NTP is my favourite route, despite being unrealistic/broken in various ways. But the aspect that annoys me most, and has become even more unrealistic in TSW2, is the signalling. Red is supposed to mean danger – stop/train in section ahead/the signals are faulty, etc. But in NTP (TSW2 version especially) we often find red signals used to make things more challenging or to prevent trains departing stations too early, which I can’t imagine ever happens in real life. This is a journey I just made (in timetable mode) using a class 101 from Manchester-Leeds. We depart Manchester 19 minutes behind a class 47 which is only stopping at Stalybridge/Huddersfield/Dewsbury, which we have no chance of catching up, and there are no trains in the opposite direction which need to use the same section of track as us, so it should be greens all the way. Since this is TSW2, there are no freight trains either yet. At Miles Platting, the signal at the end of the platform is red. There is no reason for this as the track ahead is clear. We stop, complete passenger boarding, and wait until we are scheduled to leave. At that point the signal turns green. This is considerably more annoying than the same journey in TSW2020, where the signal cleared as soon as we stopped, presumably to make the stop more of a challenge. In TSW2, it’s clearly trying to stop us leaving too early too. At Park, Ashton and Stalybridge, exactly the same thing happens. There’s no reason whatsoever why any of these signals should be red. At Mossley and Greenfield, we stop with a green signal ahead of us (some distance away). At Marsden, the platform signal is on red for no reason. At Slaithwaite, the signal a few hundred yards beyond the platform is on green as it should be. The platform signal at Huddersfield is red. At Deighton, the signal 800 yards beyond the platform is red. It only clears when it’s time for us to depart. At Mirfield, the platform signal is single yellow. The next signal down the line is on red, and this only clears to green when it’s time for us to leave Mirfield. At Ravensthorpe, the signal after the platform is on red when we stop at the station, but the signal is 1.4 miles away. The same thing happens at Batley, with the red signal being 1.3 miles away. At Dewsbury, the platform signal is on red. At Morley, the platform signal is double yellow. Why aren’t all of these signals green as they would be in real life? At least in TSW2020, all of these red platform signals cleared as soon as you stopped at them. In TSW2 there are more of them, and they only clear when it’s the scheduled time for you to leave.
The same is happening for the RE services on RRO. It was the same in 2020, so the preserved collection is no reason there, but I would assume that there is an issue with the dispatcher, that only plans the route until the next stop and then only updates when the "mission" is completed. Why it is like that, not sure, but I hope that gets fixed across DLCs, as I agree with you in that it is very annoying to play like that...
