I've done that survey today and Derail valley came about. It reminded me of that MOD for that game which is called "Air Brake" You can find it on nexus mods in the following link: https://www.nexusmods.com/derailvalley/mods/213 Why is this so interesting? well because it appears in TSW2 you get the privilege to drive off right away after letting the air breaks go. This is not the case in reality especially for the older generation engines, freight and passenger cars which are featured in TSW2. In reality you have to wait a bit depending on the age of the system, etc. Pressurize it, mother it, feed it, nurture it because it's the bread and butter of the whole thing. So now I want to experience this in TSW2. It would be truly revolutionary and fantastic. The technical details are covered in the link above, this would be train simulation to whole new level.
You're talking specifically about Wabco (formerly Westinghouse) air brakes there Gabe_1.0 - most modern braking systems are quite different and most of them use air as a secondary system - often purely as a fail safe and use electrically applied callipers on disc rotors as the main braking system. These are represented quite adequately in TSW2. I do agree for traditional air brake trains it would be nice if they were better represented, it would be cool on lines like Clinchfield and SPG that if you apply the brake too often without allowing for recharge that the people at the bottom of the hill had better start running before your train rains down on them. It would also be nice that if you don't from time to time do a full equalising application while stopped that your brakes build up such a tangent curve throughout the system that you break couplers because the brakes are going on hard at one part of the train and not at all elsewhere. As for brake pump ups, on a mile long freight you could be talking about to 45 minutes to fully pump it up from nothing in the pipe. I could not imagine most players wanting to sit there for that. A lot of the trains are pre-pumped when you get them, but there are some services on SPG and Clinchfield where you are pumping up from nothing and it does take a couple of minutes which is possibly as much as a game player would want to wait. Note that in many yards in the past the brake pipe would be charged from a ground compressor or by a switching locomotive then the air would be bottled in before disconnecting for the road engines to come onto the train. I don't think this practice is particularly common any more. Paul
Hey Paul, Your insight is very true. This would not apply to all trains in TSW only a few like mentioned. A full list should be made however for reference. in DV you can tweak the waiting times so you don't get 45 min wait but still reasonable. Game time could be done up a bit to compensate. You could however have a fast forward button to skip 45 mins or most of it and keep things as real as they can be. That's what makes a train sim worthy of coming back to Imo
There has been discussion about a fast forward button, its a bit challenging in the TSW architecture because every second actually has to happen for the time table and AI's to work properly. Have you played Run8? Its pretty realistic for brakes (including pump up times, except they're not as bad as 45 minutes!). TSW while it is a simulator and has a lot of effort made to be relatively realistic, its trying to make its stamp in the gamer market so is very much a game. Run8 is as ugly as TSW is pretty and cares more about realistic simulation than gaming. If you're into massive USA freights with long drags then it might be a good candidate for you. Paul
I just think TSW2 can do it all. It's just a matter of how. Options, choices, realism settings are probably the key to this.
