PC Universal Pzb & Brake Calculator For German Content

The second version of my calculator is here! With much expanded options and background simulation, it supports not only freight, but also light locos and passenger trains, calculating max. allowed speed of train, brake modes for you to set, and PZB mode to select.

Why to use it?

Allowed train speed is affected by many different variables - line and signal speed, wagon bogies, route profile, available brake force, prescribed timetable and more. This is not really simulated in TSW, only line speed appears in HUD, occasionally hard limited by timetable speed. Also while UIC brake levers are simulated, they are usually not set correctly on spawn. Due to that, the game sometimes allows you to run misconfigured train at higher speeds than you should, and the train is then not capable of stopping in time when encountering unexpected stop signal.

How to use it?

The calculator runs in browser as a Google Spreadsheet, where you fill in your consist and route, and get train documentation generated in return. To ensure that people don't overwrite each other's inputs, you only have view access to the sheet, and you have to create your own copy by going to menu File - Make a Copy. This will generate a version on your Google Drive that you can write into as you like. When a new version is released, you can simply delete your copy and do File - Make a Copy on the new version again.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WgXR8LhyS2NMR_8GnGjc9EAd4-H1hbdqPLWcZiztimM

Filling in data

The input is straightforward, go through the list of locos and wagons, and add respective number to it, while keeping zeros at all others. The cells will invert in color when filled, so you can keep track more easily.



Freight wagons are little more complicated, because we need to know which are loaded and which are empty, so there are separate columns marked "E" and "L". If you can't see if wagon is loaded, just try either and watch if the calculated weight corresponds to pause menu of the game.

Because of "long locomotive" concept of freight trains braking, we also need to enter first five wagons separately from rest of the consist, as their brake mode may be set differently which affects the calculation. Additionally, articulated wagons (container Sggmrss or car Laaers) are counted as one wagon, even while ingame menu counts them twice. If those are in front of the consist, both halves must have same brake setting, so we enter only 3 wagons (6 halves) in the 1-5 columns. A train with one loco and 15 loaded container wagons will show as 31-car train in pause menu, but to calculator we will enter one loco, 3 to L1-5 column and 12 to L6+ column. It sounds complicated, but that's just how it works.

After we have our consist, pick the route you are travelling, and then select correct direction, so the route profile is loaded. Weight and length are calculated automatically if zeros are filled, but as load varies greatly in different services, you can fill it here according to game menu to get more accurate calculation.

Some options are offered for finetuning, namely Timetable speed sets upper limit on resulting max speed, as TSW often sets unnecesarily low limits (usually 80 or 100) on freights that could be travelling faster. You can also enforce G timetable even for trains that would be otherwise allowed to travel in faster R/P timetable.



Reading results

After the data is filled, you can review the Train Documentation part on the right side, there you can see generated timetable, brake report and additional speed restrictions if train needs to be slowed in part of the route to maintain safe stopping distance. By comparing Available brake percent (BRH) and Minimal brake percent (Mbr), you can see how well the train will be braking.

PZB mode prescribes you what to set the PZB to, and Brake mode prescribes how to correctly set brakes in the consist to comply with the timetable, the value here can be varied: for light locos and passenger trains, you will see single letter here, usually R or P. Passenger trains always use fastest brake setting that are available, if technically possible. For freight trains, you will usually see three letter code here: PPP, GPP, GGP, GGG. First letter corresponds to setting of the loco (usually set on rear cab wall or in displays), second letter to first five wagons (three if articulated) and third letter to rest of the consist. These are set by diagonal yellow levers located usually around middle of the wagon, interactive on most german wagons. The game often sets them correctly on spawn, but specifically GGP (loco+5 wagons in G, rest in P) you always have to do manually.



And.. that's it! You now have the consist ready for departure according to more-or-less real procedures! Happy railroading!

Support me
Do you like my creations and tools? You can support me in further development on Buy me a coffee. Don't forget to sign

 

I will be checking this out! Thanks for your efforts

 

This will get lost quickly, I've reported it to be moved to the Guides section.

Great job!

 

The guides section of the forum is so hidden that nobody goes there, really. Rest of the guides are here as well.

 

It's easier to find there, as the General Discussion gets flooded with threads of all sorts and this one will drown quickly unless someone constantly bumps it.

 

Please leave it here, this forum gets much more traffic and much more people can see it here.

