It depends as in reality some trains take ages to load or unload. There’s a stone terminal at Wootton Bassett not far from here and we’ve passed there on a walk when the train from Merehead or Whatley is in. The process consists of drawing forward at 2 MPH for each hopper to unload which in reality takes longer than depicted in game, maybe 4 or 5 minutes. So a 20 wagon train is going to take something like 100 minutes to unload with all the driver involvement moving the consist forward 30 feet every five minutes or so. Not the most exciting of tasks.
Voted "No" as there are plenty of other things that need sorting out before you add one more piece of complexity to the Jenga tower. (PS Other planks are available). Voted "No" as there are plenty of other things that need sorting out before you add one more piece of luggage to the Buckaroo mule. (PS Other donkeys are available).
The other absolutely tedious implementation of loading and unloading in the game is those tank cars on Oakville. First time it crops up the driver has to unrealistically climb on top of the tank cars and do it themselves. Subsequent occasions you park the tanks then the game tells you to wait 20 minutes while the AI counts down the unloading process. About the most tedious and boring gameplay element the scenario designer could have conceived. Run 8 does it better with its industry function where you stable the cars and leave them for several hours or even days while continuing the ongoing emergent gameplay doing other things. When enough are ready at the various locations you do another industry run to pick up the outgoing cars. Take them back to the yard or hump and sort into various manifest consists.l
I like the unloading scenario on GWE, and ECW has some good loading jobs too. If they are like that, then I'm all for it.
Some Tees Valle services do this. Although I found it more tedious than an hour long bus stop service.
I mean Steel to Lackenby technically gets loaded, you take empties in, and take loaded coils and beams out. All we need are shunting there.
I want this for the German routes because as far as I know those German routes don't have loading and unloading scenarios for freight trains
I would love to see a route with a functioning coal merry-go-round, ideally hauled by a Class 58 in railfreight coal livery. There is a lot of potential to expand the ancillary roles on the railway, maybe a scenario where you are driving the motor vehicles onto a car transporter, you could then follow it up with a 'normal' scenario where you are hauling those wagons. Basically lots more freight and activity within those freight yards please.
They have them on various maps (coal, gravel, ethanol, ore, etc) They are just very limited and specific to just one map usually. So the tech is there. The code is there. It's just not implemented well. They also don't do much specific "end to end" where you load, drive and unload (or put on a specific siding) A FEW exceptions exist, like the coaching moves on WSR and the split up multi-part coal runs on SPG. Those are the exception not the rule however. Again, everything already exists in game to do this. They just.... don't. Instead you tend to start with a loaded train on a mainline, drive the mainline, and stop the train in the middle of the mainline. This would be the equivalent of passenger routes that don't stop at stations or have passengers. That is how freight should be improved. It's not a matter of tech or coding, etc. It's a matter of scenario/timetable/route design which is low hanging fruit. It's JUST above community creator level stuff, so it's more a matter of time and desire rather than any technical reason preventing more investment in realistic rail operations.
One of the more engaging options would be to have a generic container terminal where the player must use the big crane to pick up, place and form a consist of shipping containers. With the new 20ft’s, plus throw in 45’s and the tank ones, it could become quite a fun puzzle to solve.. plus it would sell the idea of a freight only add-on! There’s so many potential options for routes, and it realistically only needs one terminal on the route to make sense.
There was missed opportunities on Cajon Pass (Grain and Cement) and Antelope Valley (Rock) There is also container loading/unloading, but I don't think that would be as interactive as loose aggregate loads, as at least in the large container yards in the US, I believe the cars are spotted by the railroad, then the yard just loads/unloads them as such from there.
