Be Excellent To Each Other

God, what a tremendously spiffing game !

Steam have been having this super duper sale and I noticed Zio kept loading up Railworks 2. After taking a look over it and asking him if it was any good I decided to buy it.

Glad I frikkin did ! It's fucking great !. Every young boy's dream. I picked a nice electric German train, took off like a bat out of hell and derailed it on a corner causing a horrific accident !

Soo much fun ! I'll try and get some screeners later, but man it's a right giggle

Choo Chooooooooo !!!

Have you seen there's almost £1000 of paid DLC for it?

I am not really tempted. Yes, it looks nicer than the ancient MS Train sim, but it also needs good routes and activities, and almost every Railworks review mentions how disappointing it is in this respect. The Great Eastern route by Making Tracks for MSTS, by contrast, came with a huge route and 30+ activities absolutely filled with other trains and stuff going on.

Dunno about the DLC. I did see one and I guess that's why they were selling it for £4.75 to try and lure you in. That route there was Oxford to Paddington.

The original was designed with the input of a co-worker who was a noted route designer and all-round crank for MSTS and the other sims of the time (Trainz, BVE, Mechanik). He rightly said that they don't simulate enough, there's far more to driving than the throttle and brake levers. I don't think much of his input was taken on board.

TBH, there's no single great sim, each is good at certain types of trains. Even so, it is all down to how much effort was put into designing the route and coming up with fun, immersive activities to do on them. I for one hate fictional routes. They feel too artificial compared to real world ones which had to be built around the landscape and a specific transport need, not the other way around.

RailWorks 1 was a bit shit, but with version 2 they've effectively made it a proper replacement to MSTS. And the base game comes with 9 routes, so there's plenty to do without getting any DLC (although I have bought the Flying Scotsman and Falmouth Branch DLC in the Steam sale).

Oh, and thanks JC for outing me as someone who plays train simulators!

Want. Will it work on my computerator or have they funded me? I have a geforce 9 series and a 2.summat CPU.

Is there? Like what? I know pretty much nothing about trains, which is why I ask. I've never been 'in to' trains but find the simulators, or maybe the idea of them, quite curious.

You've picked the wrong day, MaliA, as it's gone back up to £15 on Steam now.

Talking incomprehensibly over the PA system for a start

Well, on a UK train you have the AWS, TPWS and Vigilance systems. AWS is activated by magnetic ramps before each signal to give advance warning of what the next signal aspect is (off or danger), and needs to be cancelled if it warns of a danger aspect or the brakes are applied. TPWS is a small grid which will activate the brakes if the train runs past a red signal, or approaches an approach controlled one at too high a speed to stop in time. Vigilance will make a noise at intervals and require cancelling within a few seconds or else the driver is assumed to be incapacitated and the brakes are applied.

The only sim I know of that does all these is BVE, and only in a few routes.

RailWorks 2 definitely simulates AWS. On some routes you have to cancel the alert whenever you pass over one of the ramps. If not done in time, the emergency brakes are applied and all controls disabled until the train has come to a complete stop. Possibly it simulates the others you mention, but I'm not really clued up in these things (I mostly play the steam engine scenarios anyhow).

Looking at it for 50% off and the West Coast Mainline pack also 50% tempts me a bit.

did buy sid meiers railroads in the sale

I like Railroads!, but it is to the Railroad Tycoon series what Civilization Revolution is to the Civ series: great, but maybe a little too simple. Of course, that does mean it's a good one to start off with.

It's also the only one I seem to be able to play on my PC, as Railroad Tycoon 3 crashes at the title screen.


Back to RailWorks 2, courtesy of the Steam sale, I have also gone and purchased the Isle Of Wight DLC. That's three relatively pricey bits of DLC I've bought now, even at half-price, so I think I'm going to leave it there. I'm glad I got it though as I did one of the quick 20 minute scenarios before going to bed last night and I think this might have the makings of being my favourite route so far, even if it is relatively tiny.

Possibly I like being able to drive London Underground trains in it. I'd love it if someone did a proper, authentic Tube sim, even if you would spend most of it looking at black tunnel walls. I know there were some amateur made routes done in BVE, but I'd ideally want something done professionally with proper scenarios.

