Creation Sharing New Timetable For Dresden - Riesa

I have no idea of that stuff, but yeah, the Trilex Desiro's also have a different motor, so I might do a sound upgrade or something. It would make it easier, if I give you the repaint, so maybe via discord?

 

It might make it easier for you, yes, but as I've told you several times before I'm making a timetable, not an all-in-one enhancement pack, and I'm not interested in including any other non-timetable mods with my timetable. This is not a comment on the quality of your repaint, it's just a decision on the scope of my mod that I took early on and am not going to change.

I'm perfectly happy to do the extra work on my timetable that's required to set up substitution so your repaint will be used if someone has it installed it, but I'm not interested in helping to make or publish repaints.

You are going to need to set up the "Geographic Regions" in the RVD file correctly anyway to prevent Trilex trains from showing up in places they're not supposed to, so I don't feel it's unreasonable to expect you to do so if you want your repaint to work in my timetable.

 

I didn't know that it works like that, but ok.

 

Are you also going to be adding the Erzgebirgsbahn?

 

The Erzgebirgsbahn doesn't run in Dresden, so I think you might be able to guess the answer to that one yourself.

 

isn't it between Chemnitz and Görlitz via dresden hbf?

 

It is not. Erzgebirgsbahn is a DB subsidiary operating a few branch lines out of Chemnitz.

 

Geographical Region "Trilex" is added

 

damn

oh hell no
I'm sorry, but that's all I can do for the repaint.

 

Please open your own thread for your repaint projects. I'd like this one to stay on topic a bit more, and you'd probably find someone who could help you with your texturing issues too if people who know about this sort of thing could actually find your posts in the appropriate place.

 

true, I'm sorry

 

I finally found some time to do timetable work today, so I made a brand-new template for my S-Bahn services:



This template represents one hour's worth of S-Bahn trains arriving at Dresden Hbf from Pirna, going to their respective terminus, and returning to Dresden Hbf and the Pirna portal. I'd like to take this opportunity to explain the differences between this and what I had before.

• The timings are a lot better. Arguably the most important part of a timetable, right? "Better" in this case means both "more accurate to reality" and "more fun to play". They're not an exact copy of real life, but they're within about two minutes of the real timetable. The differences come about because, while the AI can only just match real life, it follows track, not signal, speed limits, and it doesn't have to deal with PZB. I therefore had to give the player some extra time to account for this in a few places. It's still a much tighter timetable than the DTG one. You are going to want to get in some practice with the 143 and Dosto cab car if you want to stay on time, but it is perfectly achievable. Just don't brake too early, don't let the loco wheelslip, and above all don't get PZB'd! I never liked the S-Bahn services in the DTG timetable, but I had a lot of fun test driving this, and I really felt like I'd achieved something when I got to Meißen on time.
• I achieved the tighter timings by cranking up the "expected AI performance" and rounding up all times to the next full 10, not 30 seconds. You can still make up time if you're late because I've scheduled almost all stops for 30 seconds (as per reality) but the actual loading/unloading just takes 10 seconds to complete.
• I made a major change to the layout: S1, both the all-day and the rush-hour runs, and S2 are now on the same layer, and organised strictly chronologically rather than by diagram. Previously, this was three separate layers. This did mean that each individual layer looked a lot less scary, but the new way of doing things will allow me to find the answer to questions such as "is there a free westbound path on the S-Bahn tracks at 09:32" and "how many trains are in the siding at Meißen at 22:00" much more easily.
• This means I needed to add a bunch of extra columns to my "spreadsheet" layout so I can still find and select, for example, all "Enter Portal" nodes for S1 trains to Schöna at the Pirna Portal, but I think it's still quite organised and readable.
• There are a few little quality of life things too. For example, I now use a lot of - dashes rather than _ underscores to separate different elements of service names because I discovered the Editor's text selection handles them differently. It's a small thing, but if you've got to replace "31xxx" with the proper train number in a whole day's worth of timetable, every single mouse click counts!

