[Camera views from the wagons]

Sorry, i was joking with the 'who's going to drive your train' bit.

Quite often when i am waiting at a 5 minute station stop, i will flip through the camera views, i use head tracking so first thing is i try to move the view in the carriages by moving my head... that only works in the cab camera view, so then i right click and try to move the view... which doesn't work either,

But i too would like to see more of the carriages, the dev's have modeled the interiors, but we can't move the view around to see all this lovely modeling,   only cheat and 'crash' the number 2 camera through the carriages sides and see in.

 

It's fun when you can follow a passenger through the carriage door and walk around inside the carriage a little, but i haven't had any passengers boarding my 14100 / 41100 service trains for a few weeks... if anything there's usually only 5 or 6 people stood on the platforms, and they are in groups talking to each other and never move 😩

 

[use of the horn not counted]

If a train passes a 'W6b' sign in SimRail and no player is around to hear it, does it make a sound 😄

 

From: "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

[Double cars stacked at Charsznica]

oh there was part of VR signalling simulator shown a while back, showing situations at crossings, 

One of them was a bloke mad you stopped his car, and he tries to kick the door of the building in to get at you! 

[Camera views from the wagons]

who's going to drive your train whilst you are in the carriages 🙂 

isn't there supposed to be a passenger mode coming soon? 

[Station Annoucment.]

i drove for about 5 hours last night, and have to admit i didn't hear any station announcement either 😞 

After going one way with no announcements, i deleted the announcement file and let steam verify and re-download the file, so i should have got english announcements, but again got none, 

 

Making me wonder if something if breaking on the server side after things have been running for a while.

[French server needs actions]

yeah, there will be build in failures and random events in SimRail, 

ATM i think it's just the signals, at an Ai controlled signal you have a 1% chance of getting an Sz signal, i've had this a few times, and according to the experts who know the Polish railway system, 1% is way too high for real life, it's more like 0.01%. 

[French server needs actions]

i think the problem is as it was when they were doing this on the EN servers... one person decides to say there's a problem at one place, disrupting all trains in that area... ok, can happen in real life. 

But then the next dispatcher along wants to do the same, so now that's 2 dispatch locations with made up problems, 

then the next dispatcher wants in on the action, so their post has a made up problem, 

before you know it the whole line is full of made up problems delaying everyone for hours, the people doing it are having fun, the drivers not so much.

Especially the driver who has limited time on their computer due to having a job, family etc, 
They get say 2 hours to drive on an evening, and can only make it 20 km along the line due to all the disruptions that have been made up.....

No worries, just a bad day, they next get time on the computer 2 days later, and what do they find, every dispatch post in an area is blocked up with made up problems, and they can never get very far along on their drive before their time is up.

When every single day this is happening it gets annoying, the only people enjoying it are the people creating the made up problems, anyone who doesn't like this happening every day repeatedly gets shouted down, and told 'hey, this kind of thing happens all the time on real railways'  
erm, no it doesn't, If it did, no one would use the railways. 

 

The idea of multiplayer means that no 2 runs should be the same, but there is still the overall timetable to run to, and the job of the dispatcher is to move the trains through their section without causing delays to others, 
The driver is to follow the signals and keep to his timetable, 
The variations come from the train ahead not making it through the junction on time and delaying you by a few minutes, being held at a red signal a little longer than usual, being routed to a different platform etc, 

It's not about a few people who decide to play god and turn the rail system into their own private model railway... as we keep hearing, the people who are making up the problems seem to think they are doing everyone some good, 
Yet the people caught up in their actions think they are ruining the sim. 

[Station Annoucment.]

I've had Polish announcements all along. 

It gets reset after an update, which is good.... i don't set folders to read only (people do this to avoid them being re-set back to original at update time), But doing this this means i'd lose out on new features added to those folders... some people have found this out when they set the settings.conf folder read only, new things are added at update time and they don't get them as the patch couldn't write them to the read only folders.... similarly the announcement files have been altered lately to add new announcements about reserved seats and coach locations.... and i do wonder if people who are not seeing things like other players carriage lights have set folders to read only so are not getting the updates as intended?

So, after each update, i navigate to :
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\SimRail\SimRail_Data\StreamingAssets\Locales\train-announcement

That's where the station announcements are stored, if you want to look at the announcements,  open the .lang files as text files in your usual text editor.

