First of all just want to say I'm really enjoying the SEHS DLC and look forward to the upcoming patches polishing things off, however... Has anyone noticed how tight the timetables are on this route? I'm usually pretty good at keeping to time on every other route, however on SEHS I adhere to the speed limits and still seem to drop time. I just did a Class 37 Rail tour but despite running to the speed limits still ended up 3 mins late by Faversham. My 395 run wasn't much better with me getting to St Pancras over 2 mins late. Thanks
They are in fact much tighter than the real ones, you are scheduled to arrive at St Pancras up to 4 minutes earlier than in real life. I'm not sure but it could be the same thing in Faversham.
Timetables fine for me but St Pancras to Faversham, I'm always held outside strood on a red until 20secs before my booked arrival and it's all down hill from there... What dlc do I need for the railtour?
The Class 37 is from the TVL route, I think there's also the NTP locos and the Class 20 and 31 in there too. If the real timetables are 4 mins longer then that would be about perfect timing wise for driving the route. Currently it just feels like you lose time by just sticking to the speed limits.
I really enjoy the tight timetable. Keeps you on your toes and makes you want to catch the time up. Also the AWS has been having a hammering. This route definitely has the most adverse signals. Also give the PIS boards the chance to show delays even for the AI trains!
Had another go this morning to see if it was just me being useless yesterday, sadly I don't think it is. The High speed section is easy to keep time as it's fairly generous with the Timetable on that segment, it's when you get to the Medway line the issue begins. I set off from Gravesend 7s early only to arrive at Strood 1 min 18s late with me driving at the 70mph line speed limit the whole way and braking as late as possible. I did however manage to end the route pretty much on time as the final stretch from Sittingbourne to Faversham giving you ample time to complete the run. Maybe there needs to be a slight adjustment to the timetable for the stations between Gravesend and Sittingbourne? I like a tight and challenging Timetable but not an impossible one.
This is not a racing game and we shouldn't drive a train as if it was. Real trains don't do that either, the timetables are (usually) made in a way so that you can drive both safely and on time. So I think if timetables really are that tight then they're not correct.
Yep. I found this too. It seems to be around Gravesend if coming from London where you seem to start running late (especially if held up by a red light at Strood). I can't remember between which stations I started losing time when I started from Faversham.
I find that you get stuck behind a stoping service at the red light at strood, which them makes you around 1-2 mins late all the way to sittingbourne, then you get the time made up on the stretch to faversham, have no issues with timetable on the returns leg though
I was three minutes late on an early morning 395 run from St Pancras to Faversham. Not my fault as signals etc were against me. Still got gold, but some of the timings between stations do seem rather harsh.
First of all, you need NTP to unlock the layer, without that you have no railtours. Then, you can play them with: - NTP locos (45, 47) - Heavy Freight Pack class 40 - TVL's 37, 20 and 31
One way they could improve punctuality is to reduce the passenger load times by 50% at some stations. The same could be done on S-Bahn services slightly on HMA as I am barely making it on time there. You can also close doors a little early as the loading bar is nearly finishing (the 395 doors close quick so it's negligible for that). This trick doesn't work on all routes like Rapid Transit.
I agree. I can stick to the timetable between Faversham and Strood but end up a couple of minutes late into Gravesend which I'm unable to make up on the HS1 section between Ebbsfleet at St Pancras. This isn't helped by being made to wait 60 seconds at every station which would not be the case in real life and offers no opportunity to make up lost time.
I did yet another run (heading towards Faversham) and left Gravesend 30 seconds early this time, I still arrived at Strood well over a minute late so this is certainly something that needs fixing. I agree that cutting passenger loading times at some stations to 30 or 45 seconds instead of a minute would help but I do feel the timetable itself needs some re-working to give you more time.
I've noticed I don't have the same problem with the Class 375 so perhaps they haven't properly accounted for the 395's slow acceleration.
I'm finding that some serivces on the route appear on the PIS on platforms, mainly Sittingbourne. At sittingbourne I see services to Gillinghma nad Rainham. Like 07:32 P2, theres a service to Rainham and then afterwards a service to Faversham that never arrives. I think its glitched with Chatham's timetable. Wonder if this is happening to anyone else.
