Now we have steam routes to play with, I wonder if anyone can tell me how real steam crews kept to the speed limits in locomotives with no speedo? Is there some railwayman's trick to it, or is it just experience recognising the sound of the clickety-clack as the train moves along?
Rail joints at 60 ft intervals, 88 in a mile so count how many in a minute! Or time the passage between the quarter mile posts (not sure at night though). I suspect in reality train crews just intuitively learnt to judge their speed by the movement of the loco and experience, not to mention at least on ordinary passenger and freight services speeds were not that high - even the Jubilee would generally have topped out around 80 MPH, not the Class 86 physics it seems to have been endowed with in TSW.
Experienced car drivers almost never look at their speedometer. My father just knew what 30mph should feel and look like. And 20mph. And 70mph. Basically, he only ever looked at the speedo to check whether his correct estimates were correct. I guess it's just something you learn as a fireman and then a driver.
Telegraph poles were at a standard distance, and could thus be used as a reference to progress. It would be a very rare line that had no telegraph run between signalboxes, as that was the basis for Absolute Block signalling. Many single lines worked on the Token Block principle also had telegraph runs, if not to implement Electric Token Block then just for general communication needs.
Thanks everyone - the consensus seems to be that it's something you learn from experience. BTW, there's a Sherlock Holmes story where Holmes works out the speed of the train he and Watson are on by counting the telegraph poles (but then he doesn't have to concentrate on driving the train).
I would imagine that similar to driving a car, you only really pay attention to "operating the vehicle" from rest and down to rest. the remainder of the time you're managing almost on autopilot or "muscle memory" / "learned instinct" or whatever Certainly when I am driving for two hours on a long road I pay attention more to what's going on around me than what my right foot is doing, because I don't have to think about it I think with trains, managing speed is about knowing what's coming up so WHEN to manage it, then you go through the motions of doing that (ie push whatever levers or buttons make you go faster or slow you down).
