That was a big reason for me to buy TSW right from the start (2017) . But it had incredible problems, but I thought it was good that they would finally invest heavily in freight traffic, and they put energy into developing this for the first 3 4 years perhaps. But in recent years I've noticed that Dovetail doesn't do it anymore and I've completely lost interest in TSW. Now it's Simrail and Run8 that have my interest (in trains simulators)
Matt is adding the banking comm as his own passion project to upgrade the route to current standards but don't expect it to release anytime soon
Well, exactly 3 years ago he said it was accidentally omitted from CRR but " was on the list to fix ". If it had been added to Clinchfield promptly, it probably would have made a significant difference to the performance and subsequent sales of that route.
DTG's infallible market research? DTG's secret sale volume records? My guess is the thumbstick players that seem to be the main market for TSW rather prefer fast action stop-and-go single handle plastic commuter trains making frequent stops to keep those thumbs supple warm over boring, slow and sluggish up-the-mountain=down-the-mountain hauls at 20 MpH over single track in barren rock or desert canyons with not a soul in sight. Route length might also be an obstacle given the development cycle and allocated time and costs. TSC, Run8, even Railroader offer much more when it comes to USA railroading. Waiting for the announced USA route in SimRail to see if that studio has a better understanding of USA railroading. ... banking comm .... whoever came up with that?
I mean, the studio making it is Searchlight Simulations, who all work for the railroads themselves, and have a good relationship with CP/CPKC. It just depends on how Simrail as a platform can handle actual US trains.
Well, it can hardly be worse than TSW, can it? Given these studios have the poorer example right in front of them. And if the indicated sentiments turn into reality, the market for USA freight railroading will be theirs. The continued absence of the newest Amtrak trains, Siemens Charger and the new Acela speaks for itself
Honestly I feel like US freight is heavily limited by the limitations of TSW. Most Mainline US freight travels hundreds of miles form yard to yard. We are never going to get a CSX route from idk Selkirk to Boston or formerly Buffalo yard
I sure hope so! The TSW platform sure has a lot to like and a solid foundation to build on. There's also a lot of very talented people at DTG that have the creativity and experience to make it happen. The history of the franchise has its roots going all the way back to the beginning of railroad simulation games with the original release of MSTS in 2001. Admittedly, my own enthusiasm for TSW has been slow to develop. I began in this hobby the day MSTS was released in 2001 and transitioned to Railworks in 2012. Other than a few hours of time spent on the early versions of TSW, it wasn't until the release of TSW 4 with access to the editor that I gave TSW a closer look. It has now become my first choice to use and I rarely use TSC. I really like TSW and have high hopes that US freight is in its future. It's noteworthy that because of the disappointing recent roadmaps and comments from DTG about US fright routes in general, I did something this past weekend that I have avoided for 12 years. I went down the Run8 rabbit hole. We shall see where that leads. In the meantime, I have high hopes that DTG will find a way to reignite the US freight community's enthusiasm with TSW in the same way they have with TSC in the past.
Well the new Acela not currently being present is completely understandable given that it hasn't even entered service yet.
I think all decisions dovetail makes are based on economics. they have a lot of facts about all their routes. What they cost to produce and how much income they received from them. Secret information of course. But they know routes what makes them money and they know what doesn't make them money. and then freight train routes are probably bad, otherwise they would of course have done them much more often. And it is probably much more expensive to develop a route in TSW compared to TSC. In TSC they don't have to sell as much to get economy in it We'll see how Simrail does in the future. The one in Poland (500 kilometers) is a mixture of all trains. So that everyone has a favorite train to drive and I myself mix quite well between them depending on what mood I'm in. Just run multiplayer. Will be incredibly interesting to see their new USA route.
There definitely seems to be a drought in US content right now. The last route was what, Antelope Valley at TSW4 launch? Since then we have had a steady stream of British and German and Austrian content but crickets from the US. The old cadence of releases going through each of the 3 main regions seems to have fallen away. We heard that US freight seems to be on life support with no concrete future. Antelope Valley was great, but not the most ambitious route ever. NY-Trenton was the last real ambitious US route and sort of blew up in their face on launch. Its workable now but still not perfect. As someone whos main interest is North American content, but plays a lot of UK/German stuff just because it seems to be better made, I am really hoping the US stuff keeps getting some attention and can match the quality of the other regions. LIRR 2.0 has a chance at being the best US route ever made, if they don't bungle it like the early days of NY:T. San Bernardino also has the potential of being pretty good, less ambitious from the signalling/safety system point of view but the Metrolink partnership has been great so far. Another issue is that 3rd parties are finally starting to show some promise in TSW, with some great routes coming out from TSG, Just Trains... massive improvement from Skyhook... a Japanese route on the way... but there seems to be zero 3rd party coming from the US side.
