I wish they could fix the spawn cars issue , and the consist editor needs to come to consoles ..there are so many great US freight car custom liveries on creators club , but what good are they if cant select them to use in free roam and scenario planner . That would make freight more immersive to be able to build trains with whatever cars and custom liveries you want ,
I have gotten used to the controller playing TSW on console can work the brakes just fine on US trains ,i think too lots of people lack the patience to play US freight takes time for the brakes to apply and release, plus longer heavier trains .In real life you got to give the railroad employees credit that run these 10,000 plus foot us freight trains day in and day out
also, while some routes have some form of PTC implemented, others dont - this for example hurts the challenge of Antelope Valley, since there is no real punishment if you dont really follow the signal aspects and such as for US freight companies, they are way too busy fcking up Amtrak/passenger traffic and electrification (if there are plans in this or that part of US) to care much about a video game #changemymind
In US, our freight is more important than passenger trains. Especially with CSX and NS diverting trains to assist in Baltimore with ports being shutdown from the bridge collapse.
Exactly. This isn't 1997. A console can do nearly anything a PC can from a gaming tech point of view (although you can even run the full MS Office Online suite on an Xbox now if you want to). For example, you can now install Flight Simulator 2020 on an Xbox Series X, use Thrustmaster Flight yokes, keyboard, mouse, etc. Even the PMDG study level add ons are starting to come out on Xbox, the PMDG 737 and programming a FMC for a multi hour flight is a far more complex simulation than anything you need to do in TSW so far and it can all be done on a console if set up correctly. I have a mouse and keyboard on my PS5/Xbox. I actually prefer the controller for the basic controls on TSW though tbh, they did a great job with the immersion controls. The classic controls are part of what made me quit TSW1 on PS4 with only a few hours in.
Horseshoe Curve Altoona to Johnstown works too. A Sandpatch with TOD4 and an extension to Connellsville would be a great base for the P42 IMO, with layers to Cajon, HSC, NEC, and Boston Matt has repeatedly talked about how great their relationship with Amtrak is, so come on! There's no "perfect" route for an Amtrak diesel but it's glaringly absent in many places. That being said i think it has about a 5% chance of ever actually happening lol.
Freight companies didn't took over. All great american freight rail providers and their predecessors offered passenger rail till the 1960's. Some of them were legendary like the Chief and the Super Chief. But in the meantime the highways and the airplanes took over the passenger movement and the passenger trains became more and more empty. The result were heavy losses for the rail operators. So they made the only economic sensefull decision. They shut down their passenger business and concentrated themselves on their freight rail business. completely. So the complete passenger business relies on state funding in the meantime. But that funding comes also from the taxes from the freight rail companies. So that's why it is fair that they have an influence on trackage rights and so on.
In practice, if Amtrak had not taken over in the 70s, with government support, today rail passenger transport would only be seen in a few large US cities.
There isn't to much american freight. We have exactly the same ammount of passenger and freight routes. In detail: American freight focused routes: 1. Sand Patch Grade 2. Oakville Subdivision 3. Clinchfield Railroad 4. Cane Creek Subdivision 5. Sherman Hill 6. Horseshoe Curve 7. Cajon Pass American Passenger focused routes: 1. NEC New York 2. Long Island Railroad 3. Peninsula Corridor 4. Boston Sprinter 5. Harlem Line 6. New York Trenton 7. Antelope Valley Line 8. San Bernardino Line (TBA)
Not really. Amtrak didn't " take over " passenger trains. The Nixon Administration orchestrated the creation of Amtrak specifically to assume the passenger routes and rolling stock of the extant rail companies. Amtrak was given federal funding and has received it every year since 1970. There was never a chance that long distance passenger rail would disappear in the US. Too many stakeholders, including states and Congressional seats support it.
Well. too much american freight, not sure, regarding the american railways from the outside, you'll somehow can get this impression, that America is somehow totally denying the possibilities of passenger railroading. Taking a look on the amount of freight in the US, going from one coast to the other by train...well, all in all, there can't be less american freight, while passenger railroading is more or less reduced to commuter lines in the US. Well, that's how it looks from the outside, but, well, while even countries, that compared to the US are more or less the size of Kansas City, well, even they have some kind of high speed passenger railroading...
They didn't "hold on"; they voluntarily kept operating it because they feared an Amtrak-operated Zephyr would interfere with their freight service.
Simply not the case. Amtrak has an extensive network that criss- crosses the continent. Other companies like Brightline are also expanding. And Amtrak has a $75 billion plan to expand its service reach. Plus we have a President who is a regular customer and fully supports expanded passenger rail.