I’ve had before. Usually it’s because the service is stuck at a red light that for some reason will never change. Frustrating as it eventually screws up your entire sessions as trains get stuck etc
I have found that on Faversham to STP services at certain times (08:30) where the track widens to 4 wide, you get an AWS alert, and then just after the station (forgot the name) you are brought to a halt due to a 4 car stopper getting priority over you, when as a matter of fact, it is the opposite, and this continues until the 4 car buggers off at Chatham, just before every station, you are stopped, then arrive 1 to 3 minutes late, the 4 car should be held, not a regional high speed service, however, generous timings between Chatham and Strood allow you to catch up.
2 and a half minutes late. With the 395 to st pancreas yesterday. First service of the day. But still the pis board say am on time. #weird
I don’t have the route yet but I’d like to know 2 things: 1. How quickly are you taking full power when departing a station? 2. And when you’re braking for stations, what kind of speed are you hitting the ramp (start) of the platform at? It’s rare to be on-time, it’s very common to be a few minutes late even in real life. And as soon as you receive cautionary aspects, being on-time goes out the window. If a driver manager were to ask you why you were late, all you would say is ‘defensive driving’ and that’s the end of the matter. I appreciate in a game when you’re playing for points and pride, you just want to be on-time but if you want to replicate like real life, you are going to need to learn to not care about timings. The screenshot below is today’s arrivals into St Pancras from Faversham HS1 and you can see delays are very common. (Although to be fair, it does seem like there was a serious problem today)
Timings wouldn’t matter so much if AP was awarded accordingly. Sometimes, being late through no fault of your own, you end up with Silver or Bronze medals despite doing everything you could to be on time.
You at least need to pick up Northern TransPennine (NTP) for the InterCity coaches, Classes 47 and 45. Additional locos will come from Freight over Pennine (Class 40), TVL (Class 37, plus 31 and 20 both as separate add-ons), and ECW, this one for the Class 66, for Railtour and freight services. This route is very challenging, cause is very busy and almost always we follow another train (causes of many yellows along the conventional route). And cause the Javelin acceleration is not too brilliant, so we have to learn every segment (and station) approach on the route to optimize our performance and travel on time.
There's a challenge and there's impossible though, no amount of route learning would be able to make up the lost time between Gravesend and Strood. I'm putting the throttle to 4 almost straight away and braking as absolutely late as possible and still loosing well over a minute.
And you gain a gold medal the same, because you cant overtake the 375 in front of you. So in these cases 1 or 2 minutes of delay sounds like a perfect run. A bad solution could be to remove from Timetable some 375 services.
Haven’t people being asking for a more realistic experience with delays and adverse signals slowing you down instead of green green green? I think getting closer to the experience of a real railway timetable is a good thing. I know it’s not as random as people would like but it is a step in the right direction. As a similar experience to getting green signals all the way, I’d say getting a gold medal on every service is just as bad. Enjoy being held up and enjoy your silver medal if you get one. It’ll give you another go at gold.
It's not adverse signals that's causing the delays on the runs I've done though it's just the fact that there's just not enough time between some stations on the route. *Edit* I do enjoy adverse signals and I would gladly accept any realistic delays that were caused by such occurrences.
I noticed when playing SEHS that Strood station was extremely tight on time for the 395 timetable I had to disobey speed limits to re catch up An extra minute or 2 for that station would be good
I'm not sure how you've managed that without breaking line speed limits. I kept time on a run tonight but had to leave some stations early to keep that extra time in my pocket for the Strood to Gravesend section. I therefore ended up finishing the route at St Pancras just over 30 seconds early.
No tricks or illegit conduct. Just practice. The direction from Faversham to London St Pancras in my opinion is easiest. About the practice or training required, this one is another interesting challenge: https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/the-münchen-challenge.35146/ <- without the right training i ran with 3 minutes of delay. It is possible to stay on time but it's not a joke.
It doesn't surprise me too much that it's very difficult to keep to schedule in the SEH route. Like the Munich S-Bahn, it's a busy stretch of railroad, so timetables run tight to fit as many services as possible. Don't forget that IRL delays do happen and the drivers have to go through rigorous training. I wouldn't be too surprised if in a few weeks you complete the run without any delays...
But as previously mentioned isn't the real route's Timetable 4 minutes longer than the in game Timetable?
