Nothing fancy here but a typical german town, next to Finnentrop Depot in Ruhr-Sieg route. Now spawn on foot on the depot exactly at 12h, for instance. You will be able to listen to the church´s clock bell Those things make me love this game. Cheers
While The TSW family does have some problems, there are many little items that have endeared this simulation to me. Way back when it was known as CSX Heavy Haul, I was exploring on foot and notice the hum in the electrical sheds near signals. In TSW, the church bells as mentioned, the warning horns before the draw bridges are moved amongst many minor details makes the simulation enjoyable just to explore.
Yes. I like the churchs effect cause it´s not just a random loop. It actually announces the current time. Just walking around depots and industrial areas you will notice the attention to details. It worths the walking. There are lots of corners with railway stuff or simply garbage that add this special touch to the environment. Most real stations are a total mess outiside the passenger platforms and are full of abandoned areas, and they captured that very well in game. You can also find areas being refurbished like the Iserlohn station. I mean... I like those details. If they just added some more pedestrian railway workers it will be supercool. I remember Sand Patch had some pedestrians in the streets in the past at least. But I always missed to have more railway workers in the routes. You can just find some in the scenarios but in general they are not part of the default route scenery. Cheers
Another tribute to the design details. The EoT devices display the brake pipe pressure according to the current brake pressure, so this displays any value changes. This is a nice addition as in real trains they are used to monitor train integrity, so if EoT brake line monitoring detects that the pipe could be broken or the radio link with the EoT is lost the onboard HoT warns driver about a portion of the consist to be potentially uncoupled from the front of train so that driver can react. In the cab of some locomotives you also have a switch mounted on the radio panel or on the desk to command the emergency brake application from the rear of the train, so starting from the EoT device. This is working as well and it only does if you have your radio fuse activated. This is used to avoid that the rear wagons push the front ones in a heavy train and produce a derailment in case emergency brakes are applied starting from the head of train only. This has happened many times in downhills for instance. So normally the safest is to apply them from both sides at the same time. Cheers
It is a great detail, but on the flip side you don't need to put EOTDs on locomotives (including DPUs because they're already radio controlled) or any trains shorter than 25 cars but TSW does it anyway. I think it would be nice to be able to manually attach an EOTD like in Run 8. And anglecocks for that matter as well (shunting operations would be more realistic that way). Does the EOT emergency brake application happen automatically when you put the handle into emergency? I confess that I have not checked to see if it does, but it should.
I think they just attach it to engines as the connection of EoT is linked to their coupling event in game, so it´s easier for them in the implementation. On the other hand the real EoTs are heavy as hell, so to me it makes sense to transport them in the engines whenever you canm but yes, they don´t need to be used there. Regarding the emergency brakes it appears to be triggered on both train ends when activated from brake lever or emergency mushroom (at least the EoT displayed pressure goes quickly to 0 psi). I honestly don´t know how it´s done in real life but that makes sense to me to avoid the derailment situation. But if you apply regular brakes to let´s say 50% the display does not update until the air flow has reached the last wagon, some seconds later. Also when you trigger the EoT brakes there´s a delay till you start to notice the brake pipe pressure on the cab indicator and you don´t hear any air sound comming from the engine, so all those things point to brakes being applied from the rear and airflow going to the head of train in this case. But who knows... Cheers
Good to hear. Yes, that's how it's done in real life, where any emergency brake application should automatically trigger the EOT application.
On Isle of Wight, I was walking the route 2 weekends ago to finish all the remaining cameras/ice creams/etc, and there is a yard full of the tour buses not to far down from the Esplanade. If you stand by the outer fence, you can hear all the diesel engines idling!
German BR182 also implements a train lenght system. In the real locomotive this system uses a double pressing in the throttle lever. To activate it in game simply double click with mouse on the throttle lever or quickly press two times the throttle shortcuts (A or D keys). The "Roadrunner" beep sound will be triggered once train has run its whole lenght. Cheers
I spent hrs and I could not find anywhere what that "roadrunner" (great name though!) is... I thought it is some sort of indication when motors increase RPMs.
Does the loco automatically know the length or do you have to put it in somewhere for it to beep correctly?
Oooh THANK YOU! I quit searching for this and of course first thought, the train length indicator sound is depending on route and so on, was never able to actually "activate it by intention" Btw: I didn't look it up yet but I guess this is not in the manual, right? ;-)
Manual does not say anything. I got the info from a Matt´s post in the forum when I was searching for another thing. I didn´t know about this feature myself. Cheers
This is my first time using Electrostar equipment in TSW, so forgive me if this was already pointed out, but I noticed that the little driver display LCD simulates the limited field of visibility and contrast of real life LCD panels. It is a very minor detail but I appreciate it. Cheers
Does that apply when the auto brake lever is shoved all the way forward, or only when one hits the mushroom?
Also, in the ICE3M, the selective train lighting controls in the MFD work- although, oddly, the screen itself doesn't reflect the lights being turned on. The door status display also reflects the door situation. ---------------------------------- While we're on undocumented-but-useful features: I understand that in the GP38-2 and SD40-2 the two "Spotter" buttons below the alerter are functional, but I don't understand what they do. Also, does the train length button on the GP38's EOTD box function, and if so, how?