Getting the formulas right was not as much of a problem, as OpenMinded, cwf.green, Lamplight, tygerways and some other users already made a great effort in the Dresden-Riesa topic to explain the process and how are all the things related. I always liked driving german freight trains, but only reading how to calculate everything was not easily memorable, in this way I actually wrote everything myself and finally got grasp of all the concepts behind it. Getting all the data took me about a week of poking around with god mode and later TSW4 free roam, and since that, it was multiple weeks of testing by actively playing and cross-checking every train, if the game agrees with my results and the numbers make sense

 

Great work
As someone who appreciates German freight, it's often a headache to calculate this type of value.
Thank you very much, a very useful file.

 

Great work and this is useful on KWG DRA too

 

Regarding steepest descend.

Drove every german route from end(s) to end(s) the last few weeks and collected the gradients as shown in ingame hud. Here are the maximum values that occured:

• SKW 13 Kassel-Würzburg
• DCZ 27 Dresden-Chemnitz
• RRO 26 Rhein-Ruhr Osten
• BRO 8 Bremen-Oldenburg
• HHL 25 Hamburg-Lübeck
• HMA 15 München-Augsburg
• HRR 15 Hauptstrecke Rhein-Ruhr
• MSB 21 Main-Spessart Bahn
• DRA 16 Dresden-Riesa
• RSN 20 Ruhr-Sieg Nord
• SKA 10 Schnellfahrstrecke Köln
• LFR 9 Linke Rheinstrecke: Mainz-Koblenz
• RT 40 Rapid Transit
• NID 16 Niddertalbahn
• VBRG 14 S-Bahn Vorarlberg

Hope that helps

 

One thing that could come in some future versions.

 

Coincidentally, tygerways#2596 and myself are in the process of incorporating exactly this plus a „Wagenliste“ into his calculation tool as well. I would not have thought that there is actually anybody out there who is also interested in this in the first place… obviously I was wrong

 

This is genius. Now I don't have to spend an hour trying to calculate it by paper.

 

Just what I needed. Thank you!

 

Brilliant! Man, what a useful tool!

One oddity, though: it seems that running light on a flat route, even the fast locos (101, 146.2, 182) come out limited to 135 km/h. Surely that can't be right? Or is it because the calculator doen't make provision for R brakes?

 

Excellent!

Do you have numbers for Voralberg, Maintal or Rosenheim?

 

Thanks for the bump. It’s a year old thread and I never saw it to be honest. I don’t know why it’s not pinned yet… Thanks to the author for this useful tool.

 

Wikipedia claims Maintalbahn is 5 ‰ max, Rosenheim-Salzburg 11 ‰. Wikipedia doesn't have data for all the branches of S-Bahn Vorarlberg, but I want to cross-check with https://geovdbn.deutschebahn.com/isr later anyway

 

Yup, the calculator uses only P+E value to generate the timetable.

This tool is not forgotten, by the way, I am working on a new version. Not much will change on the frontend, but I would like to completely rewrite the logic behind it to better support dynamic load level that seems to be present in some newer wagons. Using the "override weight" should then better distribute the (usually additional) load across wagons and have bigger impact on brake percent overall.

 

Shouldn’t it use P (or R) but not the +E values for light locos?

 

Using this to compute light locos was not an intended scenario

 

Those who want to help me fill in all the missing route data, I am using the value shown in the new minimal HUD. To keep consistency in measurement: just drive the full route and watch for maximum descend and maximum ascend (ie. descend in other direction) values. Ignore extremes that are only present for short time and not representative of the whole route (ie. multilevel junctions around Köln or Dresden, as you don't go through them at maximum speed anyways), it should stay at that maximum value for at least few seconds at higher speeds to have any effect on your needed braking distance.

It is important to write down numbers for ascend and descend (descend in each direction) separately, because uphill routes will be very different in each direction.

(These numbers are permilles, I think the HUD shows percents)

 

So, for example, the ramps to the city tunnel on RT are quite steep...up to 4% I think, this values I don't take in account?

 

Correct. The issue is preventing the possibility of a runaway, and being able to stop in time at line speed or close to it; short little elevation changes, especially around low-speed yards, don't factor in. Think rather coming down the Tharandter Rampe. The term used in the US is "ruling grade."

 

going now through all these freight threads and my brain is ready to go nuclear lol... I usually look at the train with "3" camera and together with train length and weight data given by the game I decide between M and U and hope the game gives me pts

dont get me wrong, I would love to drive more realistically, but all these calculations make my head spin just going through them

still kudos for the spreadsheet... might use it from time to time until someone or you comes up with an actual utility ah, sweet passenger runs lol

 

My spreadsheet only asks you to pick a loco and wagons and then hands you all the data, it will not get more accessible than that

Yep. You are basically interested in average descend in rolling 1000 m (braking distance). But as that is almost impossible to calculate unless you plot the whole route with all elevation changes, I just take an educated guess based on how the HUD changes and slightly polish the extremes in that.