I wouldn't compare the game timetables with the current ones... I can think of a thousand reasons why the current one adds an extra 4 minutes. We need to remember the schedules weren't the IRL when the route was released... they could even be pre covid...
I noticed a difference in the Timetable you posted to the one I posted. Your service gave you 9 mins to get between Gravesend and Strood whereas mine only gave me 8 mins. Very strange and explains why I lost time compared to yours.
Is it me, or is the 395 a little slow in the game? I used to ride on them fairly often in real life between Stratford and St. Pancras and they never felt like they were struggling to get to line speed. I wondered if this contributing to the tight timetable issues people are experiencing. On DC it takes an age even to get to 60 or 70.
The 395 really is slower on a third rail section. In fact, near Sittingbourne there's a stretch with the third rail on each side of the track (making it 4 rails). They did that to see if it would the train in any way, but it did nothing... Again, tons of reasons why some schedules are allowing an extra minute here and there. Remember that other services run along the line. Another thing is to remember the real world timetables run with the departure time, not the arrival times. Comparing departure times with arrival times of the game really isn't to much use...
Services are planned to arrive at the arrival time. Arriving late can have impact on other services around in the real world, so it's never good if a service is arriving continuously late (even if it then goes on to depart on time). The current timings are tighter than reality, and there's certain parts where you simply can't arrive on time (even if you accelerate hard, sit at the speed limit and then stick it into full brake to stop).
I know services are meant to be arriving at the ARRIVAL time, hence why it's called arrival time. I'm writing about the fact that people are comparing the times provided by the railway companies (which are the departure times), with the game arrival times...
So I did a service from Faversham to London St Pancras. What I noticed was the following: - The first few stops were not a problem, but even though I always used max acceleration, drove right at the speed limit at all times and braked at the last moments (basically like a lunatic), I accumulated almost 3 minutes of delay by the time I got to Ebbsfleet. The most problematic are the short stops. It looks as whoever calculated the times didn't take into account that the train has to accelerate and brake. It's as if they only looked at distance and speed limit and calculated the time it takes by those two factors. Essentially, I think it's impossible to keep to the timetable between Rochester and Ebbsfleet. - I could make up some of the lost time after changing power lines, and racing towards Strattford and London, but only by completely disregarding TVM, and adhering only to the "hard" speed limits, barely slipping under the decreasing limits as I neared the stations. It's of course an incorrect way of driving and irresponsible, too, but that was the only way I could make up around 2 minutes of lost time. By the end, I arrived at London with exactly 30 seconds of delay, but the whole run was like I was racing. - The most interesting thing I noticed, however, is that the end-of-run analysis didn't pick up my delays at all. It shows as if I arrived at all stations on time, even on the Dovetail Live website right now. Whereas I remember having 1.5-2.5 minutes of delay accumulated, it doesn't display this at all. So I think it's not impossible that there's a discrepancy between our real run times and the time the game displays on the HUD. It's possible that the HUD simply measures times faster, thus it looks like we're late, whereas the log file shows no delay. All in all, I definitely have the feeling that something's off on this route. It either measures time incorrectly, or doesn't run properly (framerate drops could add up to create additional time, for example), or the timetable is calculated wrong. Either way, keeping to the timetable is very hard, or practically impossible I should say. Even with max acceleration, late braking and micromanaging on the absolute speed limit, you simply can't arrive on time. However, the log file says otherwise so maybe the cause of all this may be a technical issue with how the game measures time.
Ok, definitely glitched. It is impossible to keep the time from Gravesend toward Faversham. The first glitched time is from Gravesand to Strood. It would need at least 1 minute more. The provided time is just not enough, given the speed limit. And it's a downhill from there. I mean, how should we make a 1.1 km stop in 1 minute if the speed limit is 30 mph (48 km/h)? Either the times are completely wrong or the Javelin doesn't actually move as fast in the game world as the HUD indicates. It just feels too slow (not the acceleration, the sense of speed compared to the same speed on the TVM line).
Matt said on stream the other day that a lot of the timing issues are due to the two power systems on the route. The timings are all taken as if the whole route is under the wires, when the 395 accelerates much more quickly so the longer 3rd rail sections would lose out even if padded with route or engineering time
It also seems difficult to keep time moving the 375 out of the depot at Gillingham to Gillingham Station. There’s barely any time to set up etc and to get to the station on time.