Hi y'all, I wanted to share some information about way speeds for freight trains are regulated in Germany. Most of the details are applicable for the rest of mainland Europe and maybe even the British Isles and America. But as I don't have any experience with train planning and preparations in these countries, I can't confirm that. I can also understand that the problem is pretty nitpicky and you probably don't care, but as TSW is meant to be a simulator, I'd like things to be similar to real life. The issue I have is that TSW is most often incorrect about the max. speed with German freight trains. As an example, I will be using the 35545 service on Nahverkehr Dresden (DRA) using the BR 193 Vectron. Older routes would just show you the max. track speed, but on routes like DRA it is limited to the max. train speed. So if you'd just drive the train with the information the game gives you, you'd assume your max. speed would be 120km/h. This coincides with the PZB display showing a 70, meaning we are in the medium train category, which is in fact limited to 120km/h. But if we now take a look at the configuration display we can see, that the loco is set up in brake timing G (freight/slow). Trains in timing G are automatically limited to the lower train category (55) with a max. speed of 100km/h. Now let's say that the brake timing is just a bug and we set it to P (all cars are automatically set to P). Now we take a glance at the freight cars we are pulling. As we can see by the UIC classification Eanos (s → permitted for 100km/h) the cars are only certified for 100km/h. For a quick determination of the max. speed this is enough, as I will show further below by actually calculating the permittable speed, the train is allowed to run at 100km/h max. These are always the settings and information I will look at before I start to drive a German freight train. This is also necessary, as you might be driving a heavy train, which isn't able to stop in time if running >100km/h. Whilst I don't want DTG to implement all of the calculations below to determine the max. train speed, it would be nice if at least the legal limits of the rolling stock would be considered. As a rule of thumb: Most freight trains in Germany run at 100km/h loaded and 120km/h empty. The big exception is intermodal trains (containers, rolling highways, etc.) which run at 120km/h. Some really heavy trains are also only permitted at speeds between 80-95km/h. Nerd stuff (calculating the train speed): Now as we saw above, the cars are only certified to run at 100km/h. But if we look further right we can find the load limit table, which also lists 120km/h. This table indicates what the max. load and speed for the different rail line classes. As we can see it lists some different weights for S (100km/h) and a weight of 0t for 120km/h, meaning this car is permitted to run at 120km/h unloaded. Normally there would be two or three stars next to the table, indicating that the car can run at 120km/h but is only equipped with brakes for 100km/h. If such a railcar is mixed with other 120km/h cars and there is enough braking capacity throughout the train to compensate for the lack of performance in this car, the train is allowed to run at 120km/h. DRA is a class D4 (D→22.5t axle load; 4→8t/m line load), meaning the Eanos can load its maximum capacity of 63.9t. From the pause menu, we can determine that we have 23 freight cars (24-1 loco) and a total train weight of 2055.5t. The cars are loaded. On the loco, we can find the total weight of the loco (89t). We subtract this weight from the train weight to get the weight of the individual cars: 2055.5t - 89t = 1966.5t / 23 = 85.5t/car Now we take a look at the cars to determine an empty weight of 26.05t/car. 85.5t/car - 26.05t = 59.45t/car This means the cars are within the legal load limits. For the further calculations, we'll be using the braking weight. This is a value indicating the performance of the brake by giving a value in tons, which the brake is able to stop in a given distance. This system was implemented in 1936, based on the braking performance of a test train (which set the mark for the distance). We will need the braking weight to determine the braking ratio on which the train category for the PZB is based. All the cars are automatically set to timing P, which means the cars will use the maximum capable force. The cars use a KE-GP-A brake. (KE → Knorr (manufacturer) Einheitsventil (unity valve); GP (available brake timings); A → Automatische Lastabbremsung (automatic load braking). This means the cars automatically switch to the higher brake setting when loaded (no need to check for force switches on the cars). As seen on the cars themselves, the max. brake weight is 58t. The loco was spawned in brake timing G. But as all the cars are set to P and we want to get the highest possible speed, we set the timing on the loco to P. In timing P the loco has a braking weight of 95t. (setting R is only used on passenger trains) Now we add these values together to get the braking weight of the entire train: 58t * 23 = 1334t + 95t = 1429t Now we divide this weight through the train weight to get the braking ratio: 1429t / 2055.5t = 0.695 → Braking value of 69.5. The braking values for train category M are 66 to 110 (all below is U, all above is O). This means our train is allowed to run at 100km/h in train category M (70).
I believe you are mixing two things up, here. You have to differentiate between the simple brake setting of your train and the filed timetable. In case your timetable is requested to be in G, you would be correct. In this case your whole consist would be set to brake setting G. However, in this case your train would be sett to LL (have a look at the attached file on this post:#264), which means that your loco is set to G and the first five cars as well. Due to limitations in TSW, DTG can not set individual cars to different brake settings, so they have decided that the consist is set to the more prominent setting on all cars and if you care, you can get virtually outside to correct them. BTW, the whole thread is quite interesting and goes into all sorts of detailed aspects of driving freight trains in Germany: https://forums.dovetailgames.com/th...n-driving-freight-trains-realistically.44532/ You are right, however, I believe DRA does not limit for individual trains. I believe this was introduced mainly for the background of LZB, where the game must somehow limit the speed when under LZB supervision. But I don't know that for a fact!
