Angelo

Hi! I've seen a picture of Grodzisk Mazowiecki on Discord; it's awesome, thanks to the devs! But now let's talk about the bug. In the picture, shouldn't the following switches be set and locked (with a yellow line) on the + position? 36, 38, 40, 54, 62 Thanks!

Hi, This could be because my monitor is in 5:4 (1280x1024). As you can see, the tracks diagram is misaligned with the monitor, although the buttons on top are correctly in their place. When I open the monitor it shows everything correctly, but sometimes it's useful to just quickly glance at the video without opening it. Thanks, and keep up the great work! EDIT - forgot to mention that it happens in all stations.

Italian colleague here! Here, on relay devices (ACEI) you have a key that can force the signal to danger or let it set to clear, but doesn't affect anything else; on electromechanical devices (ACE), the signal lever can be put a little bit backwards to set the signal to red, although you need to remove the route locking before you can put the lever completely back into its resting position. On both, in theory you could play with the signal as much as you want. On Polish type E devices I see there's no way to do that; I wonder if it can be done with mechanical devices.

Just a quick advice: on the EU07, you can instantly cut off the power to the traction motors by pressing the red button on the right of the buttons & switches panel (2nd from the right). Personally, though, I never use it until I have at least reduced the power, e.g. by setting the shunt to zero if I was using it, so that the passengers never feel anything.

Didn't know that! Anyways, I expect that such stations will be so small and simple that the driver won't have any doubt he's out of the station.

Correct: the motors in each group are permanently in series - which is why, in case of failure of one of them, you have to exclude two motors. I don't know if they're coupled 1+2 and 3+4 or, like in some Italian rolling stock that I know, 1+3 and 2+4 - this way, when running with only two of them, you never run with only the front bogie motors, which will have less adhesion due to the pitch moment produced by the acceleration.

But the dispatcher has no way to know if you're running deliberately slowly - he can only assume that you will take a normal time to free the tracks. Also, as a dispatcher, if a train is early and won't have commercial stops I will use this to my advantage when planning.

But what if behind you there's a delayed freight which will go on a branch line? On paper you should have been behind it, but in practice it had some problems and now it's following you. Sure, it could recover some delay, but since you're running incredibly slow it will now get a huge delay, and will delay other trains too on its branch line. Let the dispatcher do their job, don't forget that you're not the only one on the line, and also remember that things never play out as planned. That's why we have human dispatchers.

You can know that you're leaving a station when you see the limit of shunting signal - the white top-half circle with a black border (W5 signal).

Just a small correction: the EU07 has 4 motors; when in series, they're powered one after the other, so the voltage is divided by 4; when in "parallel" (which is not a "true" parallel) they're divided in 2 groups, each made of 2 motors in series, and the groups are in parallel, so the voltage is only divided by 2. This voltage is not actually 3 kV: yes, it comes from the overhead wires which are at ~3000-3500 V DC ca., but two things will reduce the voltage actually measurable at the motors: - at slow speeds, most of the voltage will be across the resistors; - at higher speeds, when the resistors are excluded, the rotating motors will generate a voltage opposite to the one that's feeding them, which will "erase" most of it: each motor may be set at, say, 3200V/4= 800V, but at a certain speed it will produce say -750V which will result in only 50V measured across it.

Never forget that you're not the only train on the line: if you slow down, everyone after you will slow down too. Just depart on time if you have a ph (passenger commercial stop), and let the dispatchers take the global decisions, since they know the situation on the line better than the drivers.

Said switch powers two motor+generator units that convert the 3kV from the overhead wires into the 110V for the low voltage circuits - in fact, when you turn it off you can see the battery voltage drops.

Hi! As a colleague of DazT (fellow signalman) I can assure you that trains do run early. Just this morning I had a goods running 27' early. Of course, it depends on the situation on the line. Here at work we always have a person who coordinates the whole line and takes all the global decisions, i.e. deciding when a train should let another one pass and where, or which train should enter first in a junction, etc. A great tool for making good-informed decisions is the real time train graph. I've seen there's one for SimRail, although IMHO it still needs some work regarding readability. So, should you send a train early? Personally, I always send fast passengers when I can, since the worst that could happen is they'll wait somewhere at a signal; for goods trains, regardless if they're on time or not, I check for how much time I have until I need to send something faster on the same track. If a Pendolino is coming in a few minutes but I'm near the next station, I'll let the freight run; if the next station is too far away, I'll wait for the departure of the fast train. Regardless of whether or not the goods is on time, early, or delayed. It's not about the punctuality of every train: it's about the overall regularity, and of course making people get where they need to be on time. Then of course, train dispatching can't be fully explained in a single forum post - and perhaps not by me.

Thank you very much! Congratulations for the great work done so far. See you soon in the sim! 🙂

Hi! Not sure if this can be considered a bug, an improvement or just the result of an overly pedantic rail enthusiast with his own weirdly strong interest for electromechanical railway interlockings buuut... When on a type E device two points are moved from a single button, they should move in sequence: the button is pushed or pulled, the first point is thrown, then the second one starts moving. This results in a longer time for the set of two points to reach the required position, and in a double jump of the ammeter. Also, the electric control of the actual position is unique for the whole set of points, so the yellow lights indicating the position should always turn off and on at the same time. That is if there aren't some versions of the E devices I might not be aware of. I'm sorry to bother you with such a shameless example of pedantry, it's just something that has been bugging me (bugs pun intended). Thanks for the patience, and keep up the great work!

It's great to hear that! Thanks for the replies. Can't wait for the next updates! See you soon in the sim 🙂

Tldr at the end. Hello there! Train dispatcher here. I bought SimRail and I really enjoy it! Congratulations to the devs for the great work. Of course there are many little things that need improvement, but a small one that would really change the experience as a dispatcher would be better timetables. I mean, playing as a DR is fun for the first hour, but then it starts repeating; and whilst passenger trains irl are often scheduled every 60', freight trains are way more chaotic - and therefore way more fun to manage for the dispatcher! Also, freight trains are rarely on time: it's common that they run 30' early or 60' late, depending on all that could've happened at the beginning of their journey. Also, it's a shame that branch lines outside the SimRail map are closed for the dispatcher: it would be so great to have AI trains coming and going from and to these branches! Also, one thing that would make it way more fun are random failures in the station devices. Tl;dr: I was wondering if it's already planned to: - make a more diverse timetable, at least for goods trains; - have delays; - have the station devices randomly fail; - have AI trains to and from branch lines. Many thanks to the devs and keep up the great, great work!