Hello all, I am a conductor in training for a major Class 1 railroad here in the states, and a life long railfan and I just bought this sim to play around with on my time off. I have gone through locomotive indoctrination and I have to say, the way the throttle behaves and the traction motors load up with the ammeter is not feeling right at all. In notch 1 the locomotive reaches like 600 amps and it accelerates way too fast to like 20 miles per hour and then the amps drop off to zero and it coasts along. That's not now any locomotive I've ever crewed works. From a dead stop when you put it in notch 1 it will go up to maybe 200 or 300 amps and slowly accelerate on level track to about 50 miles per hour before the wind drag equals out the amp reading, which never really goes down to zero. It would be about 50 amps at 50 miles per hour. Am I missing something or is this just how this sim is? If so that's really disappointing expecially how its touted up as being so realistic. It's not realistic at all. Also the brakes are a little wonky at times and the needle jumps around and doesnt fully release. I think the tripple valve gets stuck in modes it's not displaying. Any thoughts? Am I on "Simple mode" or something? Thanks all, Kenny
It’s well documented how broken diesel electrics are. This discussion is nothing new. Still waiting on DTG to actually work on it.
Oh ok thank you man. I just found another post talking about it. Yeah if that's how it is modeled then yea it's totally wrong. And I mean totally wrong. I wonder if I can get this refunded..I will check. Disapointing but that's life. Back to Run 8. Thanks for the response! Kenny
It's on the devs known issues list, but no idea how löng it will take them to fix it. We waited for a whole year already. Hopefully soon.
Yea this has really been disappointing. The amps going to 0 has been a problem since the beta release, however the fact that there is WAY too much power in notch 1 happened in an update a while back. I don't know what brought that about but they made it even more "unrealistic" instead of fixing the problem. Notch one used to start off around 200-300 amps like you described, but you would level off speed and hit 0 amps at about 10mph. Now notch one hits 600 amps and you level off at 0 amps around 25-30mph. How do you like Run 8? The pretty views of TSW is nice but the fact that so many things are so wrong have me thinking of going somewhere else. And thanks for confirming that this problem is actually not how the real thing works, it is nice to hear this from someone that actually works with the equipment we want to "Simulate" operating.
I should also mention that the throttle on most locomotives in the previous version of DTG's train simulator works more like it should. And some have the ability to change how the brakes operate to something that is realistic, however most have brake systems that are nothing close to real life in either TS2018 or TSW.
That's weird that the previous sim works more realistically in this regard. I might check that one out. I like Run 8, it's much better than Microsoft Train sim which was the last one I had. The physics with Run 8 are pretty much right on, its just the graphics are little sub par but not too bad. An engineer I worked with a few weeks back suggested I try it. I suppose i lost interest in trains for much of the last 10 years of my life but was a huge train nut as a kid. And I lucked into my job now, working with them every day and now I'm back into the sim scene.
The other thing that I didnt like with TSW was all the walking in game. I mean it is realistic but I do more than enough walking in my job for real and it's a frustrating aspect I dont want to simulate. Ever need to change a knuckle 60 cars back on a train in the middle of winter? You have to carry that thing from the locomotive all the way back. Not fun haha.
Yea if this was the way it worked in reality you'd be breaking couplers every time you opened the throttle. Silly. People are often surprised how easy it is to snap a train in two even with good train handling. Some of these monster trains we're running now with 160+ cars have such extreme in-train forces, a one-notch power change at the wrong time in undulating terrain can produce a slinky effect and rip the train in half a mile away from you. Run 8 does a better job of simulating this aspect of it too. I dont think you can even break a coupler in TSW probably because the power is so effed up.
Yeah, this kind of failures, ability to fail badly, and generally challenging operations is what TSW is sorely lacking now in US freight department. All these forces are simulated, but proper derailments, coupler failures and wheel slip aren't yet enabled in released game. Well, you are not forced to. You can switch cabs by Ctrl+Add, throw switches, couplers and whatnot just by flying outside cameras around.