I went on the West Highland Line recently and the gaurd has alot of responsibility. They have to: Make Announcements Open/Close Doors Signal Driver Alert Driver if a stop has been requested Check no passengers are left behind Check and sell tickets Put down the ramp if required If the train breaks down or there is a fault on the line they have to: Care for passengers and inform them of the situation Arrange alternative travel for passengers Stay with the train until rescued. There is alot do to and it's not just sitting in the back for half an hour and twiddling your thumbs in between stations. They have an important role and that should be made clear in this game.
This can work and on LIRR and Metro-north these are found on 3rd 6 cars 4th 8 cars 5th 10 cars & 6th 12 car trains of M7 & M3
On the Class 385's they also sit in first Class in between and make sure people have the correct class of ticket
That's a great idea and isn't as hard to do, for example the ticket control could just be like in Bus Simulator 18/21
It might be a bit difficult for them as they make need to change there licensing aggrement with a toc to allow for the use of guard uniforms. It can be difficult for them to know where a guard will stand etc like in Scr sometimes you would be in the rear cab of a train if two trains coupled you would be in a random spot plus they would have to implement lights on the trains to show that the doors closed properly. Don't forget a AI dispatcher role would be needed at stations to make it work and how would it work in timetable mode when you are doing Freeplay, would you have to go up to a guard to guard the service from the guard, sit in a particular spot etc. Also would they restrict you from being at a station halfway on the route and getting a train that's nearly done its service making it like start or end stations for that service.
Not sure if the uniforms are covered by IP to be honest... A close enough uniform such as they have on avatars might suffice in this instance I would imagine having them act as "a slow walking passenger moving through the train gangways" would be better in this instance. The trick would be to only have one of this character per consist so you don't get multiples on long trains. True. The door where the guard is operating should be "locked out" of the normal routine and only deactivate when the guard operated door is closed. Not necessarily. In the UK at least the guard often self-dispatches from a lot of smaller stations. You'd need different levels of dispatch from different stations (but then you could easily say the same with the CD/RA signals on platforms which we don't have in game)
I know guards can dispatch themselves at stations without a dispatcher, but which stations would dovetail need to have one at. like from my experiences with scr dispatchers they only do a group of platforms not the whole station so if a guard would show up to a station would you be delayed waiting for the dispatcher.
That would need to be one of the details that DTG add when they build the station. As an example on SEHS Gillingham has dispatchers on platform but Higham does not. Gravesend does but none of the others between there and Dartford do, and those trains are Driver only (ie no guard) but the theory would be the same where there IS a guard
On the Cross City for example, I would imagine that only New Street has dispatchers. Certainly on the Snow Hill lines even Snow Hill station doesn't have dispatchers, well I have never noticed any, certainly the other stations don't (on the Stourbridge side). I would assume Edinburgh Waverley probably does and likely Queen street. I would love to see a guard mode, it would add an extra dimension, I also wish DTG would have AI guards on trains so you don't have to open and close doors yourself, except where it happens in reality of course.