Eh not really. You have new up and coming companies such as Brightline in Florida trying to create highspeed passenger in the state. They have been quite successful with a route between Miami and Orlando, with an extension to Tampa in the works. They are also expanding out west to create high-speed between Los Angeles and Las Vegas under Brightline West. There’s also a highspeed route in California which is being constructed as we speak between Los Angeles and San Francisco under The California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA), although this may never come to fruition because of the lack of funding and political differences in the state.
The routes are bendy with complex gradients etc. Great challenges possible with free-roam steam/ off rails scenarios
It’s not that they are “denying” the possibilities, it’s the fact that politics are a major factor in the difference between what’s a thought, and what can become a reality. There’s lots of setbacks and disagreements when it comes to certain things in the government. While some politicians want a lot of support and federal funding for Amtrak and other opperaters, others believe that expanding on the automobile industry and vehicle infrastructure is more lucrative, which in some areas, is true. Automobiles can simply travel to different places a lot quicker than a train. infrastructure can also play a role because I think it’s easier to build roads than to build railroad tracks. I’m no engineer, but roads are easier to place and then actually build. When it comes to passenger infrastructure, you have to carefully plan where everything goes. You have to plan the station location, and sometimes consider if this area can be electrified because some states are real tough when it comes to emissions. (Take California and Caltrain for an example)
The best potential to introduce Amtrak P42 is the Hartford line with CT rail P42 plus Amtrak and the Pacific Surfliner with the SC-44,F59phi and the P42
The F59PHI's are retired off of Surfliners roster, they are with Metra now, so DTG doesn't have references for them. Only way DTG does an Amtrak F59PHI is if they talk with Amtrak California in Oakland.
And those stakeholders and seat holders ride the trains? or only the poor, elderly and those afraid of flying in aeroplanes? or the poor cannot afford trains and ride the coaches?
Outside of major cities in the US, public transit isn't really a thing. I'd argue geography is a huge factor, but even putting the "why" aside, let's say you wanted to travel from New Orleans to Birmingham, Alabama and you don't have a car- how do you get there? You could rent a car and drive if you can afford it, have a driver's license, etc. You could fly, though it's a really short distance for air travel and not even sure there's a direct flight- you might have to fly to Atlanta and get a connection or rent a car anyway. Gonna be pricey and take a minute. You could take a bus like Greyhound, which is probably the cheapest option, but it's defitinely the longest and most uncomfortable. Or...you can take Amtrak. There's a daily train with no intermediate connections, with decent accomodations and a price probably somewhere in the middle of all the options. A lot of the smaller stops in between on these long distance Amtrak routes literally have no other transit options to serve them, so local politicians are extremely protective of it. It has a ton of support in the Northeast, but the national political environment is much more mixed, of course, so the end result is Amtrak has enough support to survive, but not enough to thrive. Can something like Brightline actually make passenger rail profitable in the US? Maybe in some places (I think Miami-Orlando yes, LA-Las Vegas is a tougher sell IMO). Tl:dr America is big, really big and Amtrak serves just enough places to maintain political support.
A glance at the Amtrak waiting room at Union Station in Chicago would show mostly young people and students plus families and politicians, ready to board trains that travel to the East and West coasts as well as points North and South like Milwaukee and Springfield and St Louis. Traveling as students, business people and tourists, often to medium distance destinations to which trains are more convenient than airplanes.
I would put it differently: outside of major cities in the US, public transit has wings. ------------------------------- There are a few places where there is sufficient population desnsity at the right distance to make passenger rail economically viable: the NEC, Miami-Orlando, San Diego-Los Angeles, LA -Vegas, perhaps Dallas-Houston with a spur to Austin. But the rest of the country is simply too spread out and thinly populated to generate the passenger traffic needed to support passenger trains. Amtrak came into existence at noon, May 1 1971. As of that moment, privately-operated interstate passenger rail became a governmental affair; so the Illinois Central's City of New Orleans stopped in St Louis; the passengers were debarked and given bus tickets to complete their journey to the Big Easy. All twelve of them, on the entire train. There wasn't, and isn't, sufficient demand for long distance passenger rail in a country 4500 km across, except as a political toy.
I hope that when the metrolink San Bernadino route is released they include some freight services for the Kaiser yard , they could include the ES44C4 SD70ace and re skin the Gp 38 2 in BNSF paint to use as well as SD40 2 from Cajon ..
I think in general DTG needs to do more with freight not less in any content ..especially. UK and US , I purchased the Goblin line and Fife circle recently the Goblin line for its short length has a surprising amount of freight services both AI and Timetable . Fife Circle has none but wish they would add some freight to the empty time table to make that route more exciting in future ..as well future. US routes even if Passenger freight layers are important along with the need for Freight dedicated routes .
