Metrolink San Bernardino Line Discussion Thread

That's nice. Hopefully LATC and UP AI traffic will appear. Especially because the San Bernardino Line is much more near to it than AVL. Otherwise the area looks extremely empty if you left LA Union Station with your Metrolink train and you watch to your left side. Kaiser Yard with ES44C4 switching action would be great. Some operational industry yards, San Bernardino Freight yard, San Bernardino BNSF Container terminal and operational BNSF freight trains would be nice.

 

EU freight is so much easier, usually... occasionally you got ZDS switch, sometimes banking COMM, those work with up to 4 locos I believe, not sure how it works if more are necessary... although I am not sure if I have ever read about a train requiring more than 4 locos in EU they dont do 10k tonnage and such crazy stuff

 

Plus there no dynamic brakes on the class 66 but US locos need them to take long high tonnage trains down mountain grades

 

I believe Taurus doesnt have dynamic brakes, but Vectron has blended those into the throttle lever, I think... not sure about Stadler EuroDual, but since those are also for heavy freight, I wouldnt be surprised if they got those... some German locos have "electric brakes" that kind of serve similar purpose - once saw a video where they also used banking loco, and when they got to the top and had to go down, the driver alternated between all three types of brakes, so as not to blow/cook any of them

 

That's why european rail freight is only a shadow compared with northamerican rail freight.

Btw european freight locos would'nt have a chance to haul northamerican freight trains. Most of them have only around the half of the tractive effort a Gevo or a modern SD70Ace, ACU or T4 has.

Another thing is that american freight locos are more reliable and have a more maintenancefriendly design.

 

A handful of railroads back in the day didn't have dynamic brakes installed on their locos as they were pointless since their system or use wouldn't cover any steep grades.

They are usually easily distinguishable on EMD equipment due to the lack of the dynamic brake blister on the long hood of the loco.

Missouri Pacific (SD40-2)


Chicago Northwestern (SD45)


Rock Island (SD40-2)


Even the Canadian National GP38-2 thats in TSW doesn't have them

 

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Ive thought about running the class 66 on sand patch with a short train in free roam for fun to see what it can handle going up and down grades and try 2 or 3 can the class 66 be run as multiple units say maybe 2 or 3 together

 

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I was watching a dvd recently was on montana rail link was shot in late 90s early 2000s period was a freight they chased up the grade had 7 engines up front 6 in the middle 5 more on the rear all sets manned by engineer but i added up the approximate horse power it was about 38,000 horse power grinding at notch 8 that was a awesome sight and sound show just think if you could run a 38,000 hp total train in TSW

 

good point is MOST of them Stadler EuroDual has potential for 500 kN, and Swedish IORE dual electric locomotive which has 600-700 kN

but then, as I mentioned, in Europe the trend is to limit freight trains to certain weight, so as not to damage the tracks on which also passenger trains drive (and in EU passenger rail has priority on most corridors)... so yes, there are also long and heavy trains, but they are not numerous... they usually send more and lighter freight trains to haul stuff... so except certain cases, there isnt that much need for superstrong locos... Taurus and Vectron have 300 kN of tractive effort, which is usually more than enough, and if not, then they can put a couple of those into a consist

in US, freight companies own most track, and freight thus has priority... they can haul heavy-ass trains, and since they own the track and earn nice money from their services, they can afford to do maintenance more often or even build new track - and since it is mostly unelectrified, for relatively cheap

so yea, US freight is the pride, but then, it is also one of primary and huge reasons why US passenger rail sucks so bad (including those funky arguments of freight companies literally fighting against electrifying certain corridors cos they wouldnt be able to stack so many containers upon themselves lol)... and trying to imagine how such comparisons would look like if EU one day decided to just fck it and start doing US-style freight trains is an intriguing line of thought, but ultimately pointless, cos the focus is just elsewhere

as for reliability, cant really compare, but I can imagine that they have to be built to last... I mean, you wouldnt want your loco going into fck you mode in the middle of nowhere and I can imagine that in US distances to nearest town can be pretty long unlike in Europe where civilization is usually short distance away

 

This went from Metrolink to EU vs US freight.

 

as a meme classic once said "This escalated quickly"

anyway, I dont know if there is any real point to comparing those freights priorities in rail are vastly different in US and in EU, in fact, US freight doesnt care what we think, as Rock would say in other words, US transports sh.tload of stuff all the time while we here in Europe enjoy nice, frequent and regular passenger service in fairly fast trains

that doesnt say that if US one day woke up thinking "damn, I want to kick EU's ass in passenger rail", you bet they could, if they made it their priority

 

Our government cant even decide if we should have closed borders what makes you think we could ever have good passenger rail?

 

Hah! If a certain someone gets back in, we won’t have any trains at all.