Next, I will need to copy and paste this a bunch of times, shift the timings into the correct hours, delete a bunch of services (for example, the "S11" rush hour S1 runs, while outside of rush hour), rename all services (and their "friendly names" for UI purposes) with the correct train numbers, connect services according to the real-world diagrams, and add ECS moves. Still, this template represents a lot of work done, not least because I've had to play a whole bunch of Dresden-Meißen-Dresden runs (which are over 90 minutes each) to check if the timings work. I'll report back once I've got all the S-Bahn trains up and running.

 

Great job!

 

Oh boy, the editor really bogs down when you're pasting six hours' worth of S-Bahn services at the same time. All the services are there now -- in fact there are a lot more services than there are in real life as I just pasted the rush hour schedule into all 24 hours of the day. Now my next job is to go through the whole thing, delete everything that doesn't exist in real life, name everything else properly, and sort out the diagrams, including ECS moves of course.

 

Damn, can you add the geographical region „dresden“ to the S8 services, when you are doing them? Because I want to do an S-Bahn Repaint

 

I'm going to do "VVO-Dieselnetz" to allow a bit more precision.

 

Thanks :]

 

This is really odd. I've been playing Tharandter Rampe today again after months of not touching it and I noticed that has a lot more off-world PIS destinations, including Prague. Very weird they didn't just add the same ones into Dresden - Riesa...

 

Any updates? Looking forward to this!

 

I've been spending a lot of time in Railroader since that released, and am taking a little break over Christmas, but I'm going to get back to this soon! No promises but I'd like to get the S-Bahn done before New Years.

 

Glad to know the project is still active! No rush at all, I was just curious.
Merry Christmas to you and yours

 

All good, I'm always happy to hear people are interested in what I'm doing. Merry Christmas to you as well!

 

I'd have liked to get the S-Bahn done before New Year's, but I'm afraid that won't be possible. I've tried, but sadly the Editor has "gently" showed me that putting the entire S-Bahn network into one giant layer may not be The Way by messing up the entire timetable's layout when I tried to insert a couple extra lines. Apparently I'd genuinely selected more nodes than the Editor could handle moving at the same time!



So yeah, back to smaller layers. I'm going to do it in the new year though, I've had enough for a few days to be honest.

 

Thanks for sharing your experience anyway despite the disappointment. It's a good warning for us to prevent this from happening. Thanks a lot for your work!

 

New Year, New Start!

I've been thinking about the timetable quite a bit over the holiday season and am ready to get back into it. Starting over (again!) is a good opportunity to improve my method instead of just trying the same thing again and hoping for better results. Here's what I want to do differently:

So far, I've been working in a super iterative process: I made the complete S-Bahn layer. Then I made the whole RE50. Then I made the entire Elbe-Elster Network... and if I then noticed while making an Elbe-Elster train that it would be very convenient if the westbound S-Bahn departed Coswig two minutes earlier every hour, then I simply couldn't make that change as I'd already completed the whole S-Bahn and would've had to edit every single train separately. Every layer I made had to "fit" over the previous ones instead of me being able to choose freely which one I'd rather change. That led to small decisions I'd made early on snowballing and forcing me into much larger compromises later on, and I ended up being quite unhappy with the result after a while.

At the time I'd just accepted that as being inherent to the way the Editor works, but I've now figured out another way. Instead of making whole 24-hour layers at a time, I'll do this:

1. Create one reference service for every line/train type in an otherwise completely empty timetable environment. That will get me the AI timings for an absolute best-case run of each service, which I can then edit to match the real world timings as well as possible.
2. Manually test-drive all of them.
   
3. Copy (+ duplicate + shift) all of them into their respective layers to fill out a four-ish hour (so every service, even the two-hourly ones, is included at least once) long test timetable. I can already tell you that this timetable will be an absolute disaster the first couple of times I simulate it, but it will have everything in it and I'll have much more choice as to how I resolve conflicts! Editing three or four hours of finished timetable is obviously more viable than editing twenty-four, so the possibilities are endless.
4. Test-drive one of each service again to account for PZB etc.
   
