I don't know about you, but my Imagination is running wild with what to do with FreeRoam first. That's why I thought I would ask you what you plan to do with FR. I have already noticed that most people here want to take revenge on the AI for many years of torture. My Ideas. -Freight Run on Passenger only Routes (Rapid Transit) -2x DB BR 110 with Dostos in Sandwich Formation. -Traveling through Cajon Pass with a Passenger Train (F125)
Vectron & IC cars on basically every German route. 142 across NTP & TVL. I mean honestly, everything everywhere, Free roam in service mode will basically kill Scenario Planner for me. It’s abit of a shame because I feel that DTG should have done more with Scenario Planner, but on the other hand, Free Roam makes me not care about it. Just need to hold out for the consist creator.
thank you for making the thread cus I wanted to but thought it was a stupid idea (not saying that your idea is stupid lmao) - Vectron on various different routes including french and swiss to test power system - steam locos (mainly TTC 8F and F.-Scotsman) and doing railtours on german routes examplewise - lots of shunting (possibly Vectron again. bro the Vectron is the only DE E-Loco im going to use now besides the Taurus cus I love music) - imitating Flixtrain using Vectron and IC cars (after release because early access doesn't have the DLCs ported yet, sadly) until we get an enhancement pack which includes a flixtrain livery for the Vectron, so I can use that and the flixtrain CC liveries for the IC cars to make some formations with the formation planner blablabla - speed test mayhem on highspeed routes without AI traffic acting stupid, and I don't want to make scenarios for a single speed test duh - fill all tracks with trash so AI traffic has issues Code: >:) - idk I'm running out of ideas but I'm sure I'll get more when I am playing TSW4!
GWE has some unused freight sidings, I can't wait to use my Class 66 to pick up and drop of some wagons in them,
Continous shifts on S-Bahn lines with changing at the ends Picking up light freights from factory branch lines, taking them to stations, changover to mainline locos to continue Loco run-arounds anywhere Gegengleis shenanigans (Germany has very complex rules for driving on left-most track) Seeing what uncommon signals are implemented in game, replacement signals Rescuing stranded trains Complex shunting
Back and forth steam on WSR with run around at minehead instead of having to do it on 2 separate scenario planners
-Attempting to run the Union Pacific Local on Antelope Valley. -Adding a BNSF ES44C4 to the front of a Metrolink train to see if I can simulate when they leased BNSF AC44s due to issues with the Rotems -Attempting to run the RVUSV (Rock train Vulcan Palmdale - Sun Valley)
It's going to be Diesels on the Steam routes for me. I have both of them. I like the routes, but I have come to the realisation I don't like driving steam trains. So I can't wait to get driving my classic BR diesels along those routes.
I am going to steal that little Class 08 parked outside Brighton and take it for a ride on the mainline, this time with no annoying red lights on my way. Another thing i may do is drive an all stop from Brighton to Victoria, give some life to those poor ghost stations. I never understood why even the scenario planner didnt let us do that. Idk what else, probably just messing around for fun.
Fill up main stations with stock and take photos using the new camera and later run the upcoming class 142 on TVL alongside the timetable.
I'm probably going to go to each map in turn and using I light loco go all over the map putting wagons etc in all the yards and Sidings, then save it and then spend forever making up long trains and moving it all about the map, Boring to some but fun to me, it's going to take forever to get through all my routes ! Some of the silly stuff will be like on "London Commuter" getting all the stock to berth in Selhurst Depot. Or filling up New York Penn with freight trains, although I'm not sure if the intermodel stock will fit in the tunnels ! Only one way to find out !!
Loving hearing about these (and if you have the chance to record/share them, we'd love to see the more wacky ideas you have!)
Free mode is going to make all past and future routes that may have been of lesser interest now far more useable, we're going to have to look at these with a different perspective.
