Has Anyone Here Beat A Scheduled Train In Real Life Using The Game?

Was in a conversation with my college 19-year-old brother about his trip on 22 September 2023 to Boston. He told me he took the 14:30-14:45 Amtrak Regional to Boston MA South Station from Providence, RI. I told him that I should race his train while myself is on the TSW 3/4 version of the route NEC Boston-Trenton Boston-Providence section. Has anyone here done that challenge of beating the train in actual service using TSW or not? This should be my first attempt at this challenge. TSC owners if NEC Boston-Washington or TSW 4 challenge an extended NEC Boston Trenton with Amtrak 137 the 14:30 Providence RI to Newark Penn 18:40 arrival

 

It could be a fun challenge but you have to bear in mind that we only have timetables for the included stock and the route IRL will be far busier than what we have

 

I think the biggest problem you will face is the fact that TSW tends to bend time meaning the TSW time is not linear and pretty dependant on your computers performance. If you try to run to an actual timetable you will be always late, even though in the game you will be on time

 

I just did this last night following a Metrolink train in real time from Los Angeles to Lancaster. I used free roam and left at the exact same time it did in real life. And I followed the schedule perfectly. I got to each station at the exact same time and only beat the real one by 4 minutes into Lancaster!

So if you use free roam and don't use a timetable, it's definitely possible to do this! My PC kept up fine with the time and stayed with the real world time the whole way. It was nice to see that the route length and distances are modeled exactly to real world.

 

I find the service lets say 1D18 on east coast mainline in timetable mode for example then I go on real-time trains website and run the service in game to what it actually ran irl on that given day. Can be a challenge sometimes but that’s what I like

 

The problem with this is many, if not most, of the included DTG timetable services don’t actually follow the real world schedule exactly. I’ll use Metrolink again for example. There are more than several trains that start at the correct scheduled time but then you end up being well behind the real schedule for some reason. It doesn’t help too that station stops are too long. And some of the services you just randomly wait at stations for like 19 minutes. So that too completely throws you off the real schedule. Sorry to say but DTG has always had issues when it comes to creating timetable sessions, among so many other things.

 

The grandkids have done it against me a couple of times since ECML came out. I'll get a text message in the morning from one of them asking what time I am on this section in the afternoon (unless it's the weekend when it may be morning) and then when I get home they either give a very smug phone call or I here nothing else of it!

 

I've done it before with acela 2164

 

How did that go?

 

Two years ago, I took this to another level - did an RE service from Dresden to Riesa... while on an RE service from Dresden to Riesa Sadly the Talent 2 was replaced with Dostos with no power sockets, so running from battery bottlenecked my PC and caused stutters (nack in TSW2, those were not so common). I was about a minute away from Riesa (while the real train was in Riesa station) when I ran out of battery. On the way back, I got a Talent 2 with a power socket and was about 5 minutes ahead of the real-life train when I had to turn it off and prepare for my stop.

 

Pretty good! I was late to rte 128 due to the oncoming train at canton jct, however I made up time by about 2 minutes to back bay, and was about 1-2 minutes early to south station. My friend who has operated train 2164 in real life ended up getting to RTE 128 about 11 minutes early once, so if that train at canton isn't there you can definitely make up some serious time! I can definitely beat the real life train, however the real question is do you want to? One thing that I've noticed is that the faster you throttle up and the faster you apply the brakes, the more uncomfortable it is for the passengers. For me, I like making a smooth ride for being on time.