Introduction Hey guys! I am back with another suggestion. I will be listing out all features and improvements I would like to see get added to Peninsula Corridor. I love this route a lot and I only want it to get better. So here is my list of things I want to see get added. Some of these may apply to other American routes as well so keep that in mind. EXTENSION TO GILROY This is a highly requested feature to be added to Peninsula Corridor. Now this can be an actual extension to the route, or it can be a whole new route like in TS2021. Only 6 stations are on the Gilroy extension so not too much modeling is required. This would also bring single branch tracks to TSW. There are no routes in TSW yet where trains share the same track in opposite directions. This could bring new experiences such as stopping for a train coming in the other direction. This could also be the first American route to be fully completed as we have had none yet. AI TRAINS WITH WORKING HORNS AND BELLS Now this would probably be super difficult to code and has never been done before. But hear me out. Wouldn’t it be cool to have other AI trains blowing their horns at crossings and activating their bells at stations? I think that would be. Now the difficult part of this is how it would be coded. It is also difficult since peninsula corridor has a lot of railroad crossings throughout the map. This could go in two ways. The first way is to have some sort of way to have somebody behind the controls of an ai timetable service and blow the horn while the train is driving by itself. This would then just require all timetables to have a recorded horn sequence for all the crossings on the route. The issue with this though is the impacts you make on other services. You being on time would work fine for other timetables. But if you are running very late, it could mess up the horn sequencing for trains behind you. This leads to my second idea of markers placed throughout the route indicating when Ai trains blow their horns. Trainz has developed something like this, but only does one long horn sequence instead of the traditional 4. It would also be difficult to do this for highly condensed areas with crossings such as Burlingame and San Mateo. This may be super difficult to code but I would love to see an attempt at this. IMPROVED RENDERING OF TREES AND TERRAIN TSW2 did a very good job with this. Especially in routes like Sand Patch Grade. The trees and terrain are in good quality, even from far distances without hurting the performance of the user. However peninsula corridor does not do this well. Terrain and trees from far distances look super ugly until you are like 30 feet away from a tree or piece of terrain. I think the trees and terrain should get a treatment like sand patch grade so they look much better from farther distances. PEDESTRIAN CROSSINGS A key detail DTG missed in terms of stations is pedestrian crossings. Although I see the possibilities in why they were not added. The main reason they probably didn’t add this is to prevent lag. These have gates just like the traditional crossings so they cannot lower or raise the gates. However, if you look at the image, you can see a small yellow gate. The gates can be down at all times, and you can just use the gate to get across the tracks. This would be a nice touch to add to the stations since lots of American train stations have them. OPTIMIZATIONS TO AI TRAINS I think performance has improved a lot in TSW2 for Peninsula Corridor. However I still get some frame drops when passing AI trains. It also can cause lag in busier areas on the line such as San Francisco and San Jose Diridon. This isn’t a major issue but it is definitely worth noting. THE ABILITY TO HEAR HORNS FROM FARTHER DISTANCES This is something I’ve wanted for a long time. On Sand Patch Grade, you can hear horns way farther down the line than in peninsula corridor. You don’t hear the horn even where the indicated W signs are. You should be able to hear horns from a way farther distance like in Sand Patch Grade. HORN LOUDER IN MP36PH CAB Now I don’t know how loud the horn is inside the cab of an MP36 but I personally think it’s too quiet. The larger problem is even with the window open on the MP36PH, the horn isn’t any louder than without it open. The horn should be at least louder when the window is open. This would be a nice small detail to fix. WATER BETWEEN BAYSHORE AND SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO This is highly requested among the community. Between bayshore and south San Francisco, you are supposed to travel along the ocean. However, water was never added to the route. It just looks like a dry water bed. I thought it was just plains when I first saw it. Hopefully this can get changed soon. SCENERY UPDATES There are quite a bit of scenery flaws within the route that are inaccurate to real life. The main issue is lots of the buildings are not modeled like the real life buildings. Trees are also copy and pasted throughout the route with most trees being the same height