"Riding on the City of New Orleans, Illinois Central Monday morning rail Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders, Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail." From the famous folk song written by Steve Goodman in 1971 after taking the train.
Sure, geography is probably the biggest hinderance. And where we choose to spend our money. But i'd argue it's a cultural thing too. Americans will drive our cars what would be considered crazy distances in just about any other place in the world, but ask us to sit on a train for 12 hours and it's like the end of the universe. I'm not sure anything can change that in the short term. I've personally driven from Philadelphia to Florida on multiple occasions, and to Maine once, but have only ever ridden a long distance train (Philly to New Orleans and back) once even being a huge train nerd. I loved it despite riding the whole way in coach because i was too broke to afford the sleeper. But, it's just not a great experience if you have any kind of time constraints because outside of where Amtrak owns the track (NEC and a few other places), they're completely at the mercy of the freight operators who have zero incentive to help them be on-time. I'd also argue that the concept of "public transit" implies that it's affordable for most people and air travel isn't that in a lot of situations in the US (short-notice travel, travelling outside the most popular routes and destinations, endless additional fees and taxes, the expense of actually getting to the airport, etc).
With the very nice new mountain textures in the game it would be nice to see something done with CP before the merger, going through the Canadian Rockies. Currently CP are not even in the game which seems strange.
I don’t get the people saying US freight is boring to drive, I think the opposite is true especially as every route we get is rich in gradients, both inclines and declines. Managing a very long and very heavy train under those circumstances requires a lot more skill than driving a relatively short and light freight train in Germany and the UK. By contrast I find the latter the most boring. The US freight trains are also just sexier all around. I’ve driven long 2 hour plus US freights in TSC and Trainz 22 and really enjoy the sense of achievement in bringing the load in successfully after often driving through some of the most train unfriendly geography in the world. I’ve also ridden an Amtrak from Flagstaff Arizona to LA and loved every minute.
probably the speed limit of US freight currently in the game what accounts for most of it over gameplay, certainly the most off putting thing for US freight in my opinion. you see similar with West Somerset, pretty much everything about that gets praise but not speed related.
Well I’d hate for everything in TSW to be just about passenger speed, personally I find that even more boring as aside from 1 or 2 stops there is literally nothing to do the entire run. If DTG were smart and built US freight routes to involve dropping off cuts of wagons to customers along the route then that would make for even more engrossing gameplay. It just needs creativity by the devs, TSC has it in abundance, not just by the devs but by private individuals in the Workshop. Bring some to TSW.
What US Freight needs is run8 style game play like realistic handling of the train with brakes and stuff like local freight and the ability to set up your train consist with specific Names like BAKBAR-M that’s you can’t do in free Roam .
You are right and I think I said something to that effect earlier in the thread. DTG’s switching scenarios serve little purpose when they do not offer any ongoing emergent gameplay.
I mean, for most mountain grades on climbs, you just stick the reverser into notch 8 and wait till you hit the summit. Even some real US railroaders claims this is boring.
I agree sometimes the the passenger train stuff can get boring too .The best thing for both passenger and freight would be to have more varied scenarios and timetable services switching setting out and picking up cars at sidings yards along the way , More lineside industries to switch interact with loading unloading be neat to unload a coal train at a power plant on a US route they got a beautiful huge coal fired power plant on Midland main line in TSW loop track and all but no services to it but can access it by spawning a engine or train in free roam mode . In general they need more variety to choose from to satisfy all playing TSW
One of the more enjoyable parts of running freight routes is switching and running locals. But the way TSW currently works doing this is a snore fest because its just follow the way points, it takes no thought by the player to do. The game needs a much better sandbox mode for freight. Free Roam is a improvement but man if they took a page out of Railroaders play book for how to do industries in a sandbox mode that would be so much fun.