5. Once that little slice of timetable works, I can once again go through layer by layer, expand these to the rest of the day, add ECS moves, changes in the patterns, etc.
6. When that's all done, it'll be time to add freight trains into the mix! Feel free to let me know you'd like freight trains to work in this thread over here!

The "reference service" thing also allows me to do smaller chunks of work at a time for a while, which is pretty nice. Today I made the Dresden-Riesa ICE...



...and took it for a test drive.


Honestly, driving nonstop from Riesa to Dresden (and back) as the only train in a dead world was one of the most boring things I've ever done in TSW, but driving the thing is the best way to see if the paths are correct, the timing is plausible, the PIS works etc., so it's worth doing.

I'm using the Kassel-Würzburg 403 instead of the Köln-Aachen 406. The way DB ran the Dresden ICEs changed during 2023 in real life -- I've chosen the latter version, so the train sits in platform 3 at Dresden Hbf for half an hour before the return trip. Previously the trains went to Dresden-Reick yard in the mean time, but we all like it when a station is full of trains, right?

That's all for today, but there'll be much more to show off and talk about on more complex trains in the future!

 

Today's job was the S8.



Not a lot to say about this one either - it's just a Desiro going from Dresden-Neustadt to Dresden Hbf and back. But I'm super happy to finally see a Desiro in Dresden!

 

Love it

 

Based on the S8, it was quite quick and easy (It was a little less quick and easy as it could've been because the Trilex trains don't quite run at a regular 30 minute interval between Dresden Hbf and Dresden-Neustadt; instead it's four slightly misaligned two-hour intervals in a trenchcoat.) to make the Trilex trains and the (AI-only) RB33. That's all the Desiro services designed and timed properly.

 

Good morning everyone, we have got InterCities!

 

Since I don't need to test drive an AI only train, I could also find time to add the long distance trains to Berlin. First, there's the EuroCity with the Vectron.



Of course it's not 100% AI only... this has got to be one of the saddest ratios of total train route length to TSW drivable length of any train in this game.


There are also the InterCity trains to Rostock and Warnemünde. The thing with the ICs in Dresden is that they haven't been 101 hauled for a good while. The Leipzig services are Bombardier Dosto sets with a 146 - I'm just pretending they're 101 trains in real life, so they use a perfectly average IC formation. The Warnemünde trains are usually Stadler KISS sets, but during 2022-23 there was a shortage of those for a while. During that time, you could see some rather eccentrically formed 101-hauled replacement trains, and these are what I based this fun double 101 "pocket rocket" formation on.

 

Would it be possible, to end the timetable for the player when driving over a destination, so that you can drive all the way to where the map ends

 

I don't believe you can do that in TSW.

 

I think you can, but you 'll get an end screen stating you have reached the end of the map, failing the service. So for the sake of being able to finish a service I wouldn't provide this kind of service.

 

If you've been peeking at my old to-do list, you'll know I've just got the S-Bahn, RE50 and Elbe-Elster Network trains left to time and simulate. Those are the most complex ones of course, but I've also made all of them before, so they should still be quite painless.

Given that I'd already remade the S-Bahn services once since the first try, I didn't really feel like doing it a third time. Luckily, I could extract an individual service from each line (S1, S11, S2) from the jumbled mess I had left. Give it a quick test drive and I'm good.

 

I did not mean to put them in fron of the world border, but as far as the map is built, and you are not gonna the reach the world border before.

 

Services can't start or end while moving.

 

Hard at work (I'm mostly joking, but it does take quite a while to drive from Dresden to Meißen and back with all stops) testing the S1 today.



If you've got the time (and maybe a good podcast to listen to) then this out-and-back run is actually a lot of fun! The 143 and cab car drive really differently, the turnaround time at Meißen is quite short, and driving these services is a bit challenging - you've really got to manage the brakes and that tap changer.

