weather in FH it will not carry over when entering back in from a save. You end up having clear skies every time.

Request: Please fix Freight Hauler to save weather settings so that you can enter back in they way you left it.

 

BTW: I am now 33/39 in my Freight Hauler session. I must say this has been very enjoyable.

There are times when you set a route to a point beyond what you may need. If you don't go all the way to the set point and complete the objective it may get confused if you begin backing up. The blue line goes away and you are no longer able to remove the set route. Most of the time, no problem, you can set a new route. Other times you can't set a new route nor remove old route, leaving you stuck. And other times you can set a new route but signals won't clear. I think this is why deleting a loco and adding a new one works. Deleting a loco removes all associations with it.

I also found by saving the game and exiting it reset everything when I reentered. I was then able to set a new route that would clear signals for passage. No need to delete loco.

 

Hello, which of the 3 routes did you do in this FH session ? If it is the US route, how do you get past these derail devices that are at the beginning of a siding ?

 

Airedale dispatcher issue XSX.

When setting a route out of Neville Hill Up Siding 2 to Neville Hill West Junction Headshunt signal L783 clears but no route is set on the 3D map. Once signal L783 is passed it doesn’t reset to danger, locking you in the headshunt.

This has happened on 3 occasions while using Freight Hauler mode.

Another issue is that when I deleted the spawned loco to try to resolve the issue I was still in the cab. The loco was deleted but now I am stuck on the track unable to walk.

Reset game physics didn’t resolve this issue or the stuck signal.

 

I'm on the US route, Miami and I finally finished all 39 deliveries.

You may pass over a derail without incedent when exiting the mainline. To safely go over the derail to enter a mainline simply 1.) set a path out 2.) request clearance with the TAB key. You should be given a Proceed slowly. If denied try setting a different path and request again.

On another matter. I found that if you are at a red signal and can't get clear check the map. If the signal is blanked out (white) on the map you can go through. Save before you go. Another mystery. I'm not sure what these blanked out signals are about.

 

So if you don't mind me asking, how long did it take you?

 

I don't know for sure since the FH progress keeps resetting the time. My guess is twenty four hours, maybe more. That is base on my start time and finishing around the same time of day the following day. Also STEAM tells me I've been playing for 36 hours and not all of that was from this session of course. I should also note I wasted time on the red signals. For example I got stuck in the yard and couldn't get passed the red signal no matter what tricks I pulled. Finally decided to back the train up two miles and exit the yard from the other end. What a waste. Maybe forty minutes screwing around.

I just started a new session with 33 cars, that's after 2 restarts trying to get something smaller then 40. I'm a lot smarter this time and doing a better job sorting in the yard. I believe this will cut my session time down considerably.

 

Harmsway, you are my Hero ! I had contacted the dispatcher, but at first. I'm so glad I didn't overwrite my save file of about 3 hours !

I praise the good old times when TSW made proper PDF manuals where EVERYTHING was explained. Nowadays you have to find out such things for yourself. And then the folks at TSW wonder why so many bugs are reported.

And about the blank signals, shouldn't these have a white light added when they are blanked out on the map ? On the German routes you get these too, but after contacting the dispatcher.

THANKS for your help !!!

 

I have ran into a pretty game breaking bug in the Florida Tri Rail map in freight hauler.
I have spent at least a few hours already sorting cars and noticed a few minor bugs and the major one.
The major one is that not only can some freight cars spawn behind buffers or other end of track devices, the target location of a car can be behind those as well. In this screenshot the tank car wants to be in the siding, but there is a buffer that I can't pass, it stopped the train and probably would have derailed it if I wouldn't have seen it and slammed on the brakes.
As it is now I can't complete this save and I don't really want to restart since I've already driven 2/3rds of the map up and down once.
Picture of it in game with the buffers

Link incase the screenshot fails. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3808127797
Picture from map view showing the siding name is correct with the car's information included.