 

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Nationalistic rot. Where is your evidence for claiming, for instance, that "american freight locos are more reliable"?
And BTW, academic studies have shown that the increased rail share of freight in the US is almost entirely due to external factors...

 

US rail was probably one of, if not the best system in the world leading up to WW2 (Maybe a bit before due to the depression, which killed some lines) then everything fell apart after that, and you can point to multiple different things that contributed to it.

 

oh, I know man watched multiple long videos on that - even when it comes to electrification it was one of the leaders, but later the freight companies even tore down some of the catenaries, so they could stack those trains high up more

 

but I mean, there are glimpses tho - stuff like PTC (I believe ATC and ACSES are like subtypes of it?), y know those in-cab systems... and if you take ETCS, which is btw a great thing, and even better the higher you go... still US are kinda ahead when it comes to how omnipresent this in-cab system is, and how widely it is deployed... when you compare it to, in some areas very slow, deployment of ETCS ... so thats one thing to admire on US passenger rail, the PTC and how they already use it pretty much everywhere

 

I kind of wish this was including the small branch (9 Miles) to Redlands for the Arrow service. Would add some extra variety to the route.

 

[citation needed]

 

The San Bernardino line does sound pretty interesting and I do enjoy AVL, so this is a DLC I will definitely consider buying. I will say that I, like other posters here, was hoping for something else. In my case, I was really hoping for something like LIRR 2.0 or a new Amtrak route like the Pacific Surfliner.

As for freight, I'm put off from playing freight content because in real life freight tends to make things difficult for passenger rail, specifically Amtrak.

 

You could easily get where you want in large city via trains and street cars, these days the US is built too much on car culture and aside from certain areas, you can't go places without a car.

 

We are getting LIRR 2, it's just waiting on licensing.

 

I am lucky enough that I live where there is enough train service... if I was to move anywhere, I swore to myself, if it doesnt have a decent rail service from that town/city, I aint goin

 

I thought that DTG already had a license for LIRR.

 

I am asking for a citation for the claim that the US was better than its contemporaries.

 

I said probably, so I don't need to quote anything

 

The licensing they are working on might not be for the MTA/LIRR itself or the M3/M7 that we already have. It could be something specific with rolling stock they want to add outside of those two trains, or maybe another operator that they want to include somewhere on the route. It is really hard to know without knowing exactly what the route and what they want to include is.

I feel like whatever it is, it must be something minor because they wouldn't put work into a route if they thought it was something that would totally prevent its release.

 

The only 2 places it could be an issue are....

Kawasaki, and their M9 cars.

Or The New York and Atlantic Railway (The freight operator on the LIRR) and Anacostia Rail Holdings Company

 

The Union Pacific Azusa branch would also be a great addition to this route for freight as it comes off of the San Bernardino line.

 

I think that there is an absolutely enormous divide in motivation between passenger and freight railroads. Passenger rail depends on, well, passengers, the general public, they pay their bills by selling tickets to consumers. Part of that dynamic in this like every other retail industry is advertising- and videogame licensing is a form of advertising, you're getting your brand and logo out there in public view in hopes of selling more tickets.

But freight isn't like that. Freight rail's customers are businesses, and frankly Dupont Chemical is not going to be swayed by a videogame in deciding which railroad to ship its tankers over. So freight railroads are not going to be especially eager when DTG come calling.

 

Yeah that makes sense to an extent.

 

The explanation from Matt reminds me on the explanations why there was no german diesel shunter back in 2019. The explanation was, that they have no access for this locos from the train operators, because they are shunting the whole day.

And then in 2020 we got the 204 and the 363 shunters. And in 2021 we got the G6.

 

If it is about immersion, then they should add the freight on that route like in real.

 

Exactly. Marketing for a freight railroad involves massive multi-million dollar businesses and contracts. Their customer are bulk commodity and goods companies, they are not worrying about getting their brand out there to the average joe. Most end users don't know or care that a product they buy got there on a BNSF or CSX train. So to those railroads and their traditional marketing people who would have a TSW thing slide across their desk, there wouldn't be a ton of incentive to cooperate. Even if they are ok with allowing their logos and likeness to be used, when it comes to technical data, policies, specs, in person reference material, they probably see a lot of risks to doing that without any big rewards they could sell to their bosses.

It would take some marketing people within these companies who understand sims and could come up with a way that it has a benefit for the company (ie "oh maybe it could be used as a hiring tool" or something like that). Even the passenger railroads seem to be hit and miss. Some (like Metrolink, Caltrain, Amtrak) "get it" and go all in with DTG. Others seem to want nothing to do with it (Metra, Septa, GO Transit). American Airlines used to be real bad with that on the flight sim side, in the 90s they'd legally go after even community websites that had AA liveries for Flight Sim 98 and 2000. Then at some point they must have changed their ways because now flight sim has tons of AA planes.