Get ready for a read. The obvious answer, and one which I'll give, is a Flying Scotsman world tour. She'll first tour through Germany (at least the routes I do have as I don't massively collect them as I do with others), then she'll return to the UK by thundering up HS1 out from the channel tunnel. From there a trip around several UK routes to have a little break before the big event of crossing the seas over to America and working in a south-west direction, starting in Boston and ending in San Francisco. I might end up recording and uploading the full tour in installments route by route, or maybe collapse two routes in together if the run wasn't so interesting. For most of the tour on the Europe/UK side Scotsman will have a diesel coupled at the rear of the train to aid in reversing movements, current aim is to make this a WSR Class 47 to keep with the overall colour scheme. The route plan I'm working with has been coordinated to follow realistic patterns, so not just jumping from Glascow to Reading for example, but going to places where rail connections between the routes actually exist. So as it stands right now, this is my current route plan: Block 1: South of England West Cornwall Local: Penzance - St Austel. Might make it a duet with a LMS Jubilee. West Somerset Railway: Bishops Lydeard - Minehead. Will meet up with a few other locos there in a bit of a gala. West Somerset Railway: Minehead - Bishops Lydeard. Probably will be folded into the same video. Great Western Express: Reading - Acton Main Line. London Commuter: London Victoria - Brighton. Might first show a turning around movement, will have to look into where it could be done. East Coastway: Brighton - Seaford - Brighton London Commuter: Brighton - East Croydon Southeastern High Speed: Dartford - Faversham - London St Pancras - Ashford Itnl. From here the Scotsman will be left to shut down and will be pulled by electric traction through the channel tunnel and over to Germany. Block 2: Germany Coverage of Germany won't be as thorough as I don't own every route. Schnellfahrstrecke Köln - Aachen: Aachen - Köln Hauptstrecke Rhein-Rhur: Duisburg - Bochum Kassel-Wilhemlshöhe - Würzburg: Kassel - Würzburg Main-Spessart Bahn: Gemünden - Aschaffenburg Tharandter Rampe: Chemnitz - Dresden. May or may not be included, don't currently own but do plan to get. Nahverker Dresden: Dresden - Meißen - Dresden - Riesa Schnellfahrstrecke Köln - Aachen: Köln - Aachen Block 3 - Mid & North of England Southeastern High Speed: Ashford Itnl - London St Pancras. Might be pulled by electric traction as though returning direct from Europe. East Coast Main Line: Peterborough - Doncaster. Midland Main Line: Nottingham - Leister Birmingham Cross City: Litchfield Trent Valley - Bromsgrove - Birmingham New Street Midland Main Line: Leister - Derby Peak Forest: Ambergate - Chinley Glossop Line: Hyde North - Manchester Picadilly. From here will travel southbound to Crewe. Spirit Of Steam: Crewe - Liverpool Lime Street - Edge Hill Northern Transpennine: Manchester Victoria - Leeds Tees Valley Line: Darlington - Saltburn - Darlington Spirit Of Steam: Edge Hill - Ditton. From here Scotsman will board a ship for a long ride overseas. Block 4 - America Boston Sprinter: Boston - Providence. From here Scotsman will travel to New York, over Hell's Gate Bridge and go via Fresh Pond Junction. Long Island Railroad: Jamaica - Hicksville - New York Penn Northeast Corridor: New York Penn - Trenton Horseshoe Curve: Atloona - Johnstown. From here Scotsman will take one of the single track coal lines to Rockwood. Sand Patch Grade: Rockwood - Cumberland Yard Sherman Hill: Cheyenne - Larmie Cane Creek: Thompson Springs - Crescent Junction. Will likely be folded into Sherman Hill. Cajon Pass: Barstow - San Bernardo Antelope Valley Line: Los Angeles - Lancaster Peninsula Corridor: San Jose - San Francisco After all that I might do a sort of 'parts that we missed' tour, going over the lines the tour didn't cover like Eastbourne, the Scottish routes and so on. Asides from all that, the rest of my time with Free Roam mode will probably be filled with freight trains going all sorts of places. One thing I'm interested to do is take trains up lines that don't normally get used by the player, like all the extra yards on TVL and SOS.
It will also make running freights much more interesting. In reality, only a fraction of freights are timetabled for full year, there are many introduced on-demand when needed, and these run often in low priority. Long mainlines like LFR or RSN could be interesting for some leapfrogging from one station to another. You will also have all the needed time to set up the train and brakes, and use some more interesting sidings..
On NTP I want to run a local shuttle service from Manchester Victoria to the bay platform at Stalybridge. It would also be nice to finally work those vans back to Newton Heath from Leeds. OnTees Valley I'd love to do some trip freights to sidings that are never used. It would be great if they could unlock access to Middlesbrough docks and other lineside industries. I assume if we can't walk there we won't be able to drive there. Something else I'm going to do is drive freights through Middlesbrough on the goods lines behind the station which only get used in one scenario if I remember correctly.
