Specifically this goes out to Matt... I'm currently playing through First Moss Turn. I decided to set it to über slippery with full snow and full wetness with light snowfall and lowish cloud cover. I picked up all my wagons and was pleasantly surprised when I had around 60+ coupled as this is a lot for TSW and performance didn't suffer at all. I then got to part 3 and tried to ascent the 2% grade... This was impossible! I tried twice and just wasn't getting anywhere, I even had a near SPAD rolling back down the hill. Anyway I had a look at the map and noticed some sidings ahead and took a punt. Luckily there are no signals at the sidings so its easy to play around up there and no trains coming back the other way as its a single track branch line. I split the consist in two at the point of the signal at the bottom of the ascend. I took the first bunch up and parked them on the northern siding, flipped it in reverse and collected the second bunch. To be clear this wasn't easy - even splitting the train up still created a challenge as the tracks are slippery, the incline is great and the two individual consists are quite heavy by their own right. Once finally at the top I reassembled the train, ensuring I kept it in the order I collected it at the bottom of the run, and got back on the main branch to hit the objective point. Now this probably took two or three times longer than planned but it was so great having to use critical thinking to get this scenario working. Later rewatching a stream I saw from Matt that this reduced power scenario wasn't intended and was due to an oversight in not realising the consist would end up so heavy. It made me think - we really need more scenarios like this. They really add a new dimension to the game and get you thinking about how to do things instead of just following markers. I'd love to see this kind of gameplay get implemented in future. Give us a difficult task, some freedom and let us think our way through it. If you'd like to try this scenario you can either start by playing First Moss Turn (the difficulty comes at Part 3 but its more fun to play it from the start if you have time), set everything to slippy and see how you go. As a little hint, make sure you split your consist in such a way that at least one car is ahead of the signal on the 2% incline otherwise you will get a SPAD trying to retrieve the second part of your train. I've attached a map to show what I mean. Anyways I've written an essay - Peace Out!
That is *really* interesting to read and amazing to see the ingenuity and creativity of solving the problem - really well done