I'd also have to bite if they released DLC of the Birmingham New Street to London Euston line, simply as that's the main line I use all the time IRL.

Fuck, I'm a deeply sad man, aren't I?

It should really be called 'Sid Meier's Stock Markets!' since the trains barely figure in it. You could play Railroad Tycoon 2 in the same way (never laying a single piece of track) but the oversimplification went too far here. Anyone who wanted to actually build a rail network would be far better off with OpenTTD.



That's my other big problem with RailWorks. The Isle Of Wight route looks great, right? But it's TINY and it costs as much as the main game itself! The similarly impressive-looking Glasgow Airport Link route costs the same, and takes 15 minutes start to finish! I suppose it's realistic, on the modern British rail network, that you can pay almost a pound per minute you're on the train...



Fucking hell, Perkies was always here, ready to be deeply sad for you! You should have asked.

You want to drive a train into Birmingham New Street, do you? Let Perkies hook you up with BVE4!

http://railsimroutes.net/bve_trainsim/x-city_south.php



Instructions on obtaining and installing BVE4 are all on that page. You can drive the Cross City line all the way from Redditch into New Street. It has all those safety systems I mentioned, awesome sound, you'll love it. It's free, by the way.

Check out the driver's guide on what the different trackside signs, signals and such mean. Have you been shutting the power off for neutral sections?

Now that you've got BVE4, you can drive the PROPER London Underground too! Trust me, the Northern Line route is more than enough for you. I'm not sure what kind of scenarios you're after, but you get to bypass a station in one of the runs due to a security alert.



Northern Line
Victoria Line

More routes (Northern and Victoria are the best made thus far IMHO) are here.

That should keep you busy.

NB: There's also an open-source version of BVE4 called 'OpenBVE' which might be worth trying instead if you have problems. BVE4 sometimes doesn't like Win2k and XP machines, no idea if it even runs on Vista, so take a look there first perhaps. Note that I've never tried it.

Otherwise known as the "Make sure Jim doesn't nod off again" system.

Well, yes. Same as highway hypnosis.

You are the spoiled kid of steam lol. Every time I look at a game and look at who plays it you're there

I love this game though. It's soooo relaxing. Start him up, get him on a lovely open track and let rip whilst sitting back and taking in the scenery. The smoking chimneys are awesome

Why, thank you very much Mr. Perkies! I haven't used BVE in a very long time, so I'll have to see what's changed.

While we're on the subject, are there any tutorial guides out there to playing OpenTTD? I've never played either it, or Transport Tycoon, but people go on about it, so it must be good. I've just got no idea how to play it, and the few times I've booted up OpenTTD make it look a bit complicated for a beginner.

The trainsim community refers to routes where you just sit back and watch as 'screensavers', because once you've got the throttle set to keep you at linespeed there's nothing to do. Hence the need for interesting activities and the safety systems needing your care so you have something else to do as you go.

Heh, my consoles are plugged in to the telly. The missus likes watching the telly. Watching the telly distracts the missus long enough for Zio to play on his PC!

I've got a rather embarrassing number of games on Steam now though. Blame last year's sale. I've only bought a few things in this one so far.

Whilst the game engine itself feels a bit dated it obviously has an enormity of stuff going on. As you thunder down the tracks when you come to a village or town it does tend to stutter somewhat. Especially as you pass through a station and the commuters are all walking up and down.. I love that bit though, go on the horn and scare the fucking life out of them just like the cunts do IRL

The bit with the traffic passing over the bridges stutters too (see the buses in the last pic) but, I did mess with the sound so I will have a toy with that later.

Cheers again Perkies!

Yeah, I think this is why I like the steam engine scenarios as there's constant things to take care of.

The Japanese Densha De Go! games are interesting as they're generally more arcade game than simulator, need quite a lot of skill and are tough as fucking nails!

BVE4 was a huge step ahead of BVE2, and OpenBVE is shaping up even better. It's only really good for underground routes, apart from that one Birmingham route, if only because the guy put so much time into it.

