Gazz292

i hear a few dispatchers telling me and other trains that we have a clear run through their section, or that they should expect a yellow or red signal due to a slower train ahead etc. If i've been running on all greens for many kilometers then it's not really usefull info, But when the Ai dispatcher has been changing signals to green only when i am within ~450 meters of them and so have been slowing down expecting a stop signal due to the last signal being a 'S5' being told i'll get a clear run through a section can be welcoming. As only some dispatchers do this shows that they are real live people there, and not an autonomous robot reading from a script.

Regarding stopping freights, the Polish drivers timetables have letters at the bottom right of each station / post entry, showing the radio channel in use, interlocking type and so on, And if there's a 'T' in there, it means that if a freight train is stopped at the signal (i presume any of the signals controled by that post), it may not get going again due to the gradient. So there are points along the line where the dispatcher really shouldn't stop a freight unless its an emergency (i don't drive freights so i don't know if there are any of these places in the SimRail universe of lines) There is also a sign that can be placed on automatic signals.. W22, a black diamond with a white T on it, That means a freight train can pass that signal at 20 kph if it's red... the usual procedure is to stop, sound the horn / whistle then pass the signal and do no more than 20 km/h until you pass a normal signal / stop before the train ahead. But again, it's there for the long heavy freights that should not be stopped due to the gradient of the line. : So many people think freights are the lowest of the low regarding movements, and are to be delayed and stopped at will, but not many people think about the time taken for the freight to stop, and then get going again may well be much longer than if they'd just let it run through whilst it's running at it's max speed.

i think some people think that at the end of their run they get to park the carriages up in the sidings, uncouple the loco and take it to the depot, use the turntable and stable it in the loco shed, Thing is, that only happens to the last services of the day. during the day your 14100 service turns around and becomes a 41100 service going back the way it came, so at most you may move the loco from one end of the cariages to the other, but looking at Polish railways maps, some terminus stations have a loop line that allows you to turn your train without disconnecting the loco. : Last night when i ran the 14133 service, when i got to Katowice ;zd, ph. i got out of the loco and gave it back to the bot to drive, as the ;zd bit after the station name means this is a crew change point, Then i watched the train drive away standing on the end of the platform, eventually i got the 'you are too far from your train' message and was teleported into the cab, and about 5 seconds later was kicked to the 'end screen'

i'm all for realism regarding the driving, but to make a 'rule' about no non railway talk might be going a little too far, Maybe have one server for 'driving and dispatching as if this was real life' and leave the others for people who want a more relaxing time in SimRail? kind of like they have done now with one server that bans track closing due to the problems it causes. But i know the dispatchers get bored waiting ~20 minutes between trains at times, so being able to chat on the radio / phone in the sim keeps them entertained, and in the UK back in the days of mechanical signal boxes, the signallers would be on the signal box party line (phone line shared between all signal boxes) all the time chatting away, some even practiced their opera singing over the phone line... as soon as a train arrived they stopped and did their job, but the alternative was to sit in the chair and possibly fall asleep from boredom,

that is awesome, one day we will have proper joystick support in SimRail, it's a pain in the ass having to use things like joy to key at times for sure. each update of SimRail i eagerly check the buttons.conf folder to see if anything new has been added, all i noticed was one of the 'test' entries was removed,

One problem is that some people literally spend all day in their favourite dispatchers post and will not give it up to anyone else unless the server restarts and someone else manages to get into it before they do. As a driver, it's no really problem for me to simply take back the train i was driving after the server restart, if someone else gets it before i do, i simply go to another server and carry on my journey with the same train (i like to drive the ~4 hour services)