It's been years since I drove on RT, but if the ramp has 100 meters we ignore it, if it has 700 meters, we take it into account. For example Hamburg - Lübeck is flat as Hungary, but the multilevel junction at Wandsbek takes you down in 2,5%. But it only has like 300 meters and you go 60 to it, so no need to "ruin" the 0,8% profile of the rest, because it will not have that large effect on your braking distance.

 

IIRC, RL Buchfahrpläne break the run into segments, with different Vmax based on the ruling grade in that segment. If you're taking a freight from Hamburg to Innsbruck, you shouldn't have to cross Lower Saxony at a speed calculated for the Alps!

 

hay I've noticed that calculator c7 should be
=floor((if(C9="P";sum(X20:X34);sum(Z20:Z34))*D9+sum(X38:X50)*D10+sum(AA38:AA50)*D11)/C5*100) instead of =floor((if(C9="P";sum(X20:X34);sum(Z20:Z34))*D9+sum(X38:X50)*D10+sum(AA38:AA50)*D11)/sum(W20:W34;W38:W50;Z38:Z50)*100)
so that it can use the overrided weight value to calculate BrH R/P and PZB mode

same for F7 should be
=floor((sum(Z20:Z34)*G9+sum(X38:X50)*G10+sum(AA38:AA50)*G11)/C5*100) instead of =floor((sum(Z20:Z34)*G9+sum(X38:X50)*G10+sum(AA38:AA50)*G11)/sum(W20:W34;W38:W50;Z38:Z50)*100)
so that the BrH G can be calculated with the overrided weight value

I noticed this issue when drive on vorarlburg int he vectron with service 63235 where originally the calculator gave me PZB mode M and a max speed of 100km/h for R/P timetable witch caused a PZB emergancy stop as the train wouldnt slow down fast enough. After my changes it gave PZB mode U with a max speed of 90km/h tomorrow I will test this as I am now headding to bed

 

Alright update time,

• using the default calculations using a steepest desend % of 11 you get PZB mode M and a max speed of 100km/h this will result in an emegancy stop
• using the default calculations using a steepest desend % of 17 you get PZB mode M and a max speed of 90km/h this will result in being able to slow down just in time
• using the changed calculations using a steepest desend % of 11 you get PZB mode U and a max speed of 90km/h this will result in an emegancy stop
• using the changed calculations using a steepest desend % of 17 you get PZB mode U and a max speed of 80km/h this will result in being able to slow down just in time

Personally I would assume the game calculates accelation, deaccelation as well as inclines and declines bassed on what the games says the weight of the train is and not what the calculator thinks the weight of train is. So, I think it would be a good idea to do calculations bassed on the weight override if there has been an overrided weight put in

 

What level of braking are you using, to outrun the braking curve like that?

 

I was using the what the calculator said loco G first 5 G rest of the consist P I was also putting the brake straight to full application in all 4 tests

 

In the UK we call it the "ruling gradient", just to be different!

 

You are correct! Thank you, I updated the formulas.

Upstream spreadsheet was now upgraded to version 1.1. Includes updated formulas for correct weight override and data for BR 111*.
Simply delete your copy, visit the upstream spreadsheet link and do File - Make a copy again.

* BR111 data are not tested as I don't have the addon yet, I used data written on the loco, basically the same as with 110, just with increased speed – I don't know if that is correct or if that is the behavior in the game. But it's not really a freight loco anyway, so eh.

Yeah, the brake distance should not be fitting exactly for centimeters, you should still have I think 10% reserve or something? Usually I am not really hugging the permitted speed unless I know I have green wave, and brake level 1-2 is often enough to easily make the 1000 Hz check. For 500 Hz maybe level 4, but I don't really use full brake at all.

To all drivers, do not forget that almost all locos are equipped with dynamic brake that can be unlinked from air brake. It's useful thing for freights, as you can go into full dynamic braking (and back) very quickly without risking the two minute release time of air!

 

I love this calculator. Thanks!

Permille grades on BSR:
Rosen - Salzb 11
Salzb - Rosen 11

 

Upstream spreadsheet was upgraded to version 1.2. Link stays the same.

I finally collected all the necessary data for all german and austrian routes in TSW (including Semmeringbahn), so I could make the route switch simpler to use. Now you can simply pick the route and direction from the select box, and appropriate downslope speed limit will be applied automatically.



If you found the prefilled slope (visible in timetable) not to your liking or you needed some route that is not provided in the list, override field is present as usual.



This selector makes it much faster in everyday use, as you no longer need to cross-reference other places to find the correct number.

