So I’ve been driving the Class 66 a lot more lately which has really been getting me into freight and has got me considering driving American freight so I wondered, is Cajon Pass a good route to start with and what’s the main differences between UK freight and US freight?
What ps are you on? If you're on ps5, you get longer trains on Sherman Hill, horseshoe and cajon pass. American freight is much heavier, challenging and require careful usage of brakes and lots of setting up to do (brakes, switches, banking comm if you have trailing locomotives). It's nothing like driving a uk or German freight train in the game. Cajon pass is really challenging going down the 3% gradient if you got a heavy load. If you're on ps5, your load can go above 10000 tons. You have to master using the dynamic brakes and the automatic brakes. You can't go fast so you can only really go like 20-30 mph going downhill otherwise your dynamic brakes will be ineffective and you get a runaway train. You can't apply both dynamic and automatic together unless you bail off the independent brake. There's YouTube videos out there on how to control the train going downhill, using brakes, etc. You basically won't dynamics which should hold the train. If you are still gaining speed, you can apply automatic brake. But you can't have both since automatic brake is stronger, so the train doesn't use the dynamics anymore so every time you apply and increase automatic brakes, you have to bail off independent until your bc is at 0. If you only rely on auto brake to slow down downhill, you lose brake pressure and repeated applications and releases of the brakes means you get more and more ineffective brakes each time. You gotta wait for it to fully recharge which is really slow in order to get full brake pressure. So as long as you bail off independent when you have both dynamic and auto brake on and go slowz you should be able to control the train. Sherman Hill is a really good practice route since the brakes were set up realistically compared to spg. It's not as steep but it's kinda empty and boring. Cajon pass is still good, but more challenging cuz it's steeper
Cajon Pass is an excellent route, though the downhill sections with a very heavy load are challenging at times as mentioned above. The sounds on the ES44C4 are the best yet as the previous offerings have been extremely poor from an audio perspective (I hope the preservation crew fixes this in the future, but I doubt it). You need a big subwoofer to get the most out of it. The SD40-2 engine sounds are anemic - this is an area Dovetail needs to drastically improve on. Personally I love north american freight driving as it is so different from passenger services. I'm British, but now live in Canada so I enjoy both equally. North American locomotives are behemoths compared to British or European locomotives; built for pulling power rather than speed - there's nothing like watching a 180 car, mile long, intermodal thunder past at 50mph. I love it.
If you want to practice American freight try running Sherman Hill or Sand Patch Grade. On Sand Patch Grade the steep section is going Eastbound from Sand Patch to Cumberland. For Sherman Hill PS5 Xbox Series X and PC you get 70-100 freight cars. In some situations, you can slow yourself down using Independent Automatic and Dynamic Brakes if required to do so I do this on Sand Patch Grade
Wow I had no idea there was such a difference between the two, maybe I should perfect my ability to use the Class 66 first
Honestly man the only way to get good with the American locomotives is to play them. The in game guidance isn’t the best but learning and doing your own research is part of the fun. My recommendation is to just dive right in. I will say, long uphill stretches are generally boring, so be prepared for that- even sometimes in real life the engineer will run to the bathroom while on a long uphill and tell the conductor to press the alerter and blow the horn for him, etc. But managing the train downhill is usually where the skill/fun comes in. Personally I think you should spring for Cajon Pass as it’s the most up to date and has the steepest downhill, which is most challenging but also reward to master. Can’t go wrong with Sherman Hill though either.