well, really we do need a different set of "user assignable" keybinds for each train, as not many trains share exactly the same controls, i.e. there's no cruise control lever / buttons in the EU07, and no shunt regulator lever in the elf, trax, pendolino etc.. the modern trains have all the computer screens with ~10+ buttons around their edges, and often a single rotary switch for head and tail lights, the EU07 has ~5 individual switches for setting the head and tail lights for the different codes they display. The problem will be in 5 years time when there are 50+ different trains to drive from around the world in SimRail, but only one single menu for setting up all keybinds, it'll take 10 minutes to scroll to the end of it due to all the different controls for different trains, and if you are stuck with assigning a single key to a single control, things will get very messy fast. So having maybe a global basic controls menu for the main controls that all trains have like throttle, brake, horn etc, ideal for those who just like a 'go and stop' style of control. Then have seperate menus / files to change for those who want to adjust the individual controls that apply to certain trains, with the ability to then spilt out the control assignments if you wish, i.e. to set say the arrow left and right keys to move the EU07's power wheel left and right, and the arrow up and down keys to move the elf's joysticks style power / brake lever up and down and so on. : : But where that other game went wrong was getting different people to set up the hard coded binds on the raildriver, one person thought 'i'll have the first 3 buttons for PZB', then the next person thought 'i'll have PZB on the last 3 buttons' they did the same for the levers too and it was hell trying to remember which button / lever did which. If they'd given people the ability to set the controls how it suited them, the end user, things would have been a million times better, as no 2 people want the same control layout. But they didn't, they thought they knew best and had a 'take it or leave it' attitude to the control schemes, and a lot of people left it and moved onto other simulators, even going back to a 15 year old train game because it gave them the freedom to set it up to suite them, the end user.

You are the driver, other people can see you in the cab when you are in it, just that when you activate the outside view, you teleport outside the cab and are levitating, so the view you have is true to if this was happening in real life... there's no driver in the cab as the driver really is not in the cab, he's holding the camera to take the picture 😄

you could do what some people did to hide the next signal aspect that shows in the top right corner, place a sticky note / Post-It note on the monitor's bezel so it covers up the part of the screen that you don't want to see the 'cheat info' Would be nice to have an option to set the alerter on the HUD only appear if you are outside the cab (playing about getting screen shots, or using the rear camera to see when the last coach / wagon of your trains gone past the speed limit sign etc)

Where is the data for the 'switch / points' speeds coming from? if it's a real track railway site, then remember that is likely based on the situation today... 2023, and SimRail is based on how it was in 2018, so things may have changed, what is now a high speed set of points may have been a much slower set 5 years ago.

ahh yeah, i suggested that the flies are wiped off the screen when it's raining a while back... just one of these 'realism things' that most people don't notice or think about, but makes SimRail stand out with realism even more. I'd love to be able to add my own keybinds in the buttons.conf file, So say i want the washers on a key, i'd make a new entry that read something like: 'Washers=X' This would mean knowing all the possible button / control names in the various trains tho, So maybe have the buttons.conf file filled with all possible controls, but list the unassigned ones like : 'Washers=NUL' and we replace the 'NUL' with the key of our choice... it's obviously upto us to ensure we don't assign 2 or more controls to the same key. Of course we will eventually run out of available keys if we are stuck to the standard keyboard keys (~76 of them) with no modifier keys allowed, But if 'shift' 'control' and 'alt' can be enabled as modifiers, that's about 300+ possible key combos.

so... there are supposed to be a left and right hand cab light switches? I too wondered about the 'overall lighting' switch that did nothing, thought maybe it was supposed to turn all internal lights off with one switch. The other switch for the 'high voltage compartment light' i guess is for the 'middle part of the loco' that we don't get to enter (yet?) I'm really hoping that one day we will get more keybinds to operate all these switches, maybe using the 'buttons.conf' file to set them up so as not to have a massive list of controls in the settings menu's. Could really do with a 'windscreen washers button' keybind... as we can operate the wipers with a key press, but most of the time we put the wipers on to clear the bugs off the windscreen, and that needs water from the washers, which is a button you need to use the mouse to operate 😞

Oh yes, there is a keybind for wipers, i use it all the time now it rotates back to 'off' if pressed enough times (in the EU07/EP08 at least) But what i'm saying is, that most of the time i turn the wipers on to clear the bugs from the screen, to do this you need to use the washers to squirt water on the screen whilst the wipers are running, But there is no keybind for the washers... so i have to use the mouse to operate the washer button, but just a key press operates the wipers. I really wish all possible keybinds could be enabled, but need to be assigned in the controls.conf file, so it does not confuse people who only set things up in the SimRail menu for controls, Sorry for going OT... tho i kinda did that with my first answer, instead of picture in picture, suggesting using head tracking for the ultimate immersion and a way to see the controls without having to use the mouse.

