Assuming that how AWS is presented in the game is correct. You just get an audible warning when approaching a signal and a sunflower if the signal is anything other than green/proceed. Unlike the German system which you've to slow down to a set speed in this amount of seconds or you get a forced emergency brake etc., you are just free to do whatever you want. No emergency braking if you pass a magnet too fast, and I am not even sure if there are SPAD emergency brakes(2000Hz in PZB). You are just assumed to know the interlocking and junction speed limits, the next signal aspect(even in dense fog) and the distance it'd require for your train to stop. Sunflower could be useful if it differentiated between red and yellow, and if it came up a lot earlier than it does. In the current iteration, it only comes up when you're right up to the signal, which would be already too late to stop a fully loaded freight consist traveling at track limit if the signal displayed a danger aspect.
UK train drivers undergo extensive training and have to learn the routes they will drive. They have to know signal locations, stations, crossings, speed limits and other things and it is a lot to learn. They also have exams/tests to prove that they know the routes as well as what to do in emergencies etc. The UK also has TPWS which is another safety system. If you approach a red signal too fast and activate the TPWS grid, it will activate the emergency braking system due to overspeed. TPWS also provides protection for speed reductions and this system is actually present on the Birmingham Cross City route for TSW3. TPWS is designed to lessen the risk of signals being passed at danger (SPAD) but it doesn't necessarily prevent SPADs.
But it appears that PZB has a lot more coverage than TPWS. Also the sunflower could still be a bit more descriptive and earlier, considering that the UK is a rainy and foggy country. In aviation for example, at night you have to have at least 3 miles of visibility to conduct VFR flight(meaning you can primarily rely on what you see out of the windshield), a yard less than that and it becomes IFR, meaning you should be able to fly relying completely on your instruments, even if your windshield was completely covered. In the UK, I don't think this would be possible with trains, meanwhile in Germany LZB/PZB seemingly offer good instrument guidance. Especially with LZB, where you practically don't even need to see anything outside, similar to IFR in aviation.
Oh it's possible and it's been done for years.. Drivers need to be able to drive "blind" in the event conditions are so bad they can't see a few feet in front of them. It again, comes back to route knowledge.
Which in the UK can and does happen. There's been times when I've been driving my car and can only see a few feet in front of my bonnet (hood to those in the US). Also, I watch live railway cameras here in the UK (York mostly) and even in the last week we have had what we call pea soup fog. The cameras couldn't even see the track or signals and the station lights were barely visible. As stated above, it all comes down to driver and route knowledge. Drivers will know the distance between signals so they have enough time to react to the AWS and amber signals.
Just to add: German drivers also need route knowledge. They can't drive on routes that they have never seen before.
But the stricter route knowledge demands are a result of the way UK signals and safety systems work, not the reason why they work this way. Emphasis on signalling: this has much more to do with the difference between speed- and route-based signalling systems than PZB vs. AWS. As a German, I can't understand why AWS is such an extremely limited safety system either, especially considering that it's a good 30 years younger than PZB... LZB absolutely does! However, this is not what PZB is for. Unlike LZB (or even AWS!) it doesn't announce signals or speed restrictions in advance, it just sits there in the background and waits for you to confirm you've seen them and act on them properly. PZB's function is strictly supervision, not guidance. Playing TSW, PZB works exactly as it's supposed to in the real world: it keeps me attentive and it trips me up if I make mistakes. In contrast, playing with AWS tends to me zone out as I know I don't really need to pay too much attention to any signals unless the train beeps at me...
But a flashing 1000Hz magnet can still warn you of an upcoming speed restriction or a stop signal in low visibility conditions, in which case you can drop your speed lower than what PZB requires to keep up with the limits.
So the same as they do here. But next to route knowledge, theres also Ebula, showing you where you are, next signals, stations and speed restrictions. So you dont only have to rely on memory but also see whats ahead if youre unsure. And of course PZB/LZB and AWS are quite different, and were introduced at different times. When the UK started rolling out AWS, every German line apart from very rural ones were equipped with PZB and the first LZB sections came along. Thats why i dont drive NTP, driving without safety systems in the 80s just feels wrong. I also think AWS is a bit sparse for 125mph operation, but maybe thats due to that im used to the many german safety measures
Not really, since the light only starts flashing after you've confirmed that you've seen the signal/speed restriction.