and size. Scenery comparison San Mateo: As you can see. The scenery here is completely inaccurate. I understand there can’t be logos of real companies but they should at least make the buildings look like the real life thing. In TSW, you just have two standard office buildings on the left while real life has a movie theater and a parking garage. Housing and buildings in other areas of the map have the same issues. Burlingame: The major inaccuracy here is the trees are much taller in real life than in the game. The game only uses copy and pasted trees. I would love to see more tree models in this route to at least get the trees to look more accurate to real life. Overall I think Peninsula Corridor could use a scenery update so everything looks much more accurate to real life. They don’t need to obtain logos of real buildings, but they can at least model more noticeable buildings in the route and make them as accurate as possible. DESTINATION BOARDS This would be another small detail that would be a nice addition to stations. With the Bakerloo line introducing them, I think destination boards would work great on peninsula corridor since they do have them in real life. RELOCATION OF SPECIAL SERVICE (NEW) I think lots of us can agree that this is one of the most boring timetables on the route. Why you may ask? Well first, let me explain the backbone of this issue. You start out parked at San Francisco. You have to wait for an inbound train to enter the station. Nothing too bad. The train passes and you think you are cleared. But then a limited stop service gets to depart 10 minutes after you start your timetable. You are then stuck behind this train for the entire line. And since this is a limited stop train, it does all local stops in the second half. Almost the entire time you are just moving from signal post to signal post. This makes the rout extremely boring. I think the special service should be relocated to a different departure time so that it has to deal with little to no traffic. My 2 solutions for this is to let the special service depart before the limited stop service, or make it depart at an earlier or later time so it doesn’t have to deal with traffic. This would make the special service much more enjoyable to play without having to constantly stop for a train in front of you. EX-METROLINK PASSENGER CARS (NEW) This was a suggestion I forgot to add. The newer gen Caltrains use a mix of their passenger cars and ex-metrolink cars with a Caltrain logo on this. Now this doesn’t need to necessarily get added since it is now planned that livery designer is being worked on for preserved collection. But I think it would be a nice touch. CONCLUSION These are some of the major features I would like to see get improved or added to Peninsula Corridor in the near future. This is only of my all time favorite routes to play on TSW and I would love to see the route grow. We’ll see what happens as time goes on. Ride on railfans!!!
I know a train sim that does have AI trains blowing the horn at crossings called Run8 Train Simulator and the AI trains ring the bell if it’s a passenger train that stops at stations. But I think in Run8 the AI trains use a script that use a trigger system and programmed the crossings in the AI database so the AI trains blow the horn at crossings.
With regards to buildings along the route, you are never going to get identical looking buildings or everything perfectly placed. These are not flaws but just how routes are built. Specific big or famous landmarks aside, the best you can hope for is a general layout and buildings that are similar to those that would appear in that part of the world. DTG are actually very good at getting a good representation of an area. Building replicas of every building along a route is not only massively and prohibitively time consuming (and therefore expensive) but each different building model needs to be saved to your computer. Each extra model requires more memory for storage. Placing them all exactly where they are in real life would also take massive amounts of time and attention (more expense), especially in a city environment. That’s why for most buildings, generic ones are used repeatedly, and in the most built up areas the buildings may not replicate the real layout. Using fewer different models in one area is one thing that optimises a route‘s performance, as fewer assets need to be loaded by the game. Optimisation is also on your list and you can see the effect adding more stuff into a scene can have when you come across an AI train.
Oops I forgot about that. It’s probably not that difficult to recreate in Livery Designer though if it ever comes to preserved collection.
The route extension also needs a loco addon (or two). I'd suggest a UP GP60 or Genset for switching and an SD70M, SD70ACe, SD60M, AC4400CW, C44-9W, ES44AC, ET44AC, or SD70ACe-T4 for heavy freight services. Also, I'd love for the route to be backdated into the 50s, 60s, or 70s with an SP FM Trainmaster, SD9 Cadillac, or SDP45, plus an NW2 or GP7/9.