 

To get Polish announcements, you can either copy the text in the pl.lang file, and overwrite the text in the xx.lang file appropriate for you (for me it's en.lang for english, but de.lang for German, fr.lang for French etc) note doing this you lose the original language text unless you make a backup of it somewhere.

Or as i do it, i rename my 'en.lang' file 'en.lang.old' (accept the warning about changing the file extension, you are making it so it's ignored by SimRail, so that's what you want)
Then rename 'pl.lang'  'en.lang'  or de.lang, or fr.lang as appropriate for the your native language you have SimRail in.

Next time you drive, you should hear Polish station announcements at the stations, just as you'd expect from driving a Polish train on Polish rails and stopping at Polish stations.

My theory on why the different languages for announcements, is that there are some people who shout very loudly about not having everything translated into their language in a game, one country in particular has more than their fair share of this kind of person, they think the whole world should speak their language and they won't buy anything unless it's fully translated... yeah, even if it totally breaks immersion.

 

If you find you don't like Polish announcements for some reason, to go back to how it was is easy, if you overwrote the language file, then simply delete the '\train-announcement' folder and do a steam file verify and it'll re-download the original file, 
Or re-name the .lang file that you changed to your native language back to pl.lang, then change the 'xx.lang.old' file back to 'xx.lang'  again accept the warning about changing file extensions, and you should get your local languages playing at the stations again.

[EU07 (E4) Brake Release Issues]

i can't wait for the SDK to be released that will allow people to write things to connect to the sim.

I'd love to see a SimRail chat app on my phone, i.e. the chat box moved off the main screen and on my phone,
with the phone's keyboard under it for typing on etc, so just like sending or receiving a 'real life' text message you can receive and send SimRail text messages... in a more realistic manner i think (your phone when running SimRail text app would be classed as a company communications device, so is allowed whilst driving 🙂

[[CZ, ENG, GER, PL, ES, CH, RU, HU, FR] Community SimRail Wikipedia]

1 hour ago, Asrtiu said:

I've found 2 in-game one at Zawierce track 3 and another in Dąbrowa Górnicza Strzemieszyce track 2

yeah, but do you actually drive on the tracks they apply to? 
i've driven past a track with them on next to mine.

[Icon for the slope of the ground, Steam achievements for dispatchers and vehicles on freight wagons]

i have no problems working out if the tracks are rising or falling as i'm driving along.

as far as i know, other than route knowledge, Polish train drivers do not have indications of the gradients in cab either, they are not in the drivers timetables, except a 'T' entry meaning that if a heavy freight stops at a signal at that station / post,  they may not get going again (hence the reason for the W22 signs on a signal, allowing freights to pass on red at 20km/h)

[The camera zoom in automatically when I look at the train in a certain angle]

11 minutes ago, krzysk said:

I don't think it's a bug. It could be a intended interesting effect to add dynamic to a dull camera rotation

yeah it's not a bug as such,

Easiest way is to imagine that when you are using the number 2 camera, the camera is on the end of a extendable pole / selfie stick, being held by someone located in the middle of the loco, 

As you move the camera on the selfie stick around, if you have extended the stick out enough and move the camera's position so the stick would hit an object... in this case the shelter.....
Then instead of the cameras movement being blocked as the stick hits the object (or passing through the object, resulting in seeing the hollow insides of object parts)  the 'selfie stick' automatically retracts enough to allow the camera to pass by the obstacle, extending to the previous length (zoom) as before once the obstacle is no longer blocking it.

 

 

it does this anywhere in the sim when you are zoomed out enough and move the camera to pass an object that is between the camera and train, it'll do it when a train passes you if you have the camera positioned to the side the train's passing and at the right / wrong distance and angle for example.

[Controller wishlist]

or just give us the access to the relevant data in SimRail on out computers, and we can do like people did with TSC / railworks, Omsi etc, and people write little bits of software that we can assign anything that can be seen as a joystick / button to operate any control we like. 

As everyone has a slightly different idea of how they would make things work,  

Some are happy with simple joysticks that are operating micro switches. others want the full linear movement of an analog input (potentiometer, hall effect sensor etc), some want to use off the shelf items, others will make custom make the controls and switching mechanisms by 3D printing and / or machining from metal, some make force feedback units so the notches can be varied as each different train loads into the sim etc, etc, etc,

But the most important bit is to give us access to every control that works in the sim and let us decide which controls we want to operate,  even if a switch is only used once when setting the train up from cold, i'd still want a button or lever that operates it as it's there in the cab of the train.