Yeah the trend now in the console world is actually older average ages. With the prices of modern consoles and the trend for younger kids to be gaming on mobile platforms, console users are often in their 30s-50s.
I personally, as a PS5 player would like to see more US Freight. A new CSX Route would be really nice, and could be the catalyst to “refresh” Sand Patch as well. I do agree however that a substitution system for the freight cars is much needed.
Weird that such a high-ranking person (I assume) in the Dovetail hierarchy has to do something like that on his own free-time. Tells a lot about the company doesn't it? And same goes for steam, and British Rail, and... It's almost like they want to doom certain "niches" to fail to so they can focus on constantly doing EMUs on short lines - to exacerbate. And then unload the burden of working on those "red-headed stepchilds" to 3rd party devs.
Yes, what a terrible company they are for not making staff work 24/7. I don't agree with the dropping of specific types of content, but at the same time I am not sure it can be blamed on the staff having time in their day not at work. Edit: sorry got the wrong end of the stick!
I think the suggestion is that important bugfixes should be something that devs are actively assigned to do rather than being left for them to do in the spare time.
Regarding things what I'd call basic functionality, because it affects a lot of services, things like fixing the DPU are things that shouldn't take years to come, especially as "pro bono" work.
Yes, sorry I got the wrong end of the stick! I do agree that bug fixes and that should not be done in spare time but as part of their working day.
It surely doesn’t help that US routes always seem to release with either no safety systems, borked safety systems, or messed up signaling. Freight doesn’t get any safety systems, I understand PTC can’t be done. Boston Sprinter was awful until Brandon saved the day and fixed the signaling. NYT signaling is broken in a lot of areas. Harlem sorta works for the most part- I don’t know it’s been a while. Whereas, that stuff generally works in UK and German content, as a standard. When I load the game up, and decide what route I want to play, very rarely do I land on a US route other than Boston Sprinter. And I say this as an American. Because the experience overall always feels second tier to UK and German routes. Let’s see how LIRR2 works out. I think its a popular route, popular name, and it’s really important to the players that they get it right. And if they don’t then I just don’t have high hopes for US content going forward.
Yeah but where would you run it? Of course you can just layer it onto the existing freight routes, but except Oakville (where Amtrack does not run) I think non have multiple stations, that I can at least drive the train between two stops. A passenger train without a station to stop at is a bit pointless, don't you think?
I feel like one of the big issues at the moment is that on a whole I don't think we can trust a word DTG says whether it be American Freight or Steam they just don't seem to want to level and be honest with their customers about the state of content and their plans going forward. They don't engage enough on the forums with important subjects like this and Steam and when they do its just a half-arsed PR response rather than actually being open. Which leads me to believe they know they're going to be upsetting the community and are trying desperately to bury it all under the rug. Which doesn't work especially well when they're creating new trailers about being an innovative train sim showing all kinds of old and dropped content when they've basically ruled out everything thats 10 years old or more with the excuse of "People don't buy it"
AFAIK, P42 run at max speed over southern parts of the NEC, often to be seen on a VRF cam: there should be more clips like these: , including the bright winter weather with swirling snow and the stream trains shuttling to and fro on the left some San Bernardino Depot action , FanRailer, do we know him from this board or another online community?
It depends. If you're using PZB on german trains, it is also not so easy to control the train. First if you have enough experience with PZB usage you can handle it. And that complexity you have with American trains especially with braking. And American freight trains are slow on montains with gradient with mor than 1,5 % and tide curves. American freight has enough racetracks with 70 mph speedlimit (BNSF Marceline Sub, NS Chichago Line). In Germany you can drive only some freight trains faster (it depends on the the kind of the used rolling stock. And American freight offers a lot of nice land scapes (Maria Pass, Donner Pas and even the Sand Patch Grade). On european routes we have that similar at Vorarlberg and Bernina Line and in the near future at Semmering Bahn. The rest of the European routes is flat country (except RSN, MSB and Maintalbahn) or you drive through tunnels (KWG and LGV Mediterrane).
Both NEC routes seemed pretty much fixed, at least in my experience. Harlem had problems with stuck AI trains, but this doesn't happen anymore either. The route that really needs a signalling/ATC overhaul is LIRR, which was already leaked to get an extension and therefore hopefully a fix. I can't remember the freight routes to have signalling problems. But Germany also has signalling problems, they're often not game breaking but still anoying. Example: DTG always messes up the Auxiliary light (small white light on a signal). On the H/V system it's missing from repeaters whilst it should be on. KS entry signals showing a Drive 60, expect 60 aspect, whilst in real life it would only show Drive 60, as this limit applies until the next signal and the expect 60 is unnecessary. PZB also has some minor faults in some trains. It's not as bad, as i.e. NY-Trenton was, but not as flawless as the UK stuff.
