General North American 3rd Party News (non Dramatic Version)

Continuing the Bozeman Pass news, High Iron reveals the first NP loco is the EMD FT

 

Is that a tank loco? Or is the tender just not complete yet?

 

What amount and kind of research went into this?
According to the roster, all FT were retired or traded in by 1970.
NP's F3 and F5 units ditto. Most F7 even. Only F9 units still ran by the mid/late 1970's and some perhaps even bore a BN name and number.

Did NP favour four or six axle units for its mountainous divisions?
https://research.nprha.org/Lists/Diesel Locomotive Roster/Standard View.aspx

 

It's an 0-6-0 tender loco some of which had "slope" tenders for improved visibility running/shunting backwards.

 

Do you just live to troll? Inquiring minds want to know.

 

It has a tender. It is just not pictured.

 

IMO a bit too early for this critique when we haven't heard about setting, scenarios, etc. When those come up with the "realism" bit as well as an FT where there shouldn't be, then this is absolutely fair to say

That said it makes no sense making a new engine for a route apparently set in both the BN and NP era that can only be used in one.

 

Northern Pacific didn't have a very 'adventurous' roster in the first place. Rather conservative and it seems they took their GE's on a 15 year lease.
Presuming DTM will cut-copy-paste-paint the locomotive roster together, a fair part of the prototype 1970's can be covered on the cheap
Cab unit covered with the FT, F3/5/7/9 for which you need to look very close to notice the differences. There will be a SW7 or SW1200, a GP7/9/18 with few external differences, the SD45 and U25/28/33C for mainline power.
I doubt DTM will do an ALCo or a Baldwin, some of which ran till the 1970's.

BN gives a wider choice, but early BN mostly kept the originating units close to their home bases I'd think.

Freight cars should have high brake wheels and roof walks, many older cars still on plain bearing trucks. Kuju/DTM/Stephan do not mix well regarding important details.
And caboose were the norm, caboose with markers that is.

We will find out when more teasers and previews show up and DTG publishes the launch advertisement with HIS' usual hyperlatives.

The test of popularity is in the Steam Workshop, how many custom scenarios show up.
Up the mountain, down the mountain on single track doesn't lend itself to much variety.

 

What makes you think that this will not be offered in other liveries at another time and place?

 

For a group that likes to promote themselves with "Realistic" content for TSC, they really like to play with the eras......

 

Very well could be. However given that the second photo of the route we see is of the FT, one would think it would of high prominence in the DLC, which once again is odd since it can only be used realistically in one of the two eras teased.

 

That's handy, as according to the announcement the route is set in 1970 too.

 

"Circa 1970." It leaves some room to work with. Circa definition: in, about.

 

HIS would of been better off making this route NP only in the 60's, followed up with their usual "Retro" packs for BN era stuff.

 

One can always pretend, since 'we play with trains', LOL.
The FT looks sort of nice, at least to the current standard of DTM, but I'd assume by the end of their operational life, there would be radios in the cab. Radio's with vacuum tubes and those telephone receiver type handsets?
DTM usually only models in some kind of fictional/presumed 'as built' condition, ignoring life cycle updates and upgrades appropriate for the road and era the units are advertised for by HIS.

 

Quite so. So if these trains ran over this route five or so years either side of this date I would think they are a more than appropriate choice for High Iron to include.

 

circa


[ sur-kuh ]

Phonetic (Standard)IPA
preposition

1. about: used especially in approximate dates: : ca, ca., c., c, cir., circ.
   I happen to know that 1970 was chosen as that was the year BN was joined. As is almost always the case, the information is wrong anyway. Northern Pacific's last pair of FTs (5409D and 5404C) were not traded-in until June 1970. In fact, those two units were assigned BN road numbers (798, 799).
2. http://archive.trainpix.com/BN/ROSTER.HTM

 

4 AB sets lasted 2 months on BN, and another set lasted 3.
If the FTs are used very sparingly (and I mean VERY) then it would be ok, but more than one is an automatic no from me (and reappearing in every scenario).

 

Meaning? BN's administration listed those 2 FT as they took over NP's possessions, but were they even operational, let alone renumbered and shown running? The stored units were scrap value or not even listed in the valuation reports to avoid having to pay taxes

If HIS set the route in the 1970's (plural), definitely after the BN takeover, how were NP units patched and renumbered before being repainted in the than standard BN Cascade Green?
You cannot have a realistic route set in both era's at the same time, the 1970's is the start of the '2nd generation" era of Diesel locomotives, Amtrak running what was left of 1960's remnant alibi of passenger trains, apparently no NP name trains were taken over?

It is either/or and not both: 1960's requires different motor cars, people dressed differently, scheduled passenger trains still run over NP's trackage, certain freight cars didn't even exist.
1970's is already a bit more closer to us and certainly BN's era and info on that era must come from the BN historical society.

Like suggested, with some player's license and mind blowing one can certainly assume HIS very much wanting to sell us a Retro pack. Like with most of his other efforts, a new dab of paint over the DTM fare. But BN has a different identity, and many signs, colours and markings need to be changed when appropriate.

