Horseshoe Curve - Definitive Feedback Thread

I've decided to refund the DLC (well once Steam decides to cooperate).

I fired up a service, to test out how well it runs going up a hill based on the comments I've seen. I always go back and properly set up the train for MU and DPU setup since at least the MU setup is wrong (for realism, it works in game though).
I got the 3 lead locos set up. Noticed that at least the 3rd MU wasn't playing audio. I want to say the middle ES44 wasn't either, but it's really hard to tell. So that's a great start. Hit the banking comm switch and then I switched via 3 camera to the DPUs. No audio at all. Switched back to the front, they also lost all audio. Fantastic. Restarted the engine to get audio back and noticed the start/stop audio is the same crap from the AC4400. Went back to menu and started again...
Second time:
Lead locos set up, and tried again using 3 camera to get to the DPUs. They have audio this time, great. Guess what, can't open the window from the outside to mess with the controls. So I go back to the front, and walk all the way back. By the time I get all the way back to the rear units, no audio. But I carry on. When I got back to the front, the lead 3 still had audio, and using the 3 camera returned the audio to the DPUs. So I set off. It's a little slow to get started, so I go back to the rear units and find they're not actually powered. I know the banking comm was on, the "lead" rear unit was set up, properly, but the tractive effort bar stayed at zero.
I ran another test, this time changing the order of when I hit the banking comm button, and it worked. So it seems, unlike the other US locos, when you hit the banking comm button during setup is crucial to whether or not it works. Never had a problem before.


Honestly, while I don't own any Rivet products, from what I've seen they at least try to do things themselves and be creative. Skyhook on the other hand, grabs the same garbage that's been around forever in the DTG content library, adds a few basic things and releases the recycled content. I'm done.

 

I have the same audio problem, no engine sounds after a few minutes. Really sad.

 

crash to desktop around Gallitzin heading west. first CTD ever in this game. very disappointed.

~ no mods ~
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That would explain it, or at least make it more prototypical than having to build air from scratch. That was always my annoyance with Sherman Hill, I don't think the ends of the route are both terminals where every train is built new so every train shouldn't have to build air from scratch, but I digress.

Did a first short grain run Altoona - Creston and all went well. Going to explore some more but so far so good.

 

Is it just me or the ES44AC's Dynamic Brake is too strong compared to the SMH SD70ACe's one. It create much braking effort even on lowest settings (1-3).

 

Dynamic brakes use old regulation from AC44CWs. You simply can't control it nice and gentle like on SD70.
On AC44CW from 24%-30% it don't react but over 31% it start rise braking effort from 20+ to 60+ (very odd)

 

Aaahhh i see, i personally hope the GEVOS utilize SD70ACe overall physics.

 

I really like that idea of a useable clipboard chieflongshin!

 

I’ve only played the route introduction and driven to the first waypoint in the very first timetable route. First impression is that I like the route very much indeed; I’m no expert on what track signs are correct or not, or for that matter if certain US locomotive sounds are right, I’ll leave that to those guys who are in the know! My initial observation is that the shipping containers in the freight consists seem very brightly coloured, hopefully someone clever will be able to alter them to something more realistic in appearance!
Other than that, I really like the route

 

Some of you may find this YouTube review helpful and or interesting!

 

Really good video about the route here too with the devs

 

I was afraid of that. I want to love this route but the more reports I’m reading, the more it seems like the ES44AC is just a mess overall: Wrong or not playing sounds, no ditch light flash, copied MFDs, SPG instead of SMH physics, …

 

While you might have a problem with MU setup, checking AI trains is not a good measure as they don't run physics and are basically going linespeed up the hill.

 

This pretty much sums up my experience from yesterday evening - I was confused and yeah ... a little bit frustrated how much I AM doing wrong. First, I thought "oh my god I choke the engine and need to start up the loco again" - it took me around 30 minutes (including watching diesel fume from the external cameras) to realize the engine is ok but the loco just plays no audio (it did as I began) ... I needed rest

 

For Dynamic Brakes, numbers feels way too high...
GEVO sounds are nothing more than a 'nice try'. Pretty close to what I whas expecting hearing GEVO but not enough rumbling and of low quality at all, in my opinion.
But - this DLC is a pleasurable experience. SPG like, but not SH like (improved physics) feel. BR o7

PS The scenery is Skyhook'ish good (forests icluded). Feels like very hand-crafted.

