Especially in timetables rather than scenarios. Not only you have to approach very slowly to not risk a SPAD, but also by the time you stop in the correct place, you're so close to the signal that you can't see it anymore without poking your head out of the window. Something like 25 meters would be fine where you could approach in a more normal speed and also see its aspect after stopping, but the game wants you to stop 5-8 meters before it.
You do know you don’t have to stop at the stop marker that the game is giving you? You can stop anywhere on the platform with the full train on it and open the doors. You’ll still load and disembark passengers and the game will recognize you’ve made it to the station. A lot of stop markers are incorrectly placed. Unless of course you care about all that silly scoring stuff and getting points for stopping on the stop marker. I turned all of that off day #1 five minutes after loading into TSW4 for the first time. I couldn’t care less about the scoring system and the stop markers for that matter. As I said, most are incorrectly placed anyway. And since I only play Antelope Valley and I’m familiar with the real world spots the Metrolink trains actually use, I follow what I know instead of the stop markers.
Ever tried freight, my man? There are no stopping zones there, only a single stopping point that you HAVE to touch. Quite often it is 5 meters from the signal. Good luck trying to stop a 50 car freight train 5 meters from the signal.
This is something that has to be sorted. There is no reason why stop markers have to be so close to signals. This is a real pain on Freight Routes
Many routes have a single marker (not the colored "zone" for stopping) placed <10 metres from the signal for the freight services. I've noticed on some newer routes, you have the stopping zone as well, but it does not count unless your train is touching the end marker. Once again that's less than 10 metres from the signal. If I remember correctly, LRS has this issue in Koblenz.
I don't know why DTG don't change this in the timetable. Stopping distance from the point is literally a setting. I think the default is within 5 yards or something nuts.
To the point that you can't see the signal aspect and risk a SPAD? No. Also, consider not using pictures of other people if you want to be taken seriously...
Having to open a door or a window to see a signal aspect is not "stopping perfectly", the opposite in fact... Especially when it comes to stock that simply lacks side windows, Br193 for an example. It's obvious that you don't know what you are talking about. Read my message again, properly this time, the answer is in it.
How could you cause a crash while stopping in front of the signal (or just stopping elsewhere on the line)?
It doesn't though. I'll be waiting for the accident investigation report to find out what went wrong there. Stopping a train somewhere along its assigned path, on a switch or not, is not dangerous.
I´m no expert, but the request of stopping a 13.000 ton, 2km long cargo train on a coin 20m before a red signal (Sherman Hill) doesn´t sound like real life to me. Yet, you´re forced to, otherwise the scenario won´t be triggered to go forward. The other extrem are stopping points behind a red signal, as it can (could?) be found on SoS. Or stopping points for a 2-car S-Bahn consist at the very end of a 300m long platform, as it can be found on Vorarlberg. Something doesn´t feel right here, indeed.
Assuming all else works as intended stopping isn't gonna cause anything major, just a few delayed trains. Saying that stopping in itself cause crashes would be like saying that a police officer getting shot during a traffic stop was caused by the officer having pulled over the car.
There's a few passenger stops here and there on other routes which do require you to stop exactly on the point before it will recognise you having stopped and allow passengers to board/alight. Not to mention there are times when stopping exactly on a marker is required for the objective to advance and get the signaller/dispatcher to step you up from a red/stop. Stop markers practically next to the stop signal is a huge issue when running LZB on freight trains. You have to disable LZB to get close enough to the stop marker to advance your objective. I hit this yesterday with a freight run on SKW.
Sometimes stopping points are so close to the signal that you can no longer see the signal from within the cab. Makes no sense to me.
This is a minor issue compared to the signal issue being discussed, but when you need to make a move that involves a junction they place the checkpoints way too far away from said junction. At least in the US most of the time I see American locomotives stopping probably only 10 to 20 feet away from a switch, maybe even less than 10 at times. Meanwhile 100 feet is considered close in DTG's world, and I swear there's been cases where a checkpoint has made me go back a whole damn quarter mile away from the switch. Playing Railroader makes me realize just how much I hate checkpoints in the DTG titles. It's so nice to play a train game where you don't have to drive to a arbitrary checkpoint 10 miles down the line before reversing back over the switch.
It's really weird, today I stopped like this and it still didn't count... OK, it's not about the signal pole this time, but anyway.
Incompetence. DTG have said in the past they were going to be doing better at not putting them like that....didn't happen.