Assuming all artistic effort and commercial interest goes into the head end power, we'll probably get the regurgitated standard freight car fare.
But I am really curious into the compulsory caboose, NP had a large variety, and no consist is legally a train when there isn't a caboose displaying markers at the rear.

Finally, that FT cab screencap shows a 26L brake valve? And AFAIK, FT had a very crude dynamic braking system with this selector handle, many roads upgraded the FT's electrics, NP perhaps also over their 20+ years of operational life span.

 

Most players play a little fast and loose with content for their own enjoyment in placing incorrect assets on a specific route or in an incorrect time. These are much improved FT units than the older Britkits FTs.

Every modeler takes a bit of artistic license. There were so many running changes in locomotive production during that time that modeling every variation is impossible without incurring additional production costs that would be passed on. One needs to pick a version that represents something homogeneous to all versions.

Here is a quote from Smokebox, a well known modeler, about his upcoming UP class S-6
"The S-5 and S-6 are very similar but with many minor differences, and even within the same class there were changes over time. I'm not attempting to model all the variations. Instead, it'll be a mish-mash of what's in the drawings I have and what I glean from photos. There will be the usual on-the-fly customisations such as removing the classification lights"

 

At least Smokebox seems to take his art of creating realistic looking locomotive models seriously.
Lots of 'extras' can be modeled by nodes and child objects, selectable by scripting.
DTM, with his 10-15 something years of modeling for Train Simulator, Railworks and TSC never had advanced to this level. It is still mostly cut-copy-paste-paint to the most common aggregator.
And he misses on the commercial opportunity to sell variations of common base models a la Jointed Rail.

 

How do you "retro" forwards in time?

 

the difference is that other devs will admit to it straight away, while on past HIS products have advertised as realistic, with “artistic license” being a cop out when questioned why the product isn’t realistic as advertised. You’ll never see artistic license anywhere near the actual product description, only “realistic.”

I would also love to see where you get the statistic of most players from, because as far as I’m aware on the TSC discord, the largest community around the game, almost everyone wants realism, and most people in other places critique HIS for the same reason.

 

The majority of people who don't seem to mind the lack of realism are those who usually stalk HISs Facebook pages.

 

You will never achieve complete realism in any simulation. Realism also isn't an absolute and varies between users and their differing needs, values and personalities.

In any market you get variations in the quality of products and services. This is often linked to price. If you don't like where some provider has pitched their product, just move on, as you would with a car or a cake that doesn't give you what you want.

Loud and vicious moaning about something a person doesn't like and won't be buying, just makes them look fixated and weird.

 

This is true, and no one (at least I'm) not expecting everything to be perfect. Some things have been lost to time, as I'm finding out while doing research on Tennessee Pass. However, this does not excuse directly making something unrealistic while still calling it so. For example, the last NP FT set was retired on 5/1, and if HIS makes the decision to include FT units on scenarios past that point while calling it "realistic" is completely unacceptable and there's a point when it turns into blatant misinformation.

Yeah sorry but realism is completely solid and resolute. If a user thinks that FTs had 20,000 HP, that doesn't mean that that is realistic at all. Realism means, to the best of your ability, mimicking the past (in this context). When it's not doing so and instead taking "artistic license," or whatever you want to call it, this does not mimic the past and as such is not realistic. There's no opinions here, just cold hard facts.

Price for routes is and always has been $40, and routes are clearly not equal in quality it all, idk what your point about linked to price is. And, if this is true, considering DSGDDR makes some of the best steam locomotives in the game for free, I should be getting paid to get this route, at least be paying very little.

So....no complaining about anything at all?

The world only moves forward because people take a stand about something they don't like and make their voices heard. Without this, we'd have no labor protections, no environment protections, and many countries, including the US where this route is set, would not have ever won their freedom. This goes to say that everyone has a right to speak their opinion on this even if they don't plan on buying, as otherwise nothing ever progress and suddenly 20 years from now we're still getting content that looks 20 years old.

I will say, we haven't seen scenarios and such yet, so I think the hate is a little overblown, but having an opinion shows that someone isn't "fixated and weird", but rather that they have a passion for content, and hate to see it done wrong (again, though, I think it's too early)

 

If the FT's are restricted to 60's era scenarios that's fine, we've seen past routes have multiple paints for correct eras.
(Sacramento Northern is a good example with the steeple cab)
But if they somehow appear in or mixed with BN era stuff, then thats a problem.

Had this problem with an old HIS scenerio where they had Speed Lettered SD45T-2's running with the U33's despite the SP getting rid of them in the 80's.

 

Something is better than nothing. Those who buy it an are happy is good. Those who pass for whatever reason is also good. It is not like we have a plethora of new TSC routes being produced every day. I thank God for every new day that I have. I am not getting any younger. I also thank those who provide new content for TSC.
Respectfully

 

Don’t forget the FRCE scenarios, in which zero regard for paint schemes or locomotives was made. HIS has shown that “realism” matters very little in scenarios to them, and I don’t expect to see any differently here. And what DRGWFan3005 said is correct—realism is not subjective in any way, it either happened or it didn’t, personal opinions don’t change the past.