 

Restarting the game helps for me with this issue
WELCOME to the club with re-starting loco /o\

 

There is certainly audio issues with this DLC, poor effort from Skyhook again.....hopefully the issues can be resolved quickly

 

Is it worth parting £24.99 when I have an unfinished Sherman and sandpatch?

 

Depends how much you like long slow US freight really. It's different and challenging enough to offer something different to SPG and SH, I was merely just a passenger in a 84 wagon coal going down the curve to Altoona on my first attempt.

There are issues but personally I've not had the audio cut out on me so can't comment on that. although I'm not convinced the the GEVO sounds are correct, they just sound odd to me but then I'm not familiar with the RL engine to comment fully.

 

It's not really comparable to Sherman Hill, but as far as American freight goes, I've only just begun to actually make progress on that route with the recent patch, so I am not personally interested in another heavy haul route quite yet.
As someone else pointed out, Sandpatch and Horseshoe Curve are only 40 some miles apart, geographically. The scenery will be largely the same, though HSC has slightly higher average speeds it seems. Some of the scenarios script busy traffic which is interesting, but the actual timetable is not much denser than SPG. I would personally hold off because I have a lot of progress yet to make on Sandpatch, but HSC is a healthy offering for someone who still craves a similar dish.

Cheers

 

They changed it for Sherman Hill, we now have air flow at light speed. For me it sucks. It was a bit long, yes but now they release ta an unrealistic speed.

 

No, actually the air flow is still the same. The difference is, we're not charging the system from 0, the brake pipe already charged to 83 psi. So we're not building pressure all over again.

 

I like the SH way pumping from scratch

T SIM W brake physics are still one big simplification so why go even more arcade'ish

 

Yeah, pumping from scratch is realistic, but for mainline service not very practical. Many players don't want to wait long for brakes. It will be great for services which start in yard, next step after switching service that put cars together and you couple fresh motive power from shop track.

 

Cold start or not to cold start?
This is another topic, true

EDIT But for freight it is about gameplay enhancement, I think. More important - brakes should behave properly.

 

Yeah, but I think that is for scenario only, timetable can't use all instruction.
Maybe scenario planer 3.0 or higher... and community will put such route DLC to it's limits.

 

Is it though? Surely a train that's been running already (by AI in our case) wouldn't dump the air for a crew change.

 

Absolutely. Same as taking over any train where "face to face" relief occurs, you would just hand your key to the driver alighting while theirs's remains in the desk.

 

Unless we are starting and forming a service from stratch the BP shouldn't start at 0.

SH where they had services split into 2 at Hermosa, starting the 2nd half of th service at 0 brake pressure was unprototypical.

 

Agreed, for most locos in TSW2 I find the in cab volumes too quiet but the GEVO is very loud - there's hardly any sound occlusion of the engine at all. I had to turn my game volume down to 50%. For a modern loco you'd think they'd have some sound insulation. It's far louder than even the F40s inside.

There doesn't seem to be separate sounds for each throttle position either, it's either play a sounds which is low power, med power, or high power!

The dynamics seem way powerful to me too. Coming down a 1.8% grade I set the auto brake for a 10psi reduction, bailed off and added N1 of dynamic which was enough to lose speed by about 1mph every few seconds. Seems too be very high retardation compared to the SPG units. I don't own any other US freight tbh but HSC ticked boxes for me.

There's an annoying go via instruction that holds a signal at red too - the signal only clears once you've nearly stopped as the instruction is literally 150yds rear of it.

The route looks great though, fair play to the Skyhook route builders.

 

Overall I’m quite a big fan of this route. Love the scenery and think all the visuals are very well modelled. Love the new locos and again visually very well done.

I do have some technical concerns as far as the consists, power and weight go. I’ve mentioned this in other threads but since this is the “definitive” one…

I only did one full run which was an Intermodal from Altoona to Johnstown… 74 cars and 1.1 mi long. After playing lots of SPG and SMH, I completed this with no issues and found it was a little “easy” considering how steep the climb was and how long the train was, compared to the other freight routes and similar sized trains. When I thought about it it all came back to power and weight:

All the intermodal trains in HSC are 74 cars but only 2653t. That’s 35t per car. Super light compared to intermodals on SPG and SMH which are around 76t per car. But the light HSC intermodals are powered by 4 GEVOs (2 front, 2 rear). So that’s 17,600hp or a whopping 6.6hp per ton. I am pretty sure that’s much higher than anything you’d ever see in real life (target for Altoona hill is apparently 1.5hp/t based on what I found online). 1.5hp/is also closer to what a lot of the SPG consists work out to. My first service I tried was a intermodal from Altoona to Johnstown, and as you can imagine that train had no problem rocketing up the steep grade keeping the speed limit even without full throttle, and then down the other side (not as steep, 1% mostly) I only needed a few notches of dynamic with no air at all. Even notch 1 dynamic would slow it down if I left it too long so I would run notch 1 for a while then cut it, then put it back, and so on.