Excel updated it's self the other day, and i've only just realised that the borders are made stupidly thick again when saving as PDF (this is something many excel users complain about, microsoft partially fix it with one update, then mess it up with the next), But basically this turned the 2 lines that separate the station box from the time box look like a single very thick line. As those lines signify if you are driving on a single or double track, i had to correct this, as it was making it look like the entire ~250km route was single track: So i had to mess about with the cells and the border styles on the timetables to make them show as they should again: A cell was deleted to do this, which changed the 'address' of the cells to it's right, and screwed up my 'print to PDF' button's logic which is hard coded in VBA, but once i figured out i just had to change cell 'T5 to S5' it all worked again. So... below is the corrected yet again timetables for the 14100 and 41100 services, hopefully i have them all displaying correctly now, and i can get on with making timetables for the other services. I am of course waiting for SimRail to introduce it's new timetables any day, hopefully it's mostly timing changes with a few new timetables thrown in, but i'll tackle that challenge when it arrives. 14100 and 41100 SimRail Timetables.zip

On my 'Timetables for e-ink kindles / kobo's (and tablets)' i use ;pt for the Olszamowice 'stop' which is a stop in the sidings by the passenger train you are driving, to let a faster train past you, Hence i've made them bold as the other stops are (;ph after them ... and ;ph,zd at the first and last station we get to drive between means 'stop for passengers' and 'crew change') But i've also made this stop italic to make it stand out that whilst it's a stop, it's not at a station... so you may miss it (some dispatchers forget this too and send you straight through even if you are running on time or early)

Get yourself a head tracking set up (my laptop's webcam has the Tobii eye tracker thing built in), SimRail has had TrackIr support from the beginning almost, i just use the 'almost free' program FaceTrackNoIr to translate my Tobii tracker signals to TrackIr signals, FaceTrackNoIr can use lots of different inputs, even some regular webcams. If you need to buy a webcam to use for head tracking, the sony PS3 eye camera is recommended by the FaceTrackNoIr people, and it can be bought for between £4 and £10! The FaceTrackNoIr software 'costs' €3.45 (it's a donation like thing to help the creators family out, as the writer of this software can't work much due to medical issues) so for between €3.45 and ~€10 you can have a head tracking set up that you will likely want to use on all your other driving games, as once you experience and get used to it you'll not want to go back to using the mouse to look around. Face / eye / head tracking is so much more immersive, it's like being in the real train cab, You just move your head and the view in the cab moves with it, want to look out the window at the scenery, just turn your head to the side a few degrees, need to look down at the controls, move your head down a little, change the radio channel?, look at the radio (to the left and down in the EU07) A common misconception for people who have never used head trackers before is that you have to move your head as much as in real life, therefore can't see the screen when you look out the side window etc, the movement is amplified (by how much you control and can set up) so you do not actually move your head 90 degrees to look sideways, maybe 10 degrees if that, so your eyes still look at the screen... it becomes second nature after a short time using it. I only touch my mouse to operate the buttons that do not have keybinds, and when i do that, i just look in the direction of the control i want to use (if it's out of the normal straight ahead view) and use the mouse as normal... just no need to drag the view around with the mouse first. (please please please dev's.... give us more keybinds, we can turn the wipers on and off by pressing a key, but 99% of the time we do this to clean the bugs off the screen, which needs the washer button pressing with the mouse)

i got things wrong... the switches now operate the left and right hand cab lights, didnt notice that as it was daytime and i didnt look directly above my head