 

Out in f interest, how long is the turnaround time at Meißen? I found the time in DTGs timetable impossibly short and can hardly believe that this was taken from a real timetable?

 

It's 8 minutes in real life. It'll probably be a bit less than that because you're actually a bit slower in TSW than the real trains are. I'll only have a number for that once I've got the S-Bahn in there with all the other trains and know how everything fits together.

 

Why test drives are important... Working on the RE50 today.

 

Just to manage expectations: yes, I am almost done with the prototyping stage, as there are only the RE50 and the Elbe-Elster-Network trains left to make. However, testing and adjusting these is quite time-consuming. They take almost an hour to drive one way, and I have to drive every service twice: once using the Talent II and once using the 143 & Dostos. In the absolute best case, I've still got almost ten hours of driving time left until I'm done, plus the time to actually make the timetables.

 

Quick update: I've thoroughly playtested the RE50 services both with the 146 and the 442 now.




Just the Elbe-Elster trains left before it's time for the next step.

 

Good morning Großenhain!

I've finally* got the first Elbe-Elster Network trains ready for testing. As you can see, I've nailed the substitution settings and the 112 does indeed substitute for the 143 on 100% of these trains, as it should do...

...when I'm done. Right now, I need to know if the timings are achievable in the 143, as that will be the default loco. So I'm currently resimulating the timetable after unticking the "allow substitution" box on the formation, and then it will in fact be ready for testing.

---
* a lot of the time working on this was taken up by figuring out how to get rid of a "leave portal" node that made the editor crash if interacted with in any way

 

Would you be able to post photos of how you've set the substitution up? I'm trying to get 628 to sub in for 642s but only when selected from the menu. So basically the inverse of what you've done.

 

Oh boy, I'm having a time with these. For some reason, the trains are coming out of the portal at Großenhain with the brake key set to "on" in the cab car at the rear. That means the brakes don't work unless, after taking over the loco, you run to the end of the train and turn the brake valve on the cab car off. Does anyone have any idea what might be causing this? I haven't had this issue on the RE50 or the S-Bahn, even though they're using the same vehicles...

 

You'll want to "allow substitution" but set the "substitution probability" to 0 on the formation data asset.



Also, on each formation in the timetable, you'll need to set an "extension length" for each vehicle, which is the length by which the vehicle substituting in may be longer than the original one.

 

Does that then find anything with the tag 'DB Regio' in the RVD? I assume for a multiple unit you just need to tick it on each vehicle and add the tag?

 

No, as that might mean you end up with just one of the cars being changed for another. I believe you'd need to have a formation that contains the two cars of the 642 with substitution disabled, and then a second formation that contains the first one with substitution enabled. That way it'll replace the entire two-car unit with another two-car unit, but the individual cars will always match each other.

 

There are only so many times you can drive trains along the exact same stretch of track in one day, so I'm also doing some research for freight trains in parallel. There are some very useful online tools available from DB that can help you figure out what freight trains can run along a track. However, filling out all the forms every single time I wanted to make a formation would be very time consuming, so I'm just making a list of what can go where now.

First, there's GretA, which lets you enter a route and locomotive(s) and then tells you how heavy the wagons can be.



I'm getting the data for the different lines from Dresden to Riesa as well as the connecting lines. That means that a train coming from Tharandter Rampe will have a different formation to one coming from the Elbe Valley.

There's also the Trassenfinder. This is essentially a routing tool, which isn't super helpful at the scale of a TSW route given that we know how to get from A to B within them...



...however, if you zoom in all the way, you actually get a lot of information about the track within stations.



Very helpful if you want to quickly find out the length of an overtaking siding.

 

Sometimes these services are weird, because the 112 has very good acceleration, but if you have the dosto cab car it is not limited to 160km/h so you can drive with up to 250 km/h, just wanted to let you know.