Wow, I thought I was specifically quite open and frank about Freight in another thread but maybe it got missed. I'll try and fix that here. Happy to report that there are a small, but growing, number of third party developers working on content. Nobody's saying anything because it's way too early, but there is stuff happening in the background. Might not see it come to fruition for a year plus though, takes time to learn and then time to make. Here here, well said. Happy to report there's news in the next roadmap. Ok, so, US content in general - still plenty we can do. Plenty in the plan, nothing drying up here. US freight specifically. Here lies the challenge. So, some hard facts. We are unable to get access to US freight locomotives for any purposes via Class 1 railroads. If you want your ET44 or GP40 or whatever, it'll have copy-pasted sounds. It'll also have made-up bits. I won't go into details, but at least one US freight loco has an almost entirely made-up cab because there was no access and almost no photo reference online. That doesn't make me happy to release as a product, gotta say, though I haven't seen any complaints about it - and I take that as tribute that our loco art team are pretty darn good at their jobs. We're in the process of exploring what Class 2's might be able to do and we've had some dialog and even got some licenses with the Class 3's and smaller - but let's take one of those small railroads and let's say we were able to arrange a reference trip out there (one of them has basically offered this for their loco fleet) - they certainly are looking to then see their brand and railroad represented in the game in return for the time the put in to supporting that trip. So I look at the route, and I have to be honest, it's not going to be a winner, even remotely. While operating this kind of shortline is probably right up my street, I know for sure it's not where the majority want to be. Museums - yep, that'd help for photo reference, but not for audio, or at least only in a limited fashion, because you can only move very slowly. Also, it'd primarily be for historic stock, which we already know is of reduced interest. What people really want is modern freight locos. Whereas we get tons of support from UK and German communities helping us out with all manner of reference, guidance, etc (I mean at a railroad level, not enthusiast) that's not happening in the US at all, so the doors aren't opening to make this stuff possible. On the flip side - we are doing quite well talking to US passenger operators, some coming to us and asking us to make their railroad even (MBTA for example). As regards the P42 - i'd love to make one. It's a huge train set to make with all those different coaches, but we do have all the reference including audio for it, yes. The challenge is gameplay. It'd be basically two services on each of about 5 routes. I can already smell the "true cost of this DLC" posts. That said, we might not need to make it, i'm sure I saw a post somewhere in the community about a US developer wanting to make it, don't know where that's gone but I'm a fan and will certainly help and support. So what you're left with is - make nothing for the US for now, make passenger stuff supported by licensed and authentically recorded trains, make freight with copy-paste sound and "best efforts" on the model detail, make US freight but just lots of re-use of existing train library. That's why you're seeing more US passenger now. It's not an end to US freight, it's an acknowledgement that we can do better and we must do better, and that in order to meet the bar that you're telling us is important we have some challenges to overcome that won't be quick. Therefore we're doing what we can with what we can get access to, working well with the brilliant operators that are working with us and focusing on bringing the best US experiences to you that we can. Folks that say "US Freight is boring" are not my concern for this, because if you dont like the US freight style of experience just don't play it, honestly. It's that easy. There's nothing I can do to make a US freight train drive like a commuter train - My concern is when US Freight enthusiasts say their needs aren't being met, that's what I need to listen to. There's other issues like gameplay and technical features like fencing but I don't see a huge challenge there - next time we can do a US freight loco I'm confident we can square those kinds of things away, and i've made sure to add to the US beta team specifically to keep me on my toes when it comes to this stuff. The last round of beta team additions was specifically entirely from the US enthusiast group. I know it's not what you want to hear, what you want to here is an announcement of an amazing new US freight route on the horizon but I thought you'd rather have it straight-up. OK. so. TL;DR: - There are US third parties. Don't expect announcements or anything any time soon though. - US freight is not dead. It's being re-evaluated based on YOUR feedback. - US passenger is very popular, and it's what we can do well and with full support from operators. Makes sense to keep doing it for the time being. Lots of options there. - I'm personally a big fan of US freight, so there's nothing holding it back there. - I am not being swayed by those who say "its boring". Not every train experience is for everyone. That's perfectly fine too. - Consoles aren't holding this back. - Technical deficiencies like fencing etc are solvable for the next freight addon. Anyway. Hope this has updated you on the reality of things and i'm certainly open to the discussion. Matt.
Im just hoping one of those 3rd parties is Reppo. Not really looking forward if TSW 3rd parties are HIS or DTM.
Thank you very much for the answers Matt. Truly appreciated ! Anyway we should start a crowdfunding to buy a nice SD70 or a GP40 and get everything right
I don't see any reason not to admit which loco that is. Why? How does this fit with your claim that "I am not being swayed by those who say "its boring". Not every train experience is for everyone. That's perfectly fine too."? And your evidence for this is? I note that pretty much all the TSC US freight DLC for a long time now has been historic... The same can be applied to something like the RHTT...
Hi Matt, I was wondering if your taking any of what people are saying about freight into account with your remaster of the ClinchField, if your still working on it. Thanks Matt!
I have listened here, and had long conversations with the US enthusiasts on the beta team, and have a todo list as long as my arm. And more. Unfortunately i've had zero time or ability to progress. I managed to hurt my neck/shoulder/back a few weeks back and only just getting to where I want to spend "fun" time sat at a computer. Matt.
Thankyou for the reply Matt! I and many others appreciate you taking the time to reply and in such depth as it does feel like our posts fall on deaf ears sometimes. A lot of us would appreciate something similar with the steam situation if at all possible at any stage? Although I do appreciate its probably just as frustrating for you as the rest of us, as I know how much you love steam. As much as the situation can be incredibly frustrating I do appreciate the work you and the team are putting in!