I've fixed a few mistakes in the timetables, the new .zip file is here: ''Dammit, excel has updated it's self, and that changes the border thicknesses when saved as PDF, so the 2 lines that signify double tracks, or single line for single tracks is one large solid line... let me correct that and re-upload the timetables, sorry about this'' I've changed Olszamowice ;pn to ;pt, ;pn is a non passenger stop but i believe it means at a platform, ;pt is more of a timing stop, which is exactly what this one is for, you stop on the sidings to let a faster train past you when you are running on time (some dispatchers forget about this) I've also made the Olszamowice ;pt and it's times bold italic, i already show platform stops (;ph) in bold so they stand out from the other entries, which are drive by times, and this one is still a stop, just not at a platform. All the temporary speed limits are now italic in my timetables to distinguish them from the normal speed limits, i'm keeping the temporary limits in my timetables for the reasons i mention in the post above. i am working on making a simple little 'dodatek-2' like page which will be placed on my timetables page 2, under the train info panel i have there now (which shows train weight, length, type of loco etc) This will just show the few temporary speed limits that apply in the timetable, and will not be pages from the massive book with every temporary speed limit on the entire railway system that a real driver has to look through before taking the train out. : I've also been trying to make some 'how to read these timetables' sheets, there is just so much data in a driver's timetable. But i've really just made something hard to read with all these arrows and tons of text (a lot of info is based on CN-BX-3N's How to read a drivers timetable post. .. the timetable he shows is the type used before about 2012, and as SimRail is based in 2018 at the moment, i've gone with the more modern style of drivers timetable, they show pretty much the same info, just slightly different layouts) Click the pictures below to see a higher resolution version. 14100 and 41100 Timetables.zip

Noticed that in the EU07 and EP08 locos, the cab light switch no longer turns the cab lights on and off, The switch to the left of it 'overall lighting' i think it's called now operates the cab light, This means the keybind for the cab light is operating the 'cab light' switch but that switch does nothing now, so i can't flash my cab lights using the keybind to 'wave to other drivers' when i drive in the dark anymore 🙂

I guess essentially what i want is a way to drive with the HUD off, so for me, having something that looks like a paper drivers timetable similar to the real thing a Polish train driver uses, displayed on an e-ink device or a tablet, which allows me to not need to worry about missing any speed changes that the HUD would have told me about is the main goal. I think this has been achieved (albeit only for 2 services so far) I can certainly drive any of the ~3+hour long ~250+km 14100 / 41100 services with the HUD off, getting all the info i need about the route from my timetables for those services. Ok, i occasionally need to turn the HUD on to see the speed limit when i start getting 'speed limit violation' messages, and it's always because i forgot i had a 40km/h signal before i entered the station or something like that (my crap memory is part of the reason why i put the temporary limits in the timetables, as i'd forget the info the Dodatek-2 had told me if i read it 5 minutes ago, let alone 3 and a half hours after starting the service 🙂) : But i also know that some people want to have the timetables looking exactly like the real thing, maybe even printing them out on paper so they can drive in SimRail as if they were driving in real life, I 'think' it wouldn't be too hard for me to make the W9 and W14 limits in my timetables hidden in excel with a single button push, then create 2 versions of the pdf timetables, but maybe it would be easier to point those who want the ultimate 'driving the real thing' experience to Zapach Kreozotu's dynamic timetables As he's designed his to only display the line limits and not the temporary ones, as in real life. : So my timetables are then more for the 'intermediate' SimRail driver who has an old kindle or similar e-ink reader, or tablet that they can place next to the computer to display a timetable 'similar' to the real thing, that allows them to drive HUD'less without too much effort. : : Talking about kindles, i finally managed to load my timetables onto mine (a kindle basic 2 and a paperwhite, both ~6 inch screens) The timetables display quite well. annoyingly not full screen, but that's a kindle thing, it just has to have that thing at the bottom (67% here) telling you how far you are through your file showing all the damn time, so i guess maximising the info i can show on the screen is even more important, no way the train info panels to the right of the timetable could be shown as well (like Zapach Kreozotu's realistic timetables have) I also notice that the kindle is not like the kobo in how it shows what's loaded on it (might just be a feature of KOReader that i use on my Kobo, a simple drag and drop install on the Kobo, unfortunately to use it on a kindle requires jailbreaking / rooting it apparently 😫 ) On my kobo i see the individual folders i've put the timetables in: On the kindles they are mixed in with the books you have on it, sorted either alphabetically or by the date loaded etc, So to load the timetables onto the kindle, i connect it to the pc via usb, navigate to the kindle and find the 'documents' folder, there i make a new folder that i called 'SimRail Timetables' and load the timetables into that folder: So inside the 'Timetables' folder are the 2 folders with the actual timetables that i attach as a zip file to some of my posts, called 14100 and 41100 so far, and in each of those folders are the 24 individual pdf's named 14101.pdf. 14103.pdf and so on, this keeps the timetables separate from the books you have on the kindle, and makes it easy to load new timetables on as i make them or updated timetables when i spot things i've got wrong (like in the 41100 timetables i forgot to apply the time update function in excel to the 'Olszamowice' timing stop, it shows 03:39 instead of the timetables correct time .. say 19:39... so there will be a corrected timetable .zip file posted here soon to fix that) To find your timetable on a kindle, it's probably easiest to just use the search bar at the top and enter the service number for the train you are driving, the kindle it will find the relevant timetable for you to click on and open (which is why i named each individual timetable by it's service number .pdf) There is something you can do with filters to only show 'Documents' instead of books to chose the .pdf's manually, but really, search is quicker usually 🙂

