Obviously they're not idling but I couldn't think of a term. Maybe "stationary". It sounds like a cooling system of some sort, perhaps for the traction motors, and maybe the air compressor for the brakes, but why are there running continuously when the motors aren't hot and brakes are not in the process of being applied/released? For EMUs I understand that they may have continuous HVAC sound for the passenger compartments, but not for singular locomotives. And why are they more loud than the BR143 despite being newer.
It is mostly cooling mixed with all of the electrical buzzing of the systems inside. There’s a lot of stuff at work - computers, the air equipment, and all of the electronics. And believe me, they need a lot of cooling. If you leave one of these locos booted up standing around in hot weather, they become literal hot boxes in the engine room even with the cooling. It doesn’t help that the coolers are minimised as much as possible (they really should have bigger ones than they do). Put simply, there’s a lot more happening in these electric locos than ‘overhead current -> transformer -> traction motors’. Simply because the audio levels in TSW are all over the place. A 143 is louder than a TRAXX in real life, at least when the cooling is on full blast.
How much computing power is needed to run the systems of a BR185?Considering that it can be simulated on a gaming laptop(not to full fidelity in TSW of course, but maybe in Zusi) I wouldn't expect the need for a crazy amount of high performance electronics that generate lots of heat. Or is it the power electronics that generate exponentially more heat than 5V digital electronics
You’re looking at these things too much in isolation. Look at it this way: You’ve got a small closed-up room packed to the brim with (heavy duty) electronics of all kind and the only bit of cooling or air flow you get is from tiny cooling grills (that probably should have been larger). In addition, you’ve got a number of computers in there that can’t get too hot or the loco malfunctions.
True but I still think the noise levels are all over the place as you say. Also I think German trains make less track sound than American/British trains but that's not represented in the game. When I lived in Frankfurt, I remember there was an intermodal train passing on a rail bridge over a road when I was walking home dead at night, and I was surprised how little sound it made, it was pretty stealthy despite the silence of the street at 2AM. But it was also traveling slowly, maybe in the PZB restricted mode. In TSW, you still hear lots of wheel/track sound even at low speeds, and noise levels are not very different between DB and BNSF trains. I don't think that's the case in reality. Also I wonder the Talent makes the brrrrrrr sound even when not moving. I've never seen a Talent in real life(or paid no attention if I did), but the regular S-Bahn trains in the Hesse(probably BR423) only start brrrring when they are accelerating.
Does the BR185 do the horrendous buzzing sound in real life? The sound added with DRA/DCZ, constant buzzing no matter the speed of the loco. Earlier implementations of the loco (RSN, MSB) didn't do it and unfortunately, I can't drive the BR185 from the cab because of it.
It's the electrical transformers and converters. Though, the sound in TSW is as if the engine compartment door was opened. Here's a good 185 cab ride video with perfect sound. Btw, a nice video on cold starting a 185...
Oh lord, it's prototypical... I would honestly quit my job after one minute in that loco. For some reasons, the transformer/converter sound triggers a migraine for me after a few minutes.
As Spikee1975 said, the sound level in TSW is more like if the door to the engine room was open, but the sound is there in real life, too. It’s just as annoying in real life but you get used to it.
Like the old Hasler tachos, you get used to them fairly quickly, hard to believe at first considering how much noise they generate.
I like the feeling of controlling a big machine, and it should make sounds. Can't stand the silent EMUs with their underfloor electrics.
Not to mention that BR 182 has atrocious sounds that do not match the real thing in any way except for the poor attempt to make the scale sounds of the traction converter. Br185 has the updated cab sounds but the exterior sounds are still bad and incorrect. More exactly that horrendous loud idle sound that represent the auxiliary systems for both locos should be completely replaced.
Well, they have a good enough relationship with Railpool that they were able to do a full sound survey of a Vectron, and RP runs 185s as well.
Hello, This are one of my first post. I've been here for a long time without writting enything. I want to say that all BR185 have a "Battery sound" that is very annoying, a very good machine and it has these problem. Anyone knows if they will arrange? I would like to use but with these sounds in cab is very annoying. Thanks Miquel
A lot of the noise on "idling" German asynchronous AC electric locomotives comes from the "HBU" and converter oil pumps. The HBU (hilfsbetriebumrichter) is the power converter for the auxiliary systems. There are at least 2, sometimes (101) 3 such HBUs. One of them is variable frequency and used for the traction motor blowers while the other(s) are constant frequency and used to power the pumps and compressor. These are loud and give off a sort of electric high pitched whine (part of that sound is most likely just the pumps as well). It's similar to coil whine inside a GPU (metallic vibration from strong, AC magnetic fields) Then you have the "substation hum" from the transformer (but afaict it is drowned out by the HBU). Making a comparison to the computing power required to simulate the locomotive is flawed for multiple reasons. 1. The noise is not coming from computers inside the locomotive but power converters and pumps. We're talking several hundred kW for the aux converters (requires a lot of cooling) and obviously a pump has no relation to computing power. 2. Even if it was a computer that made the noise, the game is not emulating the computing systems inside the PC but simulating them. You can afford to lose microscopic states and still keep the macroscopic states the same or nearly the same, in a simulating. I'm sure I'm missing some information but this is what I've been told by drivers or been able to pick up from the manuals at least Speaking of the high magnetic fields. I know at least in my country (Sweden) there were some fears that drivers were exposed to high strength EM fields due to stuff like the filter capacitors in the DC link. There were even correlations between being a train driver and risk of certain forms of leukemia (iirc) and brain cancers. That debate seems to have died down, probably because, from my understanding, there just isn't a lot of strong evidence for low frequency EM fields causing harm to humans, and the correlations mentioned above suffer from a ton of confounding variables (being a driver usually means working odd hours, being sitting for long periods of time, stressful etc).
...and you can't really compare the sound of these HBUs on a modern loco to a 143 (as done above), because that has an old-fashioned motor-generator set to power the auxiliary systems instead of that newfangled electronic stuff. (The fans are plenty loud though)