As for OpenTTD, I will happily hook you up with some awesome UK-based trains and vehicles and graphics as opposed to the vanilla stuff.

http://wiki.openttd.org/Tutorial seems pretty good at getting you started.

Densha de GO! is still a great game, both because of the challenge, and the fact that it manages to make the whole railway feel alive around you with trains going every which way.

I know this is getting off-topic, but why the Hell do we still bother putting meat-bags in the front of these things, when they're so close to driving themselves anyway?

Someone asked the question a while ago, on here probably.

The answer remains that a human is much more adaptable to unexpected situations than a computer, especially on a non-linear route. A computer will drive a metro system fine, but when you have all the other trains and diversionary routes and such to cope with, you need a human at the controls.

Plus, you need the driver there as they're responsible for fixing the train when it breaks down in the middle of nowhere.

Really? I'd have thought a computer would have been better than a human at dealing with that, especially as diversions and waiting for crossing trains is all surely controlled by signals?

When the signals malfunction? Drivers regularly need to be talked past signals that have failed, operate broken level crossings, clear debris off the tracks and numerous other tasks.

When the nearest permanent way guys are well over an hour away, you'll be glad that your driver can just jump down, give the points a kick, and get you underway again in five minutes.

Ah, that makes a lot of sense, cheers. So basically the drivers are needed because the infrastructure's fucked?

I'm wildly surprised that they would be allowed to do anything of the sort!

'Pernanent Way' is an excellent term.

Or: They're more 'mechanic' than 'driver'?

Not just the infrastructure, but the trains too. When a train breaks down, if the driver can't figure out what's wrong, he calls his unit controller who will talk him through faultfinding and then trying to rectify the problem.

It's straight out of Thomas the Tank Engine, but the other day I overheard a driver being told to get some clingfilm or a plastic bag or something, and hold it over the split in the air pipe to try and allow some pressure to build up so they could have another attempt at getting the brakes to release.*

*train brakes use the air pressure to keep the brakes released. Failsafe.



The barriers failed at Porthmadog crossing the other day, the guard got out and used the emergency plunger to lower them, and then the driver brought the train across into the station. A computer-driven train would just have to sit there. The points fail at a passing loop, they can clip them up to ensure they're pointing in the right direction for the train to go across them.

'Permanent Way' is just the way they refer to the tracks and lineside structures.

Fuck it, this is the only major sim that's doing any sort of business at the moment, MSTS is dying, let's give it a try. Main game and WCML bought.

I suggest you blow off some steam and rail against him some more whilst putting him back on the right track before he gets his signals crossed about what's acceptable on this board - I mean, the way he's been conducting himself is disgraceful, he really should know his station... ("Stop this," - Ed.)

What a relief.

I just lie to see the little train running with my 4 year old... didn't really likes railroad tycoon 2 that much, and we had already an afternoon of fun for 2 euro 50, so good investment..

will try the tube sim though..

Have played three activities in Railworks now, ummm... 166 Oxford to Reading, HST Paddington to Oxford, 86 Glasgae tae Motherwell. Played in Expert controls, with the silly HUD bar turned off, so no warning of upcoming signals, speed restrictions, or other stuff up ahead. The game does pretty well at letting you drive this way, with a combination of proper signage/signalling and route knowledge enabling you to drive to the timetable. You don't need the little track monitor window warning you how many miles it is to the next station, etc.

It doesn't really seem like that huge a step forward from MSTS or Trainz in 2001. The routes themselves look only slightly better than MSTS, while the 3D cabs with usable controls were in the very first edition of Trainz a decade ago.

It runs at a good framerate even with everything turned to maximum, which is nice. The only place it dropped below 30 (to 25) was in the very busy and detailed Glasgow Central station as I was looking around before I left.