 

Hell, most of the general public hate when their drive gets inconvenienced by a few minutes due to a passing freight train. Or dont know why that train is going back and forth across a crossing.

 

Just because I haven't seen it posted yet, here is the 2024 San Bernadino Timetable:

 

And that's why and to get new employees they should have an interest to promote their company.

You can see that by their social media channels too. Especially CSX, NS, CN, CP and UP are very active there. For example they make a lot of posts about how freight rail works and about their employees.

The loco manufacturers Wabtec and Progressrail also bring a lot of posts about their locos. Some with deeper dives about their technologies.

 

This is likely driven by a generational change as well. The previous generation couldn’t care less about things like promoting themselves on social media, where everyone is active nowadays. Amtrak and Metrolink as well are extremely active across their socials as well. Amtrak especially. Way more than they previously used to be. If you have an Instagram account for example, you’ll notice Amtrak constantly comments on pictures of their trains from railfans. That never happened before. They also recently uploaded a little mini series of them interviewing passengers on the train.

 

Amtrak can be a bit weird though with their posts.

Case in point with some of the valentines day stuff from the San Joaquin twitter page....

 

based Amtrak

 

hell, freight companies in US dont even care about passenger railways themselves and even actively do stuff against improving passenger rail so your post makes sense...

 

I actually thought there would be more trains than that, particularly in the peaks morning into LA and out again in the evening.

 

Vern, I think you have to realise that Angelenos do not embrace public transportation even to the limited extent that they do in cities such as Chicago, Boston and New York.

That means that it is underfunded and undermined by the automobile culture and the pasta bowl of freeways that define the LA region.

Some progress has been made in recent years, but it's an indication of the low ridership and consequent sparse timetable that a city larger than any other North American city bar NYC does not have the extensive subway system and urban rail network that all the other major metro areas do.

When traveling around LA, I always rent a car. It never occurs to me to use public trans as I do in New York.

 

LA follows the congestion philosophy of "Add another lane" don't they?

 

and then you have cities like Vienna with incredible network and ever expanding, with a year card for it all for like 365 euros (if paid in one go) / 395 (if paid monthly) euros which you can use for UNLIMITED journeys (compared to LA, judging by some vids, where you spend more money on some one way journeys than on Vienna monthly card lol)

 

As the CEO of Dupont Chemical*, I prefer Train Sim Classic in supporting my railroad tanker shipping decisions

Spoiler

*not really

 

TBH even years ago when we visited the USA and Canada we generally used a hire car. Public transport tended to be restricted to the tourist railways or a few exceptions where we stayed on the outskirts of big cities such as San Francisco or New York and caught the train in.

But yes so far as LA is concerned never even occurred to us to use any form of public transport, I mean for starters the city centre doesn't have much for tourists, lots of "gangland" around about (in fact you have to be careful driving to and from the car hire lots around LAX you don't end up in the real world equivalent of GTA's Ganton) and most of the attractions are well outside the central area such as the theme parks, the beaches and Disneyland.

 

On the flip side, when I first went to Europe (Denmark/Sweden) we rented a car, because thats just what you do when you want to get around when you travel in Canada/US... here, other than a few cities that are known to have well developed and safe transit networks, you don't really go to a city on vacation and get around in a dingy bus that comes every 45 minutes. I think the only NA cities I've ever gone to and hopped onto the transit system or trains are NYC and Toronto. But in Europe I quickly realized it was just stupid and got in the way, was hard to find parking, a nightmare in city centers, etc... in hindsight now whenever I have friends going to Europe I talk them out of renting cars and tell them to look into the rail and transit options that actually work in those countries.

 

To add to the post above about the US railroads using social media to up public awareness of their operations. CSX has finally joined the heritage paint parade. Every time they release a new locomotive with a new heritage scheme, it is all over social media. With these post, they are aiming toward the railfan more then general public. As soon as a new CSX post shows up, it is reposted all over the railfan network.

 

Los Angeles unfortunately has never embraced riding the train that much. It's a city that's still all about getting from point A to B in a car. I think a big majority of the population in the city have never even ridden a train before, let alone know how to even read a basic schedule, buy a ticket, or catch a train at the station. I'll bet most of them don't even know you can ride a train overnight out of Los Angeles to Chicago, New Orleans, or Seattle. The city and counties around the greater Los Angeles area do a horrible job promoting train travel. They love to report on every accident involving a train vs. pedestrian or vehicle though and make it sound like it's the trains fault. "Who put that train there?!"

Passenger rail service in Southern California is nothing more than geared to the return riders. Those who commute to work on Metrolink and who take the Surfliner on a leisure trip that have done it many times before. There's no motivation to promote getting new people to ride the trains. Metrolink still is only about 55-60% ridership recovery post COVID.