Ok so my question is this, speed markers, in the game when the marker is lower than your current speed, the indicator on the hub moves as soon as your cab passes. But when you have a speed increase marker, it activates the marker on the hub when the last carriage passes it. I'm not sure if this is the case on a real track, and if it isn't why is it like this in game?
Sorry I'm not a real life train driver, but the system as far as I know works like this IRL, it makes sense, if the cab needs to maintain a certain speed at that point of the track, so does the last carriage. On the London Underground is different, since the lenght of the trains is fixed, they know the relative position of the whole consist so they can engineer speed limit change sign so it applies as soon as the first axle of the train passes it
I very much doubt it works like this irl, how would you be able to see when your last wagon passes the sign on a huge freight train? From the streams it was confirmed that it is the way it is right now because of the way it is programmed and apparently it is alot of effort to try and change it.
Some trains have a device that lets the driver know when the train has moved the length of the train. The driver inputs the train length and when they pass a speed increase they start the counter, they then get an indication when the rear of the train has passed the speed change
IRL it’s all about when you THINK/estimate the end of the train passed the sign, based on the surroundings. For certain routes (mostly Subway) like London Underground. The Speed Limits change AS SOON as you pass the sign.
I don't know how it works for US trains, but for european trains even the longer are like 12-15 cars and is possible to estimate when the whole train passes the sign, and is pretty easy to do in TSW as well, that's why you have the lenght of the train on the little prompt at the start and in the real life documentation. You can help yourself by doing some runs with the HUD, learning when the speed limit changes and pick a reference point, it might be a signal or whatever, before running hudless... a thing that in real life falls under "route learning"... For all I know all the safety systems that control the speed of the train (for example ATC and ACSES in the US) they all consider the new speed limit after the whole train passes the sign but don't quote me on that, I'll try to get back to you with official documentation
Yes, it's like that in real life, for trains and cars... The speed limit doesn't just apply to the front of the train, but the train in total. As said above, some systems (where trains are the same length all of the time like the underground in London) have "front leading speed limits" so when the driver passes the board he can safely accelerate The whole point of speed limits is that there is some instability in the track or whatever's supporting the track that will break if the pressure of the moving train is higher (which it would be if the train was moving faster). This applies to every contact point, not just the first one, hence why the last wheel must pass the speed limit point, not just the first one On a side note, in TSx (and seemingly in TSW) the AI consists only apply this to the front item in any consist, hence why they can accelerate before the last car or wagon have passed the limit board
The AC4400CW on Sand Patch has a distance measuring device in it's onboard computers, you can activate it from the MFDs. Driver estimate when the last car has passed the speed restriction if the train is short enough or use a device like on the AC4400, most modern locomotives have this feature on their MFDs.
Assuming that the speed restrictions make sense, it would make no sense if after the locomotive passed (for example at a switch to be taken at 40km/h) the rest of the train, still on the switch, accelerated to the new indicated speed. This is the reason why in deceleration (speed reduction) the train head is taken as a reference while in acceleration (speed increase) the train tail is taken as reference.
Ok let me show you how it works. In italy we have the SCMT like aa safety system (i will say it in the easy way). When you prepare the train to start the journey you need to set some details of the train on the SCMT control desk. In this details you need to set the rank of the train (maximum speed), the weight, the weight mass during a braking area and the lenght of the train. Now normally in italy (similar to german and french) the longer train that you can see is around 50/60 cars + locos but normally they will be around 25 cars with just 1 loco. (15 with itermodal cars). Now, because the SCMT check the route in front of you you can see the speed limit change. At the point of the speed limit change a counter starts to check the train (the SCMT knows the train lenght because you have set it before depart) and for exemple if the train lenght is 500m after 450m the SCMT inform you that you can apply the throttle. Another thing is to check the milestones tab on the right/left of the track to know how to accellerate. Keep in mind that the maximum speed for a track is nornally 15kmh highter of the speed that you see on the hud so if a maximum speed on a switch is 40 the railway can support the train up to 55kmh in some emergency cases. Same thing with the american trains the locos have a counter that tracks the lenght of the train but sometimes expetially on very long freight another driver is sit in the banking loco on the other side of the train and he can give the ok to proced.
Just for info, in theory in italy our maximum lenght of the train is near 3km. Because our normal signal block is 3.200m. Another things. For ATC and ACSES the ATC inform you About the max block speed. The ACSES inform you about the current speed limitation and it is always or same than ATC so if you are running a clear block (max 200kmh exemple) a little restriction can appear on front of you and the ACSES inform you to slow down. If you have done the NEC dlc, with the ATC and ACSES activated, some speed change are just a restriction and not the track speed limit (new york penn tunnel for exemple)
Of course that makes sense... It's been a while since I've run the NEC but I rememeber the basics of how the systems works but I forgot the finer details as I "abandoned" that route... but I remeber that, in fact on LIRR that only has ATC I remember it only cared about track speed... but that'a another route I haven't run in a while
You can do it the old fashioned way by counting a number of seconds in your head. If you know the length of your train and the speed you are travelling then a bit of mental arithmetic (remember that) will tell you how many seconds it will be until the end of your train is clear. Count up to that and then throttle up.
For metric measurements - metres and km/h ( length of train(m) x 3.6 ) / speed(km/h) = time(s) For imperial measurements - yards and mph ( length of train(yds) x 2 ) / speed(mph) = time(s) Always add a few of seconds on for good measure, and if you’re counting in your head (not using a watch) make sure they are full seconds!
I haven't figured out how to make the distance counter work in the AC4400CW. I've done the preset, and start distance doesn't seem to do anything. I set the preset to the number of feet equal to the distance of the train
It's the whole train that has to pass. Not easy over here where trains sometimes can reach 150-160 cars.
I believe a proper way for european railways (if you don't have the train length button) is using the kilometer posts, which are usually have more precision than whole kilometers. Let's say your train is 600 meters long and you are running in direction where numbers on kilometer posts are increasing. When you pass a speed increase marker, the next kilometer post has 140.8 written on it. You only care about the .8 part and add 0.6 (for 600 meters), which gives you 1.4 but you again only care about the .4 part. This means that you can safely accelerate once you pass a kilometer post with .4 on it (in this case it's post with 141.4 on it but that doesn't matter). Similar math applies when running in the other direction but I don't think I need to explain in detail. Simply with 600 meter train you pass post 140.4, take .4, subtract 0.6, and get .8 as a post where you can start accelerating.
From my knowledge it's mostly metro or light rail systems where it does not and that's normally because the consist lengths are static. Where you have dynamic consist lengths they tend to be rear enforcing, but where you can be sure the rear has passed the issue requiring the limit you can put the boards where the consist will always have passed the limit