I checked all the intermodal services and they are all 74 car/2653t. That weight only seems realistic to me based on my quick math if every container on every intermodal train is empty. That doesn’t seem realistic and also means they are all pretty overpowered with 4 GEVOs.

For comparisons sake, if the intermodals in HSC had the same average weight per car as SPG/SMH, a 74 car train would weigh about 5624t. With 4 GEVOs that would give you about 3.1hp per ton. That is still a pretty high ratio even. Probably a lot more realistic than 6.6, but to actually get the 1.5 I mentioned you’d only need 2 locos for a 5624t train.

I haven’t had time to look through all other services yet but with the ethanol, grain, coal etc they seem set up to be light (empty) in one direction and heavy (loaded) in the other. That makes sense. But I didn’t check to see the power to weight on them yet.

I think the intermodals specifically might be bugged for them to be all so light but in the meantime it would probably more realistic to not even use the helpers and leave them as dead weight for such a light train.

Some people might think “well why not use as much power as possible so you can go up the hill at the speed limit”. In reality that’s not really how it works for US freight. Putting too much power on a train doesn’t really happen because it wastes fuel and more importantly because too much power would derail or break apart the train. The speed limits are a maximum not a target and generally they will go pretty slow up hills.

Then as far as gameplay is concerned, the entire challenge/fun to the US freight is realistically managing your power and braking up and down these big grades. So overpowering the train also kills the playability IMO. I’m not sure if this was intentionally “dumbed down” (a lot of complaints with SPG were people who couldn’t figure out their helpers or how to get up the hill, with these you’d be ok even if you didn’t know how to run the helpers) or if these are bugs/errors.

I wonder if skyhook- sean could look into this?

 

HP/T is ultra optymistic in this DLC
LIKE posted above - no chance for such numbers IRL

NS would have to double or even triple its ownership in the locomotive category

 

This route stood up to my magnifying glass of rivet counting for the most part. Obviously there are a few glaring issues, but all-in-all I'd say it evens out to be a pretty solid route that's up there with Sherman Hill, but being a local to the region I think I'll play Horseshoe waaay more though. Some of the issues I noticed so far, in no particular order;

- Gallitzin is waaay off to how it is irl, considering how many landmarks are there (there's a railfan hotel, and a whole railfanning park, plus the landscape just isn't accurate)

- Johnstown's Amtrak station should have a caboose near the station (I honestly didn't notice this myself until I was exploring Google Earth and found it)

- The flatcars only show up in 1 service as far as I'm aware, and the gondolas don't show up in any (the consist with the flatcars has both TOFC and trash boxes in the same consist too, not very accurate)

I'll update this reply with any other things I find, but for now this is all I can think of.

 

I've made a thread about this. I really don't get how they created new rolling stock and then almost completely forgot to use it in the timetable.

 

I think the relative quality of this DLC proves that if DLC is delayed until it's ready, the DLC will be better. I am shocked, however, that only Skyhook have managed to realise this, and I doubt this breakthrough will last for long.

 

I filed a refund request for the DLC. I may pick it up on sale but as is, its not worth the price. I should have stuck with my initial decision not to buy it but I was feeling nostalgic about my time living there. Lesson learned, hopefully Steam will refund.

 

We are actually at the stage where 3rd party DLC is a higher standard than DTG.
The fact that small software developers are producing better quality on their 2nd/4th route than dovetail who's churned out dozens of routes on TSW speaks volumes and not particularly in a good way.

 

Another 40 mile route end to end...............PASS.

