With TSW you can always learn new things about railways. The reason for this post are some misterious boards I found at East Coastway. What are they used for? I thought they may be announcing distance to signals or speed limits but that was not the case... After investigating a bit I found that they are used to define sandite application areas. Sandite is applied during track maintenance to combat the fallen leaves that could produce degraded adhesion. Sandite is a mixture of sand, antifreeze and steel shot. To assist the crews during the process a set of special yellow markers is used. Those markers are installed in a sequence of three boards: Three stripes announce a sandite application area Two stripes define where sandite application should start One stripe defines where sandite application should end I had no idea about the boards nor the sandite usage itself but that´s another example of the small details included in the game content. So I thought it would be a good idea to have some MOW trains available in game (the ones used for the track maintenance). We have some scenarios where ballast is hauled in Peninsula Corridor for instance and other related to degraded situations in many routes, including fallen trees among others. I always liked those things as they are different to regular services. But we have no real MOW trains. Some of the most commonly used by almost all railways are: Heavy cranes: used to take out from the tracks derailed rolling stock (very important and interesting) Ballast trains: use to repair or rearrange the track ballast Sprayers: used to apply herbicide to prevent fires caused by wheel sparks Snow plows: used to clear the tracks during heavy snow conditions Sandite: now we also need one for british routes I don´t know you opinion but I would like to have some of them in game. They add some different experiece to the regular services and operation and they are also very different to standard rolling stock as in most cases they use customized vehicles. Feel free to comment and vote if you like Cheers
Sounds like a great idea. Something to do besides hauling goods and whiney passengers back and forth between location a to z all the time. They have some in OGTS, and I always enjoyed them back then. More things to do and see are always welcome.
Interesting idea! I guess it would really add to the overall experience. Maybe something to implement with the random events. OT: Shouldn't this be in the Suggestions sub-forum? I'm sure this wouldn't be only interesting for us PC Users.
Challenge is that a lot of OTP is quite individual, and very complex to model. Most is also very hard to get decent reference for, in the UK at least. It's a lot of development time for something that isn't realistically useable in a service mode.
Sprayers are just tankers adapted to include a generator and the exhausts and they operate being hauled by any locomotive. They can also include a coach for the crews or a van for eqquipment, as most MOW trains. The sprayers are very frequent worldwide at least. For the sandite ones there are some pics here, and appear to be using the same concept: Leaves on the Line | Rail.co.uk Cheers
That's exactly how they looked in OGTS, if memory serves me right, and they were fun to use at that. Especially if pulled like in these pictures by the awesome class 20 (one of my favorite locos, and we already have an excellent version of it). Something a little different, some variety in tasks to perform. Variety is good, helps battle monotony. I'm all for things like these. New and interesting things to do and see. Bring it on!!
I am 100% up for this! We often get Class 73 RHTT and MPV trains as well as Tampers on ECW, so I think this would be amazing. Driver training runs are also seen which would be good.
Enjoyed the spraying scenarios on the old TS. Usually in the Uk it’s three or four wagons sandwiched between two diesels. Would make a nice little addition to SEHS along with an occasional ballast train. Even if only parked in a siding for local colour.
Melt the snow ahead as weather algorithm does to fade the texture and add white smoke effects for the exhausted snow on the plow. Problem solved! Hahaha Yeap, it may be hard but is something cool indeed. I hope to see it too. Cheers
I would very much like to see RHTT stock added to the game. A huge range of locos pulled the trains and they go everywhere across the network in the UK. Would also love to see a nice big crane out and about on the rails in game!
I support this idea. It would be cool if we could do track maintenance in the timetable. It would add more to do besides hauling passengers from a to b and doing freight runs in mostly non full line routes. This could work well with random events that most players seem to want
Some routes have natural termini but many just stop and you hand the train over to someone else who drives it off the edge of the map. One interesting idea would be to have the end of the route as a major set of works. If a route was made that just so happened to have the end of the route marked by a set of works where they are putting down more track or replacing old track etc then it would fit in quite well. Trains would artificially terminate at the last station due to the works and turn back at that point. The maintenance would never end of course, but again it would make a nice story if they ever did line extensions: the story would be that the maintenance is finally complete You could also have scenarios where you have to take maintenance trains up to the end of the line and move equipment etc.
That sounds like a good idea but then that would mean we should have the option if we were doing a passenger run to do the return journey so like if we did a service from penn station to Hicksville, we should then have the option to go back to penn station because of track works
Also don't overlook the functionality of AI MOW trains- they could cause of all sorts of interesting complications like unexpected stops, reroutings and wrong-way operations to give timetable services some variety.
Yep, I think adding MOW stock would open up a huge amount of possibilities. Especially if the next iteration of the scenario designer allows us full access to the driveable rails, rather than just being able to pick some pre-set paths.
True. There´s literally a huge amount of tracks that are currently not used, including some depots, yards and industries. Rapid Transit or Tees Valley are some examples but also newer lines have many as well which are not used by scenarios or services. Cheers