So, i've been thinking, Should i make 2 versions of the timetables? One a semi realistic one with all speed limit changes listed as would be shown on the HUD in SimRail, i.e. what i have now, so you just look at the timetable and see where any speed restriction applies to you as if you had the HUD on. And then have a realistic version of the timetables with just the 'W27a' speed limits shown, I'd then include a simple 'dodatek-2' type page with the timetables, listing the W9 and W14 speed limits that apply to the route. i could show this list of W9 and W14 limits on the 2nd page of my timetable, which currently only shows the train info panel (max speed, weight, length, braking info) and it's then upto the driver to read and remember where those W9 and W14 speed limits apply in the main timetable (or flip back to page 2 to check when they are in the area of a W9 or W14 type limit) Then when i've made all timetables to cover the SimRail universe, i could then make a SimRail Dodatek-2 listing all the non track speed change limits, which could be referred to before loading the relevant timetable for the service you are running today for the ultimate realistic experience. .... Am i referring to this 'list of temporary speed limits addendum timetable' thing correctly here? i keep calling it the 'Dodatek-2' is that what it is called by real Polish train drivers?

it's certainly no easy task for sure, and it's way more work that i thought it would be to produce even the simple static timetables i am doing, i am learning new things every day tho, i'm just an english guy who has never actually been to Poland, i really wish i'd carried on back in 2006 when i was in the camper van i'd built and had driven as far as Frankfurt (oder). Most of what i have learnt about the Polish railway system is from SimRail, plus reading old official documents i find on google then machine translate. So i'm getting the station info stuff (R1, RT, H, SS, L1) from a 2020 timetable that covers the SimRail route from Warsawa Wschodnia to Katowice... BUT it's service 5406/7, which is an ED250 train doing the run, but it dosent stop at all the stations the EU07 trains do, so now i know that the station info changes depending on the direction, also the track being used? ;pt does seem to be the better one to use for that 'timing stop' at Olszamowice, i only spotted it should have an arrival and departure time when driving the route and being stopped to let the ED250 overtake me, i wonder if it having 'NoStopOver' is why dispatchers rarely stop me there.