With aws and tpws mentioned above drivers also get fair warning of a stop signal. 2 Amber lights indicate the next signal is a single Amber that indicates to the driver to be prepared to stop ahead at a red signal. Obscured signals usually have a distant signal or repeaters way ahead of them. The driver training isn't something that just anyone can just turn up for and pass In the UK. They test your mental abilities. Ie memory and concentration under pressure before you even enter the driver training program. As a driver you are required to know the entire route you will be driving from memory before you can drive it. With that said most high speed lines in the UK will be losing trackside signals in the near future and will be upgraded to the radio signalling, just like hs1.
Don't look at it as if the systems all came in place today, think about it in terms of historical development. Railways around the world make most changes for two reasons - cost savings, and safety. The latter normally as a direct result of an accident. Most of the features and facets of safety systems come from someone analysing an incident and determining "x" would have prevented it, so the incidents that have occurred and the engineers and designers looking at them are the evolution of how things have got to where they are for the legacy systems like Indusi, PZB, AWS etc, where as new systems like PTC and ETCS etc are more reflective of "how *should* it work". Onboard systems on trains evolve in much the same way, look at the history and development of US Train braking - which didn't originally include the emergency reservoir, so you had the potential for runaway trains that simply couldn't be stopped. You can imagine that didn't take long to cause a problem and the fix was the emergency reservoir to ensure there was always enough air to stop the brake etc. When you drive a train, you are not allowed on your own until you are fully familiar with the train and the road, its not that drivers are trusted more or less anywhere really, they all need to be at the top of their game. Matt.
Since I'm not brave enough to drive without HUD on the PZB territory, I never paid attention to that. I thought it flashed whenever you passed a magnet. I wonder how often do train drivers in Germany get a forced brake in real life. And how do they know when it's okay to release the PZB restriction(I mean in the game HUD tells you)
Forgive me for making another aviation analogy as a cross-simmer of both the skies and rails, and also a real life operator of the former(albeit not at commercial capacity), but I can say that it’s similar to how Airbus vs Boeing handles pilot controls. To simplify it a lot, Airbus fly-by-wire logic have this thing called flight envelope protection, for example it will not allow you to bank more than 67 degrees(which is already a lot more than the standard 1G bank of 25 degrees) won’t let you pitch up higher than 30 degrees etc(though it changes with airspeed). Meanwhile in Boeings, particularly the ones that have mechanically actuated controls like the 737NG, you can just pretty much do whatever you want, the aircraft will let you. It may complain with audible warnings, but at no point it will try to override any of your inputs. Does Airbus trust the pilots less? Maybe, maybe not, and they surely don't get any less rigorous training than pilots who operate aircraft without such protections, however they firmly established the boundaries where the human operator could not be under circumstances where they would need the exceed the limits established by the protection system. Which is kind of similar to PZB, and since unlike aircraft, trains have only one degree of freedom instead of six, the only thing you need to regulate is your speed, which the PZB does.
This is key to understanding the evolution of PZB from its original form into what its like today, or the development of TPWS in addition to AWS, but I don't think it really applies to this question: even the original 1927 version of PZB (then called Indusi) would stop a train if the driver failed to brake after passing a yellow signal, while AWS, introduced as standard on British Railways almost 30 years later, does not. It's a really rewarding experience once you're good at it! If you want to try it, I'd advise against "learning PZB". Take the time to figure out the signals first. 90% of the time, PZB only checks if you're doing what the signals tell you to do. Once you're confident with the signals, the remaining 10% are easy! You're allowed to release once you see a signal that allows you to proceed at 30 km/h or above, and there are no signals or signs you need to acknowledge within the next 550 m. The point of restricted mode is to stop a train that has already stopped in front of a red signal from starting up again and passing it at danger at too high a speed. The 2000 Hz magnet at the signal will stop any train passing it at danger, but if the train is passing the signal too fast, it could still cause accidents. It had to be introduced in the 90s because modern trains accelerate a lot faster than the ones PZB was originally designed for.