[Times don't agree with each other]

a while back the departure times worked out to be something like 00:21:54, i.e 6 seconds before the departure minute.

i only figured this out by watching the countdown timer and knowing that real Polish drivers timetables use decimal minutes, so the departure time on the drivers timetable would show 00:21:9  but the clock and 'F1' timetable only show to the whole minute.

I noticed that things changed and the data from the API's now list the arrival and departure times to the next minute, 
So the timetables i made for my kindle are all seemingly 1 minute ahead of the times shown on the 'F1' on screen timetable, but are correct when the stop timer ticks down to zero.

Hopefully eventually we will get more realistic timetables with the decimal minutes in them, as in real life some station stops are only 30 seconds long! 

Part of a real drivers timetable showing some of the different decimal minute departures:

The numbers in the right hand boxes are the time allowed to run that section,
The top box per station entry is for when running on time, bottom box for when running late, again the numbers in the supertext numbers denote they are decimal minutes, 6 normal seconds = 1 decimal minute. 
Just another quirk of the railways 🙂

[How does the neutral section button on the pendolino work?]

at a guess it's not programmed to do anything just yet, 

I know the devs have said that they animate all the cab controls at the start to make it easier to add in the functionality at a later date.

Perhaps if/when the neutral sections become active then that button will be scripted to kill the power to the motors / from dynamic brakes when pressed as you pass a neutral section. 

For now you can pretend it does it's job, like when driving the EU07 i wind the power wheel to zero when i am about to cross a neutral section. 

[My suggestions after 3 days intensive test]

SimRail is based on the simulator used to train real life train drivers, hence it tries to do things realistically, 

so adding extra tracks and platforms that do not exist on the real line, allowing trains to run at what ever speed they want when running late etc would just turn it into yet another train game. 

half the things you mention are already present, some are switched off for now for bug fixes,  there's a lot planned like better timetables, random events, 

But SimRail was released on early access just over 3 months ago, so right now things are kept simple to help with bug fixing. 

[[ENG] Neutral Sections - Power Off]

4 minutes ago, DazT said:

Oh that's the first thing I changed! The default SimRail keys are horrendous (more so if you're on a laptop that doesn't have a numeric keypad!) 

i have a number pad on my laptop(was on of the must haves when i was shopping for a new one)
So i have the driving controls (power wheel, notch lever, train and loco brakes) all on the numberpad, 

But i also use autohotkey to re-assign a few keybinds only whilst SimRail is running, mostly because you couldn't use numberpad enter to move the power lever / wheel (it was hard coded for dispatcher's talk enter key or something)
So via autohotkey i make my numberpad enter key give the numberpad . key when pressed and set that to power decrease, and now i have the 2 largest keypad keys for power increase and decrease. 

I then went on to set left ctrl for 'fast move' and left shift is SHP/Czuwak reset, and i bound right shift to left shift with autohotkey, so i can reset SHP/Czuwak from either side of the keyboard, 
then i made the numberpad dot key bound to the left ctrl key, so i can fast move the power wheel totally from the numberpad. 

[[ENG] Neutral Sections - Power Off]

8 hours ago, DazT said:

And another tip that I only found by accident on the EU07/08s for faster run down of notches is to hold down the right shift and whatever key you've got set for reduce power (on mine it's D, as that's from MSTS days) 

oh yes, is that not in the instructional tutorials people have made on these loco's? 
It's the same key 'fast move' as used to running when you are out of the train walking about.

Same as there's 3 keys for the train brake lever, one of them puts it straight into the off position, 
And to brake on the EU07/EP08, first tap the brake apply key, this puts the lever into the brake position, then press and hold the apply key to wind whe lever round slowly, 

If you just press and hold the apply key from the off position, it will go round fast to emergency position. 

 

 

[[CZ, ENG, GER, PL, ES, CH, RU, HU, FR] Community SimRail Wikipedia]

Not sure how to add things to the wiki, as i've never done that before.... tried to edit the title for the neutral sections - where to pull down the panto to 'where to turn the motors off' but not sure it worked.

i made a pdf about neutral sections if it's any use: 

Neutral section explanation.pdf

[[ENG] Neutral Sections - Power Off]

 

A little bit of very basic info about these neutral sections in real life, this isn't implemented in SimRail yet, but some people like to drive as realistically as possible obeying all the lineside signs, and it certainly keeps you occupied looking out for these neutral section signs without RWag64's Neutral Section location info.
:

The railways overhead power lines in Poland are energised at around 3kV DC, thats 3 thousand volts, Direct Current (the voltage can vary from 2kV to 3.6kV and be within 'spec')

This 'low' DC voltage can not travel that far before the voltage drops too much, and the lower the voltage the higher the current that is drawn from the system, which could lead to overheating of the wires, transformers and rectifiers at the sub stations, and possibly the motors on the train. 