 

I respectfully disagree with this statement.

Case in point the TLS SD70M. You can't really expect to make something of such low quality, and expect people to pay the default $20 for it.


Its why I'm glad Diesel Workshop is releasing stuff on the steam store now.

You are telling me I can get THIS QUALITY for $12? Hopefully it sparks competition and DTM and HIS to do better.

 

Thankfully those scenarios are easily fixed...the "Delete" key is quite a useful tool

 

So much for being a 3 RD PARTY NON DRAMATIC forum.

 

"Realistic" is not an objective, quantifiable metric. Everything represented in game is done so through the interpretation of whichever modeler has placed it there, and nothing is an exact 1:1 facsimile of the "real world". It's a very impressionistic term that implies that the broad strokes are more or less correct whilst not being overly concerned with the absolute historical accuracy of the smaller details. And for me at least, authenticity is more important and interesting than strict accuracy.

Except, in real time that is not what happened, or happens. People don't go to bed one night and wake up the next morning deciding to completely alter their wardrobe. It's why transitional eras are so interesting, you can run just about anything together at the same time in all manner of mash-ups of liveries and paint schemes and find you're not far away from something that happened in "real life".

 

I find it hilarious that some demand authenticity while sitting in front of their computer pretending to be a train engineer. There is a reason that Minecraft is the all time champion of internet games, it is total fantasy.

 

[Deleted; Insulting - DTGHarry]

The problem with his routes (somewhat) and his/dtm locomotives and scenarios isn't that they're not perfect simulations, it's that they're so far below what's considered standard in every other country. Locos at dtm/his' quality would be laughed out of the German, British or (especially) Czech communities, where even freeware locomotives have better visuals, physics, and sounds. HIS routes themselves tend to be fairly decent, but still far below the quality standard set by devs like JT and VT in Europe.

 

I reply with my standard answer. Then don't buy it and let the rest of us enjoy these wonderful offerings.

 

Mhmm, gotta love that non response. What's so wrong with wanting a dev to do better, especially when they continually under deliver in regards to rolling stock and scenario quality?

 

I turn over my king.

 

Part of being rational is also to accept that it's ultimately the devs' decisions how they make their product, and accepting it won't match everyone's expectations. Particularly not making it bad for others who like it.

 

True, but at the same time, jumping down the throat of anyone offering even the gentlest criticism isn't very sporting either.

 

One note of a dev acknowledging some fictionalization of a route, was when G-Trax made the old Bessemer &Lake Erie route.

This was posted on their site which let the consumer know that yes, some artistic liberty was taken with the development of the route.

You don't see that from Gary from his stuff. Who keeps promoting it as "Realistic" and "Authentic"

 

In fairness the liberties taken with the b&le route were a bit more significant than those his routes generally take.

 

Aren't they the same developer? Just the "brand name" got changed for reasons.

 

Well there are repaints, so I wouldn't say it's "virtually impossible."

 

Not back when the route was originally developed, as DTM (Cesar Pach) and HIS (Gary Dolzall & Paul Dolzall) weren't part of the original G-Trax developers. There is also some developers who worked on older G-Trax routes (Like the Sacramento Northern) who aren't developing anymore.

Here is the comparisons of devs from G-Trax's work on Pennsylvania Steam (B&LE) and the newer Boston & Albany Route.


The Sacramento Northern credits.

 

Rick grout (the main g-trax dev) announced his retirement, other than that yeah I think it's basically the same team.

 

Ugh, here we go again. It's not that we're being "forced" to purchase low quality nonsense from DTM or HIS. It's that they're still reusing the same LOVE over and over again. On top of that, barely any of the horns for any of their locomotives are actually correct. And there's that lovely DTM bell.

I'm sorry, but it seems some folks forgot this is a Train Simulator, not Trainz. We have Pro Range locomotives you know. I fail to see any good in the same old worthless rollingstock that Digital Train Model and HIS keep providing. It's like they can't make one good thing.

The amount of rolling stock (well amount of repaints for a few models) and the return of the abysmal DTM tank car in the Feather River Canyon Enhanced route is just absurd and ridiculous. Compare the so-called "enhanced" route with the original Feather River Canyon route, which had less rolling stock, but of better quality and just three locomotives (yes, a B-unit is a locomotive) and a nice route to run on.

Some things with FRCE were okay at best, but 30 extra miles, multiple reskins of the same rolling stock that has been around for ages and reskins of old locomotives with the same horrible DTM bells and horns? Yeah, definitely not enhanced. More like downgraded.

I mean, Reppo has given us a much better, more up to date AEM-7. Of course the amfleets are the same model from the E60, however they're still much better than the other older Train Simulator Amfleets whereas DTM has pretty much butchered a U25 and a P40DC.

 

What funny is Trainz has a better selection of US stock thanks to the long time contributions of Jointed Rail to the sim.

Not to mention they look good.

 

Yes, and it's hilariously disappointing, considering Trainz is a model railroad simulator franchise and Train Sim Classic is a literal train simulator. I'm not sure if I said this before, but JointedRail even has a few good things for Train Sim (sold by Searchlight Simulations of course).