Link https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3808128974

The minor issues are mostly related to pathing, sometimes if I'm leaving a yard or siding onto the main, even though there is no traffic for miles, and nothing planned for close to an hour, it will not let me out unless I repeatedly bother the dispatcher. Even then it sometimes doesn't work and I end up having to save and restart the game. It can also bug out to where a path can't be set but no error as to why appears, and the signals all show up as if one is set. At the end of this glitched path you can't set a new path or cancel the existing one so if you are on the main line you can't do anything. I found that reloading the game has a 50/50 shot of fixing it, and if it doesn't usually reloading it a few more times eventually fixes it.
Also the pathing should be able to figure out that if I need to go from one track to another I probably would rather use a crossover and not drive 20 miles to the nearest yard, also I know this may just be a problem IRL so it made it in, but without a reliable way to turn a train around freight hauler can be a nightmare if you need cars on the other side of a train since most of my cars spawned on random sidings and need to be shuffled, but since I am in the top of the map there is literally nowhere to do it, this is annoying at best, and infuriating at worst since there is nowhere to turn around for miles and my car needs to be 10ft from me, but on the other side of the locomotive!

 

My pleasure.

You have to figure this stuff out on your own. Well thankfully we have the community.
As far as TSW goes, I love the product but there is no quality control that I can tell. It only takes less than an hour of play time for most of us to find the same issues. If there is a quality team at DG, then send them out to take a course in quality inspection and costumer satisfaction.

I do appreciate this forum though, that DG is reading and responding. There's that.

 

As the number of sidings in Freight Hauler is overwhelming especially on the Florida route, I made a schematic map for all sidings and yards, with numbers from 1 to 51 beginning at Boca Raton.

I added an alphabetical list of these siding with their numbers, so you can look up where a siding is without searching on the ingame map.

Also added are arrows for sidings that can be reached from north or south only, so you are able to plan a complete train with the cars in the correct order for a journey. Also visible is from which main track the siding can be reached and the switches between the main tracks.

I laminated my map and with a water-soluble felt-tip pen wrote the target numbers of each wagon beneath the siding where it is parked, so that I have an overview of all wagons on the map. And if I fetch a wagon, I erase the number.

The PDF is available on trainsimcommunity.com, here’s the link. An explanation page how it works is added too.

I hope it's usefull for you too !

 

And an advice for the Florida route. If you start a freight hauler session, the first thing to do is look up N29th Street Track 1. If there's a wagon placed there, you have no chance of finishing this session because it's the wagon of death, it will derail when you couple with it. So better restart freight hauler until this track is free.

So far I haven't found any other wagons of death, if you did, perhaps on the other 2 routes too, please report them here, cause it's very frustrating to play for 3 hours and then you can't finish.

 

Awesome work and great pointers! You are completely correct about the wagon of death, it has caught me and some others out as well. It is the only one I know of, so far...

 

After several hours of gameplay, 192 miles and only two wagons left, these two brake blocks prevented me from finishing the Freight Hauler session in Florida. As you can see, this is on 51st Street track and the blocks are not at the end of the track but in the middle, so that it is not possible to place even one wagon here.

DTG, this is so .... (my good manners and the forum rules prevent me from making myself clear)


oh wait, I found the word: Disappointing !


I made a Ticket at DTG...

 

These types of situations are incredibly discouraging. However, if we are being honest, I think it would be impossible for DTG to prevent every instance where this could happen. Perhaps then the solution could be one or two "allowed deletions" per freight hauler session, cars that you could get rid of, for any reason, thereby reducing the total you have to sort. At least then any problems that show up like this, especially at the end of your session, could be mitigated.

 

I had this exact same thing happen

 

Can we also enable the option to add an EOT (End of Train Device) on the back of cars for the US Freight as well? Would definitely help with braking and making this Freight Hauler mode and also free roam more realistic

 

Now that's a good suggestion !

 

That would add an additional hour to the FH gameplay, cause you would have to detach and park it somewhere every time you push wagons into a sidings. I prefer to brake earlier, that works fine.