Hello everyone, I have recently added the LIRR to my collection. This is my first American route I want to give a deeper try, and I encounter some struggles I am not able to figure out myself and hope someone here can shed some light for me Also, if someone has some documentation or information explaining those things, I would really appreciate if that could be shared. Most of the time the TS manuals are a good help, but in this case not even that helped. If possible, please don't post anything that you believe is supposed to be in a way, I would like to get answers from people that actually know the correct answers to my questions rather than someone that thinks they know, but are just guessing (no offense ). First of all, the signalling system. While I believe I got a good understanding of how it works (seeing all yellow was making me feel very uneasy at first , but it boils down to a horizontal yellow means "stop" and a vertical or diagonal yellow means "proceed" (Please intervene if I'm wrong!)), I just SPAD outside of Jamaica, being caught completely of guard by the little white signal that suddenly showed a stop aspect. Is there any way of telling before what the next signal is going to be, e.g. like with the distant signals in Germany or the Double-Yellow, Yellow and Red sequence in Britain? I noticed the ATC going to 15, but that was a couple yards before the signal and way too late to brake in time. Also, sometimes there are two signals in the same place on top of each other, one showing stop, one showing proceed, how do I know which is valid for me? I just assume the one showing proceed, since, for whom else should it possibly be? In addition, I am totally puzzled about the ATC. Well, not the ATC itself, I believe I understood that, but I noticed that if I follow the ATC, I will very often speed compared to what the HUD is showing as maximum speed. There was also one change where I felt the HUD was actually correct and the ATC too late, since I was going through the switches too fast (or it felt like that at least). So my question is: Is the ATC implemented in a way that it does not do what it is supposed to do (i.e. show me the maximum speed I am allowed to drive)? Do I have a wrong understanding of how ATC works? Or are the HUD speeds implemented incorrectly? Thanks a lot in advance for everyone that can help me to understand how this route works. Thanks for sharing your knowlegde, I really appreciate it!
Check the signalling chapter here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1693369538 There I added the basic guidelines for the ATC operation. A deeper signalling guide is here: Long Island Rail Road Signal Guide (unofficial) | Dovetail Games Forums Jovet also has some nice and explanatory charts for other railroads. For LIRR & NEC the NORAC case should be applicabe, if I´m not wrong: Railroad Signal Aspect Charts (jovet.net) Most important things to take into account in LIRR: 1) ATC does not provide permitted speed inside every place in the block, only the max authorized speed for the block 2) Speed restrictions (due to curves for instance) need to be known by driver. Few speed boards exist. You better use the next speed indication in HUD but basically the important ones are at: - Penn and Atlantic tunnels - Woodside entry/exit curves - Jamaica arrival/departure - Belmont branch - Hempstead branch 3) You need to brake with a defined minimum deceleration when ATC triggers an overspeed alert and also acknowledge it Good luck! It´s an interesting route to test your skills Cheers
Great, that's what I was looking for, thanks a lot! For ATC, does that mean that LIRR is cheating the system a bit, i.e. that is realistic and like that in real life as well, or are these some short comings in the simulation?
I also created a post including a basic guideline for track speed restrictions here: Lirr Track Speed Restrictions Map | Dovetail Games Forums About the realism this route has always created polemic discussions, as the signalling is really different than what we have in other cases. Most users claim that ATC is wrong, but according to people who know the real operation the implementation is correct and real drivers need to know the speed restrictions by heart. I can´t say a word about that except that a MAS system works like the ATC we have in game, just giving the maximum authorized speed for the block and nothing else. In therory the background was that in real route ACSES system was not still in operation when route was released for game. That system is the one that provides the speed restrictions from track itself (the ones I put in the link above) and is what users are missing in game as they find logical mismatches between ATC displayed speeds and HUD speed limits, being the latest normally more restrictive than the ATC ones. The ACSES was used in the orginal NEC route we had in previous version of the game for instance and the driving was much easier there by just following the indicated speed limits from the onboard system. Cheers