You can safely delete your own old copy of the document from your Google Drive. Then, go to the upstream spreadsheet, and click on File - Make a copy to create your own editable copy once again, so you don't conflict with other users.

 

Why was this excellent and useful thread unpinned? Mods? This one should be permanently affixed to the top of the subforum.

 

Probably because the place became too cluttered. A personal user-curated threads index (with questionable importance of some entries) which needed permanent updating, what people do in Freeroam (not really interesting for everyone) and such. I see they want the forum structure to be more clean.

It's what it is - a fantastic but content-specific guide that belongs to the section that was created for it, and where all the other fine in-depth guides are happily gathering without wanting "special treatment" - in the Guides subforum.

Noir apparently did not want it to be there though, fearing it would not be seen. But if I'm looking for a guide, I go to "Guides". If people can't read or use a forum, it's their problem.

DTG don't want it on the opening page of their game (as it is not a general thing) - so the only option left was to unpin it.

Another issue is people tend to spam the General Discussion with all sorts of things unfortunately, many bug reports are not seen because they're in the wrong place or have meaningless thread titles. Mods have to move stuff to the Troubleshooting section manually.

 

Randomly got onto RSN with the 187. saw it wasn't in the calculator. was that loco overlooked or is there a problem with it why it can't be in there?

 

Whilst this brilliant tool works superbly for me in Google Docs, I have an issue when downloaded to Excel, which is I don't get a Max Allowed Speed showing:

(I'm using the defaults unaltered, so this should be showing 75kmh in R/P, 65kmh in G.)
Working through the formulae, I am getting Invalid Name Errors in four cells on the Calculator tab:


Do others get this too? Is there an easy way of resolving it, or is it just one of those things?!

 

As the error is in the route speed calculation, excel probably does not support the IFS function. That's how this table is encoded. I don't have a solution for you, I don't work with excel. You can just use it natively in Google Drive.

 

yeah I got the same issue porting it to excel. the easiest way to resolve it is to bookmark it and use it in your browser in google drive. that's the quickest and easiest for me

 

Thanks for the reply. I had another delve into the formulae and think I've solved my issue.

The errors were occuring in Excel because it didn't like the formuale on the Calculator tab being lower-case. Doing a case-sensitive Find+Replace to change all the instances of ifs to IFS sorted everything out

 

Just a mild touch, there is a -60% sale on the old red 363 addon and as many recently praised this very old DLC, I decided to finally grab it. With it come rarely used Uacns wagons, so I completed the wagon data for them as well. This makes the calculator finally complete with all the current rolling stock implemented.

If you own this DLC, you may want to upgrade to version 1.2.1 of my spreadsheet, but if you don't own it, you don't need to bother, as there is nothing new otherwise.

 

Just started playing TSW and coming from flight sim I love these kind of tools, they really add to the immersion knowing everything is set like it should, massive thanks!

 

So this is a fun trip. uphill I'll try to keep at 80 but wow DTG put some heavy trains in the system

Edit: it's the DGS 47480 at 7 AM from Salzburg

Second edit: Wow I'm tired and read the Brake Percent as max speed.

 

If you're departing from Salzburg, you've got the 'Route and direction' the wrong way around. Might not make a difference here, but it can sometimes.

 

ah. wasn't aware there is a salzburg to rosenheim one.

 

So I was wondering about these rare services. sadly not seen ingame anymore on any route. a loco haul with a 185 taking five 143's and two 185's somewhere. of course all panto's but the towing loco should be down, suppose the game can't do that for a service start.

I wonder how to calculate speed and PZB for those. Ingame it was set to PZB U. but my logic says take the one loco and full weight and length of the consist as override and pick a container wagon empty to get the higher speed limit but since carrying unpowered loco you are freight so PZB M or U? or do you fill in all the loco's and put PZB on O?

 

When you pull locos it basically follows the exact same rules that define this spreadsheet. The way you have to set up the loco that you pull is dependent on type and varies a lot. In reality only people that have a rating for this type of loco are allowed to do this. Modern locos, for example, don’t have a mechanical possibility to change the brake type. If the battery is switched off you need to know what it is doing.

In case of 5 143s you would be way below 800t, hence, you would set all locos to brake type „P“. You now calculate BrH (rough estimate: braked weight 515, weight 495) = 104. As per definition this will be PZB mode „M“. As the 143 limits this consist to 120kph anyway, this will be your max speed.

 

There seems to be a variance between the way the spreadsheet calculates freight car weights, and the way the game does. I have to use the override box just about every time, because the in-game weight is heavier than the spreadsheet output.