Stuff I have noticed:
-freight trains don't carry a flashing taillight as they are meant to. IRL the train can't run without one fitted and operational.
-the combined throttle on trains like the 166 is annoying as you have no idea when you've got it at zero... there's no key to snap it there, and no real indication when you hold down the accelerate/decelerate buttons in expert controls.
-the activities are riddled with spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.
-the HST's horn sounds like a wasp trying to play a kazoo using its farts. The real horn sounds the same as the other trains in-game.
-Airport Junction (where the Heathrow Express and Connect trains leave the main line and go towards Heathrow) simply isn't there... after Hayes and Harlington there's no huge flyover, no diverging line... the OHLE just suddenly ends.
-at Reading, the two platforms with third rail electrification that are set aside for SouthWest Trains services to Waterloo are always incorrectly occupied by FGW trains.
-the sun visor is either up or fully extended... on the DLC class 87, you can adjust it as much as you like.
-there's no stop boards on the platforms so you don't know where you're meant to stop, meaning you can have some cars unable to open their doors as they're no on the platform.
-the glow from signals is visible from the other side... you see these coronas off in the distance and are unsure if it's facing you or not.
-there seemingly only four passengers - angular-faced woman in bellbottoms, MaliA in a brown suit, haughty blonde in a woman's suit, and gormless man in a puffy jacket. You will see half a dozen identical people on each station platform.
-the guard closed the doors early and the station staff dispatched me, even though the signal at the end of the platform was still at danger because I wasn't due to go for another minute.
-the digital speedometer in the HST does not work.
-even if your train is due to depart, if you press the 'open doors' button, they spring open and passengers spawn as if they've just gotten off the train.
-there is no buzzer from the guard to advise the train is ready to depart each station.
-there are no London Underground trains at Ealing Broadway or Royal Oak near Paddington.
-none of the HSTs have a TGS car (with guard's compartment) at one end.
-if you are driving along at 125mph, and use the 'rear' camera to view the rear power car, there's an identical ugly cunt driver sitting in the cab. Nobody rides in the rear cab. Neither he nor the one in the front are actually touching the controls.

I love you Perkies.

Played some more of this.

-the 'every locomotive that's running has a driver' issue is quite funny, especially when driving a large North American freight train with six locomotives, and you have a guy sitting in each cab... sometimes staring at the guy sitting in locomotive facing him when they're coupled up nose to nose.
-during career missions, the game measures the 'ride quality' for the passengers based on the physical forces they experience due to acceleration, braking and cornering. Fine, so don't slam on the brakes, don't punch the throttle hard when leaving a station... but when the linespeed is 125mph, I'm doing 95mph and my score starts plummeting into the negatives due to 'too much sideways force', then however the game calculates these forces is fucking BROKEN.
-a guy in work who used to drive the class 86 has explained how they work, and I'm at long last able to drive it properly in the game. The manual's explanation is very poor.
-some of the scenarios are woefully dull. Taking the Union Pacfic passenger train into San Bernadino is little more than an hour of tweaking the dynamic brake between 11 and 18% to keep the speed under control. If you could set is more precisely (as in, to the percentage point) you could probably just leave it on 15% and go make a sandwich.
-I wish you could have more fun with the horn... the two-tone horn on a British train can make lots of noises, and you can see (in the accurately recreated cabs) the various ways a real driver can push the lever to make different tones. Likewise with the US horns, at 01:19 in this video the driver gives the cameraman a shave-and-a-haircut on his horn! Here you're playing lousy-sounding flat blasts, which on a slow uphill climb in Cajoin Pass is one of your main sources of amusement gone. Driving a heavy freight train and blasting the horn should make your hair stand on end!
-none of the US locos have working ditch lights (visible from about 1 minute in) either.
-while approaching a level crossing, there was a train coming the other way already on the crossing. A car drove straight across, THROUGH the side of a tanker car, and out the other side.

Anyway, here's a few screenshots of my trips around:

Top to bottom they are:
-leaving the marshaling yard
-F7 at San Bernadino station
-scary embedded man
-very accurate (except for crowds of neds) Glasgow Central concourse
-class 86 crossing the Clyde Viaduct into Glasgow Central

I am surprised the driver is allowed to do that. I'd have thought TOCs would tell them under no circumstances are they to mess with p-way because Network Rail could turn round and say "you broke it more, pay up".

The Green and Gold FGW HST sounds much better, there's probably some way to fiddle with it and substitute the sound, however Steam will probably go OMG CORRUPTION and revert it.