On SEHS: always wanted to ride freight train on HS1, so my idea is to: Spawn Class 66 in Dartford with some freight wagons; Drive it to Hoo Junction, drop the cargo there and spawn/pick-up another, on the other side of the branch so I would have to pass main line to pick it up; Drive it to London St Parncas, spawn another Class 66 at the end of the train and go on HS1 to Ashford. I would like to make a stop at that branch which is on the way on HS1 (don't remember after which station now, but it has a lot of conteiner freight wagons there and one Class 08) but I don't know if it is accessible. For SKW: Spawn light loco in Wurzburg/Fulda, then run it to one of the "branches" on the way, then spawn ICE1/3, couple light loco to it and haul it to Kassel to imitate rescue run for ICE major malfuntion. Another idea is to also spawn light loco and collect all those pair of Habbiins wagons you passing by when running ICE1/3, and bring them home, they are staying there long enough
Using the EMD F125 from Antelope Valley Line on other US Mountain Passes Finally visiting the Power Station on Ruhr Sieg Nord
I want to see if I can access some of the track on SOS down by the Harbour and see if I can have a little shunt around with the 4F and maybe try an Inglenook style puzzle. Or failing that do a nice bit of shunting in some of the station Goods yards on SOS and PFR with the 4F.
Funnily enough I was just driving a Javelin service as I read this so I decided to check for you. From the looks of things the yard on HS1 is accessible but only in one direction, the only yard entrance onto HS1 faces eastbound when leaving the yard so coming from St Pancras you'd have to stop further up the line and reverse back into the yard, crossing onto the up track on the way. Depending on how long your train is though I'm not sure it will fit in the track that's there before you reach the end of the layout, I doubt they built much beyond the tunnel entrance. That being said, I'm probably going to lose my license for this but I stopped on the line there to test things for you. I was able to walk right up into the yard without any end of route screens, and I drove around a little in one of the idle locos that appear there. So from what I can gather provided there's enough room for the shunting, you might be in luck.
You really are going to upset so so many people with that ha But you can do better, try and come up with a more heinous combination
Just done an all stop ECML run with the 323, hats off to DTG, this feature is one of the best things they’ve added to the series.
Have a question. On free roam can you set more than one destination. So if I wanted to stop at every station can I set the path or is it just final destination?
This is my biggest gripe with it, it’s just one destination, with no options for anything between. You can add a go via, but this doesn’t translate to an objective, so you cannot use it as a waypoint or anything, it just forces the dispatcher to re-route you. So for a passenger service, you need to know where the stations are on the map & mark the first one as your end point, when you get to that, mark the next one and so forth.
Yes multiple stops would really be fantastic! As it is it's a great addition- just had a great run on ECML with the TTC 323- can't wait for my full collection to be available to use.
I haven't really got time to try it out fully, but free roam for mw is THE feature of this release. It's something that i wanted to see for so long as its simply breaks the limitations we had. There is so much stuff i want to do in TSW since release, but couldn't as their were either no services or possibilities in scenario planner 1.0 Take Everlingsen Kraftwerk on RSN as one example: I can set up a freight train at Finnentrop, drive down to Werdohl and there i can spawn a 363 shunter to take over and bring the wagons to the Powerplant. Then i actually can take those wagons back, forming a new train and can take this all the way down to Hagen freight yard. Or take action at the yards on DRA at Coswig or Riesa for example. Chemnitz Heizhaus at Hilbersdorf, we can recreate a festive there (especially when the BR 52 Steam-engine is coming to TSW....as im pretty sure thats one of the next german locos 'we dont know anything about it yet' ) So many options to do things 'outside' the box. This feature will truly be a revolution on how we play tsw. Cant wait to get my hands on all of the content in a few days. And then of course just waiting for the consist creator, this will be awsome !
And now my anticipation for free roam has died a bit, as accoding to someone on the TSC discord, some of the sidings on Antelope Valley are apparently blocked by a kill box that kick you out if you enter them.... Such a buzzkill... Thought we've learned this lesson with Oakville, I guess not.
Select your train on map, select to set its destination, place its destination, you can also add in “go via” by clicking on the train on the map afterwards.
The ideas I have are unlimited for US routes Using Canadian route for industrial pick ups and deliveries. Using Norfolk Southern or CSX for it. Running modernized trains on CRR Route (Beautiful Scenery!)
Oak ville has sooooo much unused track it saddens me. Wish they would go back and open up a bit more.
I can see myself deleting the path for AI trains effectively making them 'broken down and stuck'. Then going to use a loco. to rescue them and run a seperate replacement service. The holdup will delay the entire timetable so more red & yellows along the way ! So many yards to shunt around. So many sidings to populate. All the odd formations to drive. Railhead treatment for all British routes... ( and a lot more )