ahh, that's something i decided to 'take artistic licence on' 🙂 i figured that whilst i want realism, having to spend 10+ minutes searching for and through the relevant appendix timetables for these W14 and W9 limits, then finding the ones that apply to all the lines our chosen service drives on.... then remembering where they apply along the route (which we likely have not learnt learnt fully like a real train driver does) ... and doing all this before taking over a train in multiplayer might be a little too realistic, I tried to put the temporary limits in italics to distinguish them from the normal ones tho', but the ones i have done so far are the ones that show up on RWag78's data and not on Uetam's speed limits, these are mostly the W14 ones i believe. I sort of figured that others may want what i want from a timetable, to be able to drive HUD'less, and be able to quickly glance at the timetable on the kindle / kobo / tablet, and see that 'at 292,800 Km, the current line speed of 120 km/h drops to 50 km/h for 100 meters' I could set the W9 and W14 limits to be hidden with a button in excel, and produce 2 versions of the timetables, but i'd then need to include the relevant sections from the 'Dodatek-2' ... but i only have one from the 2018 era that covers lines 1 and 4, not line 2.. which the 41100 / 14100 services run on: IDDE4-Dodatek-2-IZ-Sosnowiec-z-popr-1-od-10-VI-18.pdf

I still haven't tested these on my kindles i'm afraid (amazon issues following a hacking of my account with them) they do display just fine on my kobo clara HD, which has a similar size e-ink screen. and they display perfectly on android tablets which can scale .pdf files easily (no idea about i-pad thingies, i've never owned an apple product in my life (something amazon won't believe.. as it was an iphone that was used to order these womens 'beauty' products over and over again on my account) : Attached to this post are the timetables for services 14100 and 41100, that's the EU07/EP08 loco hauled services between Warszawa Wschodnia and Katowice, and vice versa. Inside the zip file are 2 folders, named 14100 and 41100, those folders contain 24 timetables each for the days services for each direction of the line, How i use them: i load transfer both folders onto my tablet / e-ink reader in a new folder i created on it called 'SimRail Timetables' Then when i drive a 41100 / 14100 service in SimRail i note it's service number.. say 41132 for the service that spawns just outside Katowice at ~17:41, i now open the 'SimRail Timetables' folder on my tablet / e-ink reader, select the 41100 folder, then either search for '41132' or look for it on the page of files listed for it (which should simply be the service number . pdf.... so '41132.pdf' Click it to open it, and i get the timetables front cover displayed. I've set my tablets / e-ink reader to display pdf's as single pages and at full screen, so i just click on the right side of the screen and it 'turns the page' so next i see the train info panel, this shows the trains weight, length, max speed, brake settings etc, click on the right again and i get the actual timetable shown, As i drive i keep referring to the timetable and getting my location on the line using the hectometer boards at the lineside (some parts of the SimRail line are missing them occasionally) adjusting my speed as the timetable tells me, stopping at the stations (marked in bold with ;ph after the station name, and 2 times in the box next to the station name) As i progress and i am reading the last entry on the page, as i pass the station / post for that entry i go to the next page, and carry on from the top again. : Please tell me of any errors i've made (i may have made a mistake with the 44100 services, do they stop at Olszamowice to let an ED250 past like they do on the 14100 services?) i will hopefully have a better description on how to use / read the timetables with some pictures for my next post here, If you want to see more timetables for services i haven't made yet, then check out this thread by Zapach Kreozotu, who has made an awesome automated online timetable generator, note they will not display well on a small e-ink display kobo / kindle, that is what my project is here for 🙂 Timetables 14100 and 41100.zip

Thankyou for updating the speed limit data. Is there any way to get a json of the data about the route a service runs in SimRail?, with the standard and temporary speed limits and their kilometerage shown that apply just to that route (station stops would be the icing on the cake) Sort of the data that's used when you actually drive the route in SimRail, that tells the sim how far your train is from the next speed change / station etc. Or is that kind of thing saved for the official SimRail drivers timetables? For my e-ink kindle based timetables i've been working on, I've used a mix of your speed limit data, RWag78's data from driving the routes, DeadlyKungFu.Ninja's EDR data, and a 2020 drivers timetable from an ED250 running part of its route on line 1, 2 and 4 as in SimRail, I tried using a 2018 appendix 2 / temporary speed limit timetable found by hours of googling, but it only coveres a small part of the route and is very hard to understand i found. So i've come up with this frankenstein data set, but it's prone to errors being mostly filled in by me.