Okay, so I drive a service in Timetable mode from NYC to Hicksville which went fine. After waiting about a half hour at Hicksville, the next service to NYC pulls in and I go sit in the cab, taking over the service from the AI. I go through the procedure of setting up the train when suddenly...oops! My brakes won't charge. I make sure the master key is turned on, the brakes are in the notch 10 position, and the reverser is set to forward. Nothing. The needle doesn't go over 30 on the brake gauge. Normally you need to charge it until the needle hits 90. Also as soon as I let go of the button, the needle drops back down to 0. If I can't supply air to my brakes, I can't move my train. I tried repeating this multiple times for multiple services and it happened every time I went to take over a service from the AI. Lousy. I submitted a ticket. How much do you wanna bet DTG blames it on my GPU drivers, or something else completely unrelated to this kind of bug? GPU drivers are their usual go-to excuse.
And that's what I had it set at and it still wasn't charging. Believe me, I drive this route more than any other on TSW, so I have the procedure down. It only happens if you're on foot and take over a service from the AI. If you spawn in driving a service, it still works fine. I'm gonna try repeating the problem to day a few more times just to make sure.
The manual is a little unclear abot "pressing the charge button". You should tap it 7-8 times, not press and hold.
Then my last solution is to uninstall and reinstall the DLC to see if anything changes. Otherwise its a bug and it's discussed in the Steam forums as well: https://steamcommunity.com/app/530070/discussions/0/3104564981122366701/