How Does Raildriver Work For German Trains?

So in Germany, the train controls are different from the UK and the US. Basically, everything is inverted, you push the throttle forwards to accelerate and pull it backwards to take the power away. Also, the brakes are released in the front position and are fully applied when they are pulled back towards the driver.

Are the controls on the RailDriver for German trains like in real life, described above? Or is it the British controls for every train?

 

It is the same principe like in the british stock. Backwards=accelerate, Forward=decrease power.

 

Unfortunately Raildriver works as the labels on the Raildriver are - accelerate: pull towards you, brake: push away from you. This is extremely counterintuitive for me, even more so when driving a German train (or French or Suisse for that matter). I hope we will get the option to inverse to controls so they match what we see in the cab, but currently that is not possible.

 

Okay, thank you. This should definitely be changed...

 

Hm, was not aware of this. For a non-German it feels normal, but I appreciate the confusion for German fans.

What's it like driving German locos with keyboard/ mouse?

 

It's the same controls on the keyboard and mouse, but that feels totally fine

 

Since the keys are left/right, it doesn't matter really, but with the Raildriver and in-cab controls going back and forth, it makes much more of a difference

 

Thats exactly the point!

 

We just need custom bindings on RailDriver so we can set it to how we want so we can reverse the throttle and more.

For example on TS1 I use the range switch for PZB acknowledge and the Estop for PZB release etc.

 

Here’s my rail driver for German trains. Works with all locos (with the same leaver/switch doing the same thing in each loco - unlike rail driver)

Also works perfectly with Zusi

 

Wow, did you build that yourself? That is impressive

 

I built a similar copy of Whitsim's brilliant controller https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/arduino-controller-build.45279/#post-447330

It was quite straight forward. Because I normally only drive German trains mine is laid out like a standard German panel. I have levers for AFB and Power on the left and the three brakes on the right. I have the two toggles and one button for PZB and a big red Sifa button in the middle. To the right I have some door opening toggles/buttons and a horn toggle.

I was quite close to buying a rail driver, but it was quite expensive and I was put off by both its American layout, and the fact that you had to wait for trains to be added in TSW, and when they were, each button/lever seemed to do different things on different trains.

Using Whitsim's method, you can control the same feature from the same button/lever in any train. As I said, it also works beautifully in Zusi (which I spend most of my time in)

 

Your controller look superb ! But I have a question where did you find the "big" levers ? I have found everything I need like small switches or pushbuttons but not the big levers.

(Edit)
Nevermind, found them !
Link if someone else is interested : https://www.amazon.com.be/-/nl/Cont...4&psc=1&mcid=6857cd1161863312acd623e39aafeaa2

 

I'm not sure RailDriver would be capable of inverting controls - unless possibly there would be a loco-specific calibration. However, RailDriver has been in Beta since 2020 and no sign of it coming out of Beta. It does work with every loco, which was not originally the case in 2020-2021. But its limitations are the reason we see in every RailDriver post, someone who has built their own custom controller.