 

Probably because many skip the tutorial - jump right into a scenario or timetable and expect to drive without setting up the locomotives properly in MU or DPU settings - just look at all the complaints and questions generated on SPG - Same as the decision for starting with most safety systems disabled -- many of newer users find them confusing and can't understand why their train stopped after hearing a buzzer - then can't figure out on how to make it go again and spam the forums with all they bugs they found... so from a company point of view - better to provide so processes as cold start, proper setting of brakes, set-up of DPU's, all safety systems that can be enabled for those of us that want to go through the proper processes, but leave them disable for the newbies and others that just want a casual experience to be able to hope in and drive a train.

Just look at all the complaints about Sherman Hill and the time it took for the brakes to release.. Fix was to have the scenarios start in a more ready to run state that isn't really real to life to appease the masses.

So not standard procedure for American Freight - but more of a decision to make the game more accessible to the masses while yet providing the immersion for those who want it.

 

I'll admit waiting half an hour for the brakes to release isn't my idea of fun, so in this case it's a concession on realism I'm willing to have, personally. I guess ideally you could have an adjustable brake difficulty setting where the release and application of the brakes would be adjustable between "hardcore" realism and more "gamey" speed.

 

Indeed Mike. I know we are a bit critical of Run 8 graphics over at TS dot com, but when you can go 500 miles from Fresno to Seligman, that's a route.

And reading the above sounds like the physics are completely botched too, back to the days of early TS when you could climb steep gradients in Notch 2.

Never mind, the money saved on this and Harlem can go towards buying the Georgia Fitz route for Run 8 when it comes out.

 

I'm not sure if I agree completely - Horseshoe Curve is probably the best US freight route so far, but generally the quality of Rivet and Skyhook DLC has been poor. Rivet is very good at modelling but their DLC is usually broken and the distant scenery is often bad. Skyhook's past efforts have often looked good (Cane Creek is possibly the best looking TSW DLC) but in the past they have been as and or worse than Rivet. DTG, while unsatisfactory, do seem to get somewhere in the middle which makes their DLC more palatable. However, DTG are well away from the peak they had in the TSW2020 days.

 

Just curious if I'm missing something, or if the physics of these locos is bad, but I just completed an eastbound intermodal scenario the entire length of the route. Departing Johnstown on the 0.6% up grade it seemed to take a lot of throttle to get moving but the train never rolled even with the breaks released. Then descending the east slope I only ever had to alternate the dynamics between 1.0 and setup. 1.0 was enough to consistently slow the train which seemed quite odd. Are there hand brakes applied or something when you load a timetable service? Because it almost seemed like I was dragging a brake the entire time, although I was still bale to hold 43mph up the west slope the entire time which is quite fast compared to watching real trains struggling at 20mph or less in Run 8.

 

If you just look at Luzern & HSC both are a higher quality then SH and Harlem.

Wanting working distant counters? Well you can only get that from HSC and not SH.

Want a commuter service line that doesn't have a broken timetable then forget Harlem and pick up Luzern.

 

Just completed the first scenario in the Journey mode, grain train Altoona to Cresson JR Corman connection. Was a lot of fun once I trusted in the game setup and stopped trying to second guess how my trailing unit and the DPUs were setup. First 2 times I did it were not stellar. Third try just did what the game designers wanted: Banking com on, reverser in, set up lead unit brakes from the screen, now a warning to others, as soon as you accept the settings of cut-in and lead and exit, run your independent brake to apply and back to release, this will prevent your air from dumping, which it starts to do once you accept the lead unit brakes. Now reverser to forward, apply independent brake to at least 60% to hold your train as the train brakes release, wait until the rear shows around 80 psi, whistle off and apply power, run 3 is good, once the amps build release the independent and off you go. I had no trouble maintaining the speed going up the hill and in fact had a few 15 APs for slightly over. Could keep this train just under 30 mph with throttle cycle of 7 and 8.

 

Lol… a 40mile route for a US freight is like 1-2hrs.

 

An 18 mile branch line as well.

 

Thanks for the info. I was having trouble with this exact service, and i did the same thing you did- the MU's in the rear did NOT seem to be setup correctly, so i set them up like i would on SPG and it just wasn't right.

So, to be clear, the only thing you changed was hitting "banking comm" and setting the lead unit to cut-in/lead on the MFD? You made no changes to trailing units or helpers?

 

Will you both please stop facts getting in the way of a good DTG/Skyhook bashing?

 

My experience is that as long as I hit the banking.com button first thing,everything sets up properly in the trailing units. The only thing I wish I could do was turn the trailing headlight to dim.