AWS can't brake a train passing a yellow signal because unlike Germany a yellow signal in Britain does not impose any speed limit on the driver. Making yellow signals impose speed limits would require either a complete resignalling of the entire network or for each line to have its own yellow signal speed limit. The primary reason for the differences between AWS/TPWS and PZB is that the rules they are trying to enforce are fundamentally different.
If the only thing that UK signals tell you that whether the next block is occupied or not, then why are there so many red signals in the game even if there are no trains in any block that follows it? Especially in scenarios, it seems like every signal that's not on your way is a red.
There are two types of signals - normal signals default to red unless a route is authorised through it, and then they tell you whether there's a train in the block. Automatic signals default to green. The latter came about because on busy mainlines signallers had far too much to try and cope with constantly setting signals all the time, where as with autos they can just set up the wider path and let the automatic systems just keep the trains apart from each other. Matt.
Yes, that is a feature of TPWS Depends how you define it. A version of AWS was used by the Great Western as far back as the 1920s (one factor here is the difference between having a national state railway (DRG) and several private railways (UK before 1948). Also, Indusi 34 was really an experimental system and only installed on a few lines and locomotives (and consisted of just the 2000 Hz SPAD magnet); PZB didn't become universal until after the war with the rollout of Indusi 54.
Interesting, I thought the signals at railyards and sidings defaulted to red and signals on the mainline defaulted to green.
Do you have a source for that? I've tried to check and German and English Wikipedia contradict each other on that. The German article claims that experimental versions as early as 1919 used the 2000Hz, 1000Hz, and 500Hz resonator circuits, while according to the English article the original Indusi only used the 2000 Hz train stop function. Neither claim is referenced, and I can't find any good sources supporting either of them.
As far as I know there isn't route knowledge necessary in most cases. But then, you are only allowed to drive 100 km/h on main lines an 40 km/h on branch lines. But I also know some branch lines (not from DB Netz, instead from RegioInfra) where route knowledge is necessary.
PZB is used in the UK on the Tyne & Wear Metro AFAIK. What you have to also remember is PZB isnt a cheap option and the UK railways have been chronically underfunded for decades. I mean most of us know the history of the Morpeth boards showing a impending speed restriction, brought in after an infamous crash at Morpeth curves, but the UK trains even then where so underfunded that a Morpeth board wasnt deemed an economical option at the Morpeth curve until a virtually identical crash at the same location a number of years later.
Thing you have to remember in the UK at the time of AWS, GWR ATC, HUDD ATC etc or indeed no form of AWS, there were always 2 people on the footplate observing the signals, the guard was also supposed to keep an eye of signals. UK signals are also spaced that from the first warning signal there is always sufficient braking distance to bring the train to a stop. If a train has insufficient braking capability it must run at a reduced speed where it can stop in time. This is why freights run at 60mph most of the time, or unfitted trains run max 35mph. Nowadays UK has TPWS which will dump the brake if you pass a red signal, and OSS grids are often fitted to important areas. OSS will usually bring a train to a stop within the overlap (or in some cases of very powerful brakes even before the signal), should the driver fail to bring speed down sufficiently before the signal. Theres nothing inherently unsafe about UK safety system, or the German ones for that matter, they are just a different way of doing things. One country doesn't trust its drivers any less than the other, its just how things have developed over the last century. I would also point out the UK rail network is probably one of the safest in the world nowadays.
Punktförmige Zugsbeeinflussung Indusi 1934 and German Trains after that year are supposed to have one equipped while AWS was only being used 1960s onwards do it there would have been two upgraded versions of PZB I54 & I60. The latter one is also made in communist Romania for export to the German Democratic Republic Deutsche Reichsbahn although they made their own version later on in the 1980s PZ80 VEB Teltow