So the overhead wires are broken up into many isolated sections fed from different power sources along the line, as the voltage can vary by upto 1.6kV on each section you need to be drawing as little power as you can as you cross a neutral section, to avoid the risk of tripping a substation out amongst other issues.
This is a very basic explanation, there's more to it but most people are not that interested... especially as in SimRail you can just ignore these neutral sections right now and not get a 'points penalty' or cause any issue to the system. 

:

:

So, to comply with the neutral section signs.... 
You do not need to turn the main power switch / breaker off for these sections, you just need to be drawing no motor power, so simply put the power lever / wheel to zero when you see a We8a sign that applies to your track ahead:
  

You can apply power again when the nose of your train passes the We9a sign:
  

If you are driving a (single) loco hauled train, you can re-apply power when the nose of your train passes the We9b sign, which is the above sign with an 'L' on the top of it:

If you are driving an EMU, you need to wait until the nose of your trains passes the We9a sign, which is the one without the L on top.
This is placed further ahead than the We9b sign because your pantograph is further back on an EMU than on a locomotive, so it may still be in the neutral section when your cab passes the We9b sign for locomotives. 

:

A tip to get the motor power to zero by the time you see the We8a sign is to look for the back of the We9a sign, which is for trains running on your track in the opposite direction, and will be about 100 meters 'before' your We8a sign:

The neutral section signs will sometimes be located on posts to the side of the tracks, or on the catenary masts, and in some locations you need to look harder to figure out exactly when the signs apply to your line, and not the line next to you, which may have a staggered neutral section, especially at junctions where tracks join and leave the main line.

 

[Servers have not been put in Summer Time]

I keep wondering about a server sync'd clock,
like an android widget that you can have on your phone which you tell it which server you are on (or your steam ID and it tracks the server you go on) and it shows that particular servers time.. to the second (that bit is missing from most clock widgets)

So no matter if you are on the UK server which is currently 1 hour behind, or one of the other servers that is x-many hours ahead or behind local time, a quick glance at this server sync'd clock will tell you the correct time for the SimRail universe. 

But programming / coding is not something i know. so what sounds simple may actually be almost impossible. 

___________

As i only drive the trains, i've also asked the simrail france team on their discord server how hard it would be to add a server clock to the live map, something looking like this :

With an option to show the clock or not, and where to show it, as i pretty much always drive with the live map open on an android tablet. 

I know their EDR thing has a server time clock... that's where i copied the graphic from to insert in to the map. 

they replied that they are working on a new user interface with a clock planned, but no date for the update is available yet.

[Servers have not been put in Summer Time]

i noticed this too, especially as i like to drive with the HUD off and a drivers timetable, 
the server it's self is on the correct time when you press 'TAB' when driving, but the timetable is an hour behind.

But usually when i mention this on discord people just say 'well that's DST for you' 🙂

[[CZ, ENG, GER, PL, ES, CH, RU, HU, FR] Community SimRail Wikipedia]

Just a little thing, 

You have https://simrail.cz/wiki/index.php?title=Neutral_Sections_-_Where_to_pull_down_pantograph 

You do not lower the pantograph at a neutral section, you only need to stop drawing motor power, so set the speed control lever / wheel to zero before you go past the We8a sign:
  

You can apply power again when you pass the We9a sign:
  

If you are driving a loco hauled train, you can apply power when you see the We9b sign with the L on the top of it:

If you are driving an EMU, you need to wait for the We9a sign without the L on top, which is placed a few hundred meters ahead of the We9b sign... this is because your pantograph is further back than on a locomotive so will still be in the neutral section when your cab passes the We9b sign for locomotives. 

 

A tip to get the power to zero by the time you see the We8a sign is to look for the back of the We9a sign that is for trains running on the tracks in the opposite direction:
 
These signs will sometimes be located on posts to the side of the tracks, or on the catenary masts.

 

________________