1. If you want me to show a specific part add a timestamp and don't just post a 8h long livestream, I ain't going to search through it. 2. Yes the P40s may run on the NEC, but I don't think it's the right route for that loco. The P42 runs through the entire US, why choose the NEC, if a AEM-7 would be much more fitting for that route? Didn't DTG get references for the P42 back when they did visit Metrolink? Or was it the Charger? Either way, they took reference because they could get access at that time, so they don't have any problems if they want to make that loco. But they aren't planning to do it right now. I think San Bernadino would be a fitting route for a P40, but the routes before weren't suitable.
Sorry about that. I watch those live cams often, but clips cut from the live stream are hard to come by since they don't allow others to do it. I found a clip with a meet between two P42 powered trains at speed, but the most vivid memories are from bright winter weather with a snow cover and the trains swirling up lots of snow. They are at over 100 MpH there, do they? Long routes, long trains are sort of a problem at low speeds. Nobody likes watching 100's of double stack container cars or coal gondolas watch by, either thru the windscreen of his car at the gate of a grade crossing, or in some simulation game.
If it is about immersion, we exactly need that kind of trains. And American freight means not slow speed only. Otherwise it wouldn't be the backbone of the american economy (in opposite to european freight, that has a tiny part of european freight transport only).
Some of these issues can be mitigated by having a keyboard plugged in. That’s certainly the case for cancelling the bell. I would go as far as to say that a keyboard is essential for playing any kind of content in TSW on console. Switching camera views is hopeless with a controller. The only issue I have with cycling the brakes with the square button is that it goes in the wrong order for how I would normally do things. It cycles in the order Dynamic, Independent, Train, Dynamic and so on, whereas when descending a grade, blending brakes, every addition to the train brake requires immediate bailing off of the independent brake and then adjustment of the dynamic brake. So it should cycle the other way for that to be single presses of the square button. Currently, I am quite adept at the double press for nearly every change of active brake I require. The other issue that doesn’t usually affect me is that you require the HUD on to see which brake is active but I usually have the HUD on. In the case of older locos where the selector lever is mapped to what would usually be mapped to the dynamic brake, accidental movement of that because you thought one of the brakes was currently selected can result in the loco cutting out and becoming unrecoverable. I’ve had that happen a few times on Clinchfield. That’s a bold statement to make. There are clearly issues at present but it may not be the end.
Who says, that european rail freight plays a tiny part? Yes the majority of freight is transported by truck, but that's the same in the US. The statistics I found were from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics for the US, and the anual market share report from DB representing Europe. By weight in 2023 7.3% of all freight was transported by rail in the US, whilst Germany had 19% in 2022.
Weight alone doesn't tell you much. The usual measure is weight over distance, i.e. ton-miles or tonne-kilometers. In the US rail accounts for 40% of ton-miles, whereas in Germany railfreight's share is just over 13%.
The German figure was for ton-kilometers. But even 19% is not a tiny part. In fact it's the second largest mode of transport after trucks.I'm just annoyed that some people seem to think they'll get more US routes by diminishing the importance of rail freight in Europe.
But remember that studies have shown that railfreight's high modal share in the US is primarily due to factors outside the railroads' control.
Is There An American Future In Tsw? was the question My answer is No (with some exceptions). considering what I has been read and seen carried out in the last 2 years. So sad that it's become like this in Tsw. You probably have to look for another simulator if you're going to drive like American freight trains in future. There are quite a few of them (but just to Pc I think)
These videos are not of the NEC, but rather the Keystone Corridor between Harrisburg and Philadelphia. The train with the P42 is the Pennsylvanian which runs between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia with diesel power (Pittsburgh to Harrisburg is not electrified), then changes to an electric locomotive in Philadelphia to run with electric power to New York. Currently the Pennsylvanian is one daily train in each direction, but there's funding to increase that to two daily trains. Not a lot of traffic to justify creating a new loco, unfortunately, even if it ran under diesel power over part of the NEC which is modeled in TSW (which it does not).
Think it's the charger. They had some teaser images before tsw4 launched. Other thing to consider is how much additional pieces of rolling stock dtg have to model. The viewliners or superliners aren't used everywhere from what I've heard. Each line seems to have unique consists. I remember Matt explained a while back that there is little interest in a p42 because it only has around 2 services per line and to get 2 more, you have to pay much more, so it's not great value for what you get. He also mentioned the various rolling stock that needs to be modeled. He also did say they are working on other options.
I think freight in any region is pretty much dead in all regions in TSW, which is a shame as I particularly enjoyed the few switching focused routes we had in the past. US content would look a lot healthier if the LIRR route hadn't been delayed by licensing issues. The UK has benefited from 3 routes in TSW4, but 2 of those were from third parties, it would be great if DTG could get a US partner on board, even just one third party developer delivering one additional US route per year would be a great boon to the game. I do wish people would stop blaming consoles for the lack of whatever their favourite thing is, there are way more complex games than TSW that work just fine on consoles, consoles players aren't all just dumbly going 'make train go fast', and anyone who thinks consoles players aren't capable of pressing 2 buttons at the same time clearly hasn't ever even played on a console.