If the two-way EOT is attached properly, it should activate whenever the train goes into an emergency state. So that would be yes to both. https://www.ble-t.org/pr/archive/twowayeots.html Those locomotives can move a little bit on just their battery power for maintenance shed use, so that diesel exhaust does not fill the room. This is of course possible because of reserve battery power and electric traction motors. It is very slow, so you may need to hold the buttons for a few second before you start to see any movement. Cheers
I have always loved all these little things in games, where the devs go the extra mile to put in little things that not necessarily need to be there, but when you discover them, immediately raise the immersion level by a factor of +3. Always put a smile on my face when I discover them. Another game that is really good at it is ETS2/ATS. There's like ALWAYS something going on. Every trip I take, I see something that puts a smile on my face. Loving it!!
Thanks. And the Train Length button? The one in the Class 66 is functional, but while this button is interactable I haven't been able to make it useful.
The train length functionality can be configured to either count up from zero or count down from a preset. You can go through the menus to set a preset (train length) for the counter to count down from. Do note that although the distance counter asks you to enter feet, you actually need to enter yards (the same length presented on the pause menu summary or at the beginning of the service). Then save the preset and press Distance Start when you would like the computer to count down. For example, here is the length of a two-unit helper service. Cheers
Wow, I hadn't even seen that! But I was actually talking about the GP38-2, which has a Train Length button on the speedometer box, the one with the red LED readout and the accelerometer.
Another interesting small detail about the SD40-2 and the GP38-2 is that the models are slightly different between the YN2 and the YN3b schemes, mainly the addition of the AC units on top of the Cab and the horns being moved back to the long hood.
In fact, the YN2 and YN3b GP38s have slightly different cab interiors (including the bottom side of that rooftop a/c)
The brakes topic is very cool. In the german rolling stock there's also a small indicator on the locomotive body that changes to red or green when they are applied or released. This is the BR182: Cheers
Inspired by this Thread I went for a walk on SKA to find some lovely stuff to share... ... there is this turnable in Düren ... this lovely building next to the track ... this look very nice and the stairs are pretty realistic ... this (working) turnable next to Cologne Main Station ... and it even has a (working) light switch! Sometimes it's just worth to appreciate the little details on this and other routes!
Yes, in Sand Patch the boxcar interiors are modeled -simply, but modeled - and you can climb in (play hobo!). The nicest little touch is that you have to operate the latch before you can open the door.
The freight wagons added with the NTP Heavy Freight pack also have a small lock on the outside, with doors that open and a modelled interior. They're far smaller than the American boxcars but still a fun touch.
This may not be such a small thing (part of operating the loco) and I can't remember if the game covers this in the tutorial, but I really like that they correctly modelled the automatic system for the cold start of the Br 155. In other locos, you need to raise the pantograph, close the MCB, then power up the transformer. In the Br 155, you simply flip the transformer switch and the loco raises the pantograph, closes the MCB, and powers up the transformer automatically for you. It's a cool little thing which doesn't really affect operating the loco, but it was modelled nonetheless.
Yeah totally right, but I think this thread is more about positivity. There are ENOUGH Threads where people complain
Not sure if this counts as a small detail but I recently noticed that when I clicked on "Explore on foot" in the menu, the time of day matched with my local time. I wanted to spawn at a station during the morning time and it was annoying to change the time when I play at night sometimes. Then I figured out that the time of day in the game was based on my location.
I found the turntable on LIRR near Belmont I think! And also walking on Ruhr Sieg Nord there’s the siding where the factory is.
Here's another nerdy little tidbit! If you go onto Southeastern Highspeed and spawn at Gravesend or Rainham stations, you might notice something odd: There's a Platform 0! There's only around nine such Platform 0's across the UK that still see service, and you can find two of them on SEHS Theres also a fantastic video from Geoff Marshall that covers this neat little quirk!
Odd to number a platform with a number 0 (zero). Especially if you start philosophizing about zero as nothingness, as something that is absent. You can experience two or three things, but it's difficult to conceptualize zero objects, because there is nothing to experience. Yet there clearly is something - a platform. So, very odd to go about things like that. Dare I say, illogical.
It's usually when an extra platform has been added and they don't want to confuse people by renumbering all the existing platforms. Kings Cross platform 0 is like this (though they could have just got rid of platform 9¾ ). On the continent, they sometimes use letters to avoid the problem.
There are Tennis courts in RRO! And also some gardenig love. And this yellow steel beam swings a little bit, which is very nice to see!!
It automatically takes the train length from the consist. You push it to activate it, then you'll get a 2 beeps when your train has passed the point where you pressed it in the first place.
the shiny cleanliness of TSW is what kills it for me. MAG is a really good example of flat, poor texturing....but again, this is a positivity thread, so its nice they remembered the station and tracks.
I phrased that poorly- yes, I understand how it works on the 66. Its hiw to operate the one on the GP38 I cant figure out
I hope when we get steam we will be able to fry an egg and some bacon on the shovel like they used to do.