It's in everyone's interests to minimize the delay minutes. A former signaller, MOM and crossing keeper in my office confirms that yes, giving them a kick can be the expedient resolution... sometimes they work fine again after that and it just needs that added physical input to get them all the way over. They still get checked after a problem like that, of course.

I'm seen topics on the Steam forums about the sound, I'll see if it's possible to put in something better. Hell, I'm sure someone's made a proper two-tone horn mod somewhere. The one in BVE worked great.

I felt most disappointed when I had a look at the Careers bit of our local train operator the other day to see they never advertise and only accept speculative online applications for become a real-life train driver. Driving a choo-choo has got to be better than this IT shit I've found myself in.

Still, might send an application off. Not sure how good 'have played MS Train Simulator and RailWorks 2' would look on the CV though.

While it couldn't hurt, they're more interested in stuff like good organization, reflexes, shift work experience, and the ability to keep track of a lot of things at once. I'm told one of the aptitude tests involves a large panel of buttons hooked to various lights and buzzers. When one is activated, you have to push the correct one as quickly as possible.

A former colleague had enough of customer services and went for a driver position. He did quite well until this test, when they gave him the practice run, which he was fine with. The actual test runs much faster, with no warning, and if you fail it, that's it, you're gone. He wasn't impressed by this policy but is now stuck as a guard, something he doesn't always object to as leering at underage girls in flimsy clothes during the summer is one of his hobbies.

The big problem with that test is that some of the driver managers, who have been driving for decades, can't pass it. It's too arbitrary. Same with some of my own tests for my job - there are people who've been doing delay attribution since it began, and are excellent at the job, but are hopeless at the test.

In our brief today we learned about this:



http://www.firewestyorkshire.com/summit ... ec20th.htm

The same tunnel where a train came off the road last Monday after colliding with a three foot block of ice that had fallen down those same ventilation shafts you see above.

Anyone into this sorta thing... I visited Hereford signal box today while taking a new member of staff out route learning:

The loco-hauled Holyhead-Cardiff Central 'gravy train' passes through the station (not booked to stop, to the consternation of the locals)


Inside the box itself

Had a crack at the long freight run on the WCML route today. For some ridiculous reason you run through every single loop even though nothing is overtaking you on the main line, you have to drop from 90 down to 40, crawl through the loop and then rejoin the main line and accelerate again. The ludicrous "driving forces" mechanic is really a problem here, as braking at more than 52% brake causes too much force. I'd understand if it was passengers, but I've got a load of timber as my cargo!

There's some free activities on Steam to download. One is a very tense run along the length of the Oxford - Paddingon line, riding the yellows behind a late service.

I am finding some of the freight shunting activities are made a pain by the interface. I arrive at a big marshaling yard and am told to drop my grain cars in track 10. Looking on the map, the label for track 10 could apply to any of three tracks, and you have to then stay focused on this one line (out of over 20) while you then scroll several screens back to set the switches.

This is definitely a problem with how the game works on those scenarios. It's pissed me off a few times too - turns a train sim into a frustrating puzzle game whilst you try and work out what points you need to activate to get onto which tracks.

RW2 is a strange one - terribly ropey in some areas but I still don't know of a better train sim out there at the moment. I always thought it was a shame that MSTS2 got shelved.

The only solution I can think of for now is to look on the little "track monitor" thing at the bottom of the screen, try throwing a switch and seeing what it says is now ahead of or behind you. Even that is broken, it warned me late of one speed restriction and didn't even mention another.

Incidentally, I don't use the minimap (F3) as knowing the aspect of the next signal makes playing the game almost entirely pointless. Except, you can hit Tab to request permission to pass the next signal at danger as many times as you like. If it's already showing off, nothing happens. If it's on, you'll get the "denied" message popping up.

It's a shame MSTS2 was canned twice. It's also a shame the big third party route creators like Making Tracks and EuropeanBahn aren't supporting Railworks as it really needs more routes of the same calibre of WCML. I used to say similar things about Trainz, all these add-on trains are pointless without routes to drive them on! There's a Pendolino add-on, for example. All you get is it and two activities on the TestTrak tutorial level. Nothing for its natural habitat, the WCML. Likewise half the DLC trains, there are no routes to use them on!