As a German I wished you had right. But since the 1960 the importance of rail freight in western Europe is getting constantly down. You want to hear the reasons? 1. To much influence from the politicians. The result is the making of economicly wrong priorities. The main priority in Germany is passenger rail. A good example is the Schnellfahrstrecke Nürnberg-Erfurt. The priority on that route is Highspeed only. That's why that route has steeper grades than 2 %. So that's why a german freight train can't run there. So that route costs so much money. And exactly that money is missing for investments in freight stock (for instance automatic cupplers) and freight trackage. 2. These priorities lead to cutting the freight trackages. You have a lot of former freight yards that are gone. The area there became to supermarkets or shopping malls. 3. 9 Euro/49 Euro Tickets. That is a monthly fee. For that money you can drive with regional passenger trains as much as you want in Germany. So much more people than usual use that passenger trains. That means the train operators need more rolling stock to handle that bigger amount of passengers. And exactly that money, that comes partially from the state, is missing for investments in freight infrastructure and rolling stock.
Actually Amtrak serves the Oakville Sub daily on its New York Penn to Toronto Union service with stops at Aldershot and Oakville, Maple Leaf (train) - Wikipedia
Without opening a new topic here: The entire rail network was left to rot after the privitisation. No need to blame passenger rail for the decline of freight, that happend all over Europe. After the war the truck grew in importance and so the rail lost it's immense market share. But the figure (19% of all freight is transported by rail) is very true, and it's slowly rising since the early 2010s. The growth is actually limited by the rail network, as it can't handle the amount of trains that would run, if there were capacity. For the last 13 years I have lived in cities which lie on important European rail corridors. It's an immense amount of freight that just goes past here every day. Far more than trucks transport on the highways. So don't blame any old decissions for the poor state today. You should rather be happy, that we're finally modernizing the network and rail freight is growing again.
Personally I would liked to see Peninsula Corridor get a remaster like LIRR is getting. The route has potential to be a top 5 U.S route if it gets a remaster. Personally I like how they did freight services on the route, although they are very limited, I like how they handled the runs down the route and then doing shunting operations and then running back. With how Dovetail is expanding out west, it would be a great route to be re-marketed.
I am not really interested in freight routes. Especially American ones. It just never appealed to me. I guess the lack of U.S routes is down to licensing issues especially with U.S passenger content which is disappointing. I do think that there is a future still for American content even if previous releases were underwhelming to put it lightly
PenCo could also be a candidate for an update representation of the same route, like the two Isle of Wight DLCs. With the electrification and new Stadler KISS trains it's a very new driving experience, but i doubt that enough people would be interested for such a remake to be profitable.
What has one thing to do with the other? Yes I find US freight rather boring to drive in TSW. On the other side I corrected a false statement about the importance of rail freight in Europe. To be clear, I had a problem with the sentencing of "in opposite to european freight, that has a tiny part of european freight transport only", as it isn't a tiny part at all. It may be less significant than it is in the US, but not unsignificant. But do I choose what TSW routes are interesting by their real world economic importance? Of course not. But a route with stops in between (as it happens to European trains far more often) are just more fun to drive in my opinion, as to just set the throttle to Notch 5 and cancel the alerter for the next half hour. There are more challenging and interessting rail lines in America, but for the existing TSW routes that seems to be an overall theme. It's fine if you like these routes more than I do, but if many players have a similar opinion to mine it could be an explination for why we lack US routes now. If you can get proper access to deliver a similar quality as with the newest European content and have a reduced number of buyers, there comes a point where it's no longer profitable.
First of all I like all kind of railroading. In TSW I use all stuff equally if it comes from my homeland Germany ore elsewhere. I like to see the different approaches about railroading. And I think enough other people think similar. I like the variety of freight and passenger action on german and UK routes. My words where a rethorical answer to your harsh opinion about american freight. I think one of the reasons why DTG has a problem with american freight is that TSW has an performance problem. You can see that on Cajon Pass especially. There is only one complete timetable service about the full length of the route. And if you do exactly that timetable, it will crash many times. That is one of the reasons, that we don't have so much substitution.
I have one US freight route: Cajon Pass. I have made a few custom liveries for freight cars, but they never show up at all in any train, and I can't even individually spawn them. Definitely a let down.
The game is filled with American routes. Every version of TSW has multiple US routes. There was just too much US freight compared to passenger routes. That was a complaint for a long time. You can't please everyone it seems. What about the future of Belgian routes? Not seen one so far.