Freights usually the pickiest that it needs close to exact, passenger is lenient in this regard, why that is could be multiple programming reasons or one was changed and the other wasn’t.
Exactly this. Way, way back in my TOC Control DM days, I always felt a bit sorry for drivers who slipped up (literally) in leaf fall season, but a Cat A SPAD is a Cat A SPAD even if there are mitigating circumstances and they still had to come off.
Someone on the forums put it this way. Always consider a SPAD potential manslaughter, no matter how harmless you think the situation is. Drive with that in mind. (Btw it's a nice feature for beginners in SimRail that the game puts you back before the signal after spadding, to avoid breaking the dispatcher.) Of course some stopping points are placed rather silly in the game, no doubt. But for freight, I just brake early, using dynamics for fine control, and crawl up to the stopping point. No rushing required.
No it's not erased. But another driver takes over on the spot. The company will first check the mental condition of the SPAD driver, at least in Germany. So for you, the service is actually over.
Yeah I know that. But the point is that the driver taking over doesn't have to start from the beginning of the service again. I get there's not a way to make it so a SPAD doesn't end your service when you've still got objectives to do. But when it's the last one, surely there could be a way to say, give you a tick to say you've done it, but no medal. Just an idea
To be honest, as medals or achievements are not tradable for anything useful I don't care about them...
Personally I quite like the idea SPAD ends the service, it’s more realistic than to just carry on or be rewarded for it. Don’t SPAD and you will get the reward and get to carry on.
I definitely agree that the game is weird with the stopping markers. In stations it's not so bad since you have the entire length of the platform to stop, made obvious by the red to green markers on the track. You can have half your train short of the platform and the game surprisingly doesn't care. So easy enough to avoid a SPAD. Where it really becomes an annoyance is when you have to stop elsewhere, e.g. for signals, point switches etc. You no longer have a broad area to stop in, but rather a very specific spot. I can't count the number of times I've ended up stopping my train a few metres short of these markers and then had to get the whole thing moving again to crawl for a few seconds because the game is adamant that you stop precisely where the marker is.
I see both sides of the argument. But they said they were going to move the stopping point a bit back from the signal, but have reverted. (Much like the return of AI made timetables). My point still stands. If its the last signal, why not just give the tick, but no medal. (Or male that an option, so purists can turn the safety net off)
cause it wasn’t completed, theirs nothing to reward, you shouldn’t receive anything for a service failure that was the drivers responsibility. if you want the reward and the service complete, complete the service. Personally i think the stopping points should be placed in realistic places, regardless of where that is.
Can't really be done, because if you run a red signal, you run the risk of messing up the pathing of traffic around you. And how should the game now if the signal you just ran is the last or not? I mean sure, technically it may be done, but would be a pretty weird logic to implement. I think the current solution is fine the way it is, as it shows how important it is to respect the signals.
This is the point that we need checkpoints in case of accidental SPAD. It's a pain when drive for an hour or more, because of one SPAD, need to restart service
After doing a 90 minute full stopping run from Minehead to Bisops Lydeard on a WSR scenario without making a single issue, I got a SPAD failure for the front bufferbeam touching the SPAD zone at 0.5mph as I came to a stop. My fault entirely, but the stop zone being close to the platform space required is very tight
Ouch this is a lot of pain, happens to me few times, one of that in SKA whit the ice, the stop marker is very close to red signal at Aachen station
Not all the time on some routes I’ve stopped 10/15 yds from the marker on platforms and it didn’t recognise I had arrived.
In real life there's no penalty in stopping 5-10-20 meters from the signal. I am no train operator but if someone is unlucky and the nose of the train ends up passing 10cm over the red signal you don't fail the service and are forced to begin over again lol My absolute biggest quirk with stopping points in TSW is that they seem to be absolutely random from route to route and even within the timetables themselves on the same route depending on the length of the train. Examples: Some perfect stops have their stopping point with the loco passing the end of the platform by several meters (DB 767.2 on RSN is an example). Some are linked to the actual stopping sign "H". Some just have a random point on the platform where you actually have to have the HUD turned on to know where the game wants you to stop. Others seem to have the light pole as a dedicated perfect point. Some have the warning sign of "caution slippery" as a dedicated stopping point. It's absolutely absurd. If you are like me who wants to enjoy driving trains without HUD and no help, while at the same time want perfect runs due to AP points, this just makes everything less fun. I am not playing this game having to memorise e ery nuance of every route. I got 30+ routes and I just want to have some specific rules that the game can abide by.
