Just curious, if you're going into Free Mode to just watch a nice variety of AI traffic (as opposed to driving or riding along), what would be your favorite recommendations? Routes? Variety? Frequency? Best viewing locations?
Boston South Station approach Southeastern Highspeed at Dartford and Strood London Commuter: London Victoria Bakerloo Line Queen's Park Naverkehr Dresden: Dresden Neustadt If you are lucky enough to have trainspotted in a real-life location that has been represented in TSW, you can try and recreate the activity as accurately as possible (exact locations and timings). Since this is a simulator, I like to watch trains from locations inaccessible in real life. For example, at Boston South, instead of standing on the platform, head onto the junctions and signals and watch the trains trundle past your head.
I quite like seeing virtual trains at Preston. I'd also suggest Harrow & Wealdstone, but it doesn't have any of the WCML trains yet.
I also like standing at london victoria on bml and watching the 465, 375, 377 and 387 going about there duties. Such a busy station. Its awesome
Hamburg station is for sure one of the best. Its always busy and the variety of trains coming and going is great. German routes have the advantage just because of the variety of services and substitutions on most of the routes (assuming you own a lot of the German DLC at least, to activate all the layers). Dresden being another great example. As far as the UK goes find the Glasgow Central on the new 380 timetable the closest thing to rivalling the German stations... with all the relevant DLC you get to see 380s, 170s, 314s,158s, 385s, 801s, and the Scotsman coming and going all day. London Victoria is also great of course because of just how much traffic is there in game but I prefer the variety of Glasgow. On SEHS there is the spot where the slower commuter line (I don't know the correct name for it but in game it runs from Dartford to Faversham) crosses over top of HS1, which I find to be a cool spot seeing the traffic on both lines. SEHS is cool because you have Railbow and the Medway 395s, which in game correctly appear on just one unit and its fun to keep an eye out for them (they don't repeat like some of the other special liveries that can exist a few times in game even though in real life they should be one unit, i.e. the TSW2 ACS-64 livery on unit 662 that can exist multiple times in a session). For the US I find Boston fun to watch at the approach. With Amtrak Sprinters, Acela, and MBTA coming off multiple lines, not to mention stuff coming to and from the nearby depot and turnaround loop. Then of course Horseshoe Curve where you can spawn right into the park and it looks quite accurate to real life (I've been there). It would be nice to have more variety in what locos exist there in game but it is what it is.
Take a walk to the top of the hill at the end of the Meißen branch of Nahverkehr Dresden - It’s a beautiful view! Starts at 1:32:00 on this video: https://www.youtube.com/live/J8rMQ1nx18c?si=Qeka6e_v0hbxC6J1
For variety Bemen or Oldenburg. Plenty of traffic and a lot of service variety. Nice timetable to play, also for railfaning
with the 2024 timetable mod it's even better. I just keep looking when I shunt in bremen. every time I go back or forth along the different storage tracks one to three trains at a time run past me on the main line. from freight with different vectrons, 155's and traxxes with all the CC liveries to boot, to 624's, ICE's and dosto's in DB red, IC2 and Metronom colors to see. it's become the german railscene I've been dreaming a route to have. and it keeps being updated with more and more services.
If you don’t care about virtual trespassing then there’s lots of specific places, but a few I can think of right now: the bridge west of Strood station on the SEHS Somewhere just north of Battersea Park station on the BML
i agree on this one i sometimes stand by the carriege sheds but i postion myself so I can see the station
With the Thameslink mod, east croydon is really busy on bml. Or if you head back towards London along the track and stand on one of the embankments you can see a lot of traffic on the various lines passing over and under eachother.
