While in the Penzance/St Austell sim I took the opportunity to walk around the Penzance area. I had noticed that the 150 unit stabled by the sea wall always had it’s engines running, so I took a walk up to it to shut the engines down. While there I took the opportunity to look over the unit. Having worked on 150s I became aware of some missing items and one inconsistency. These are as follows: In real life each driver has his own master key, which he takes with him when he has finished with the unit. So, the master key should not be in the key slot when you, as the AI driver, climbs aboard the unit. It should be the same as the 377s and the 387s. The key appears when you go to insert it, as if you are actually putting it in the slot. It should work the same way on the 150s. Moving on, there should be internal door buttons next to the passenger doors, which the passenger can use to open the doors once the guard or the omo driver has energised the system. The guards control buttons, or the drivers control buttons, which ever is used, do not actually open the doors, they just energise the system so that passengers can open the doors themselves to alight. The external buttons work, so it shouldn’t be a giant leap to create internal buttons which work as well. My final point is this, on a real 150 there would be passenger communication handles near the doors to allow them to stop the train if an emergency arises. There are handles to release the doors, but these are not the same as communication handles which apply the brakes. If someone from Rivit games reads this, for the sake of realism, please give these items some thought.
Just an aside ,,, it is Rivet not Rivit. Might want to fix that when writing a missive on a companies lack of attention to detail on their part. Best
The WCL route and Class 150 sadly have far more fundamental flaws than those pointed out in the OP. So far we have seen little evidence Rivet or DTG are in any rush to address them, so unlikely more peripheral issues will get a look in.
I have pointed out my opinion in technical terms about the 150 on the rivet forum. There is a public driving manual, where every function is explained also the gearbox and torq converter. Well the brake handle on a br class 101 usually gets removed as well in the lap position, but to be honest those are details i dont mind, because the 101 has animated engine shafts, local start procedure and animated adhesion brake calipers. For the 150 i pointed out: - The guard panel, which is the same as in the 314 and 313 (doesnt work in the 150, cant accept that sort of short cut) - my other points covered the rather basic functions of the 150, so i suggested an advanced version. I dont like generic basic functionality ala ts style. The 150 has also local startup buttons for engine start & stop at the outside of the dmu. I suggested to implement that together with the main battery switch, which is also located outside. As last suggestion i pointed towards more working fuses and switches. In the 72 tubestock the traction interlock (door override) works, in the real 150 this function is there too. I think rivet needs to get focused on functionalities more, instead of visuals only. Just the visual aspect is not a reason to switch from ts to tsw. There are players spent so much money on ts, whitout real corebased reasons they will not change to tsw. Devs need to start using the benefits of unreal and simugraph. Even dtg starts to make short cuts. I will measure the following year on that. If dlcs with generic locos become standard, ill burry tsw and move on to another "project".
