Hello! I became super fascinated with all the amazing timetables coming out recently so I decided to jump head-first into making one of my own! After a lot of trial and error I'm starting to understand the editor's ways. Currently, I'm looking at making a revised NTP Timetable featuring the plethora of stock we've gained over the years. Here are some very early screenshots of what's going on so far. Sneak peek at the timetable. Lots of stuff is hidden at the moment but here are some DMU services and some specialty services! All are subject to changes and tweaks! A few shots of static stock at Manchester Victoria, based on pictures and the "Bury Line Works" which is my way of hiding the empty tracks lol. ill update this thread with services and what content will be included as they happen. Please don't expect this anytime soon I want to take my time with it and make sure it's really good! Please give feedback! Good or bad!! Or if you've spotted something in the timetable that you think I'm doing inefficiently please let me know!
I am very excited for this timetable! NTP has so much potential, and I'm glad you are making a timetable so I don't have to. A few thoughts about timetable organization, as you move forward: Make sure you finalize your service title format and descriptions before you copy-and-paste them to fill out the timetable. Check carefully for spelling and consistency, like "NNNN London to Brighton" versus "NNNN London-Brighton". These can't be batch-edited later if you make a mistake that propagates through copy-paste. It's helpful to group the service nodes for each consist in a comment box, so you can move them around easily as required. You will likely have to batch-edit timetable nodes as you refine your timetable, such as changing "dispatch beyond" tickboxes or "lock doors to complete". Try aligning them so you can select them with with a long-click and drag rectangular selection box, either in columns of all Go To or Load/Unload orders, or by putting Go To above the corresponding Load/Unload instruction. You will thank me later. Don't forget to use layers with DLC requirements, so that a player without a DLC or two can load the route without those layers, instead of crashing the game. In order for "spawn on foot" to work properly and for all trains to show up in the menu, you can only use formations that are in your plugin. You can copy these from formations on other routes, but the timetable can only reference formations in your plugin. Those formations need the DLC/plugin requirements listed, even the ones which ship with the NTP route, or they might not appear in the menu for all players. (The requirement to put in the textbox is the name of the plugin, which you can find in the content browser.) And a few thoughts/questions about timetabling itself: How are you calculating arrival/departure and dwell times? For my ECW timetable I followed the WTT exactly, with a default 30 second dwell time if not otherwise noted. However, I set the minimum Load/Unload time to 20 seconds, so trains can make up time with shorter station stops -- keeping time is tricky sometimes especially with the poor braking of the 313! Avoiding delays at junctions requires careful use of the "dispatch beyond" tickbox. At Lewes, I often leave it unticked for the Go To instruction, and tick it on the Load/Unload order. The driver will stop on a red signal, then it will clear. But if a train has a long timetabled dwell time (up to 8 minutes sometimes), I'll leave it unticked, untick "close doors to complete," and add a second Load/Unload instruction with a 1 second time, no load/unload, and both "dispatch beyond" and "close doors to complete," just to prompt the signal to clear before the driver closes the doors (the rulebook prohibits closing the doors on a red signal to prevent start-away SPADs). I am happy to explain any of this more, or just send you my uncooked timetable for reference. I am also happy to look over your timetable file, if you'd like another pair of eyes.
For now the first rendition is based on the current timetable with some tweaks, this is just while i learn how to use everything. Id very much like to use it as a base to fully recreate a different timetable in the future though!
Ooooh thank you for this! There are lots people don't warn you about when making stuff like this so it's nice to have a helping hand. Once I've made a little more progress I'm happy to send my stuff across!
I'd imagine the tweaks would have to be fairly major in order to make them achievable by NTP's stock. Working timetables back to 1994 are publicly available if you want something closer to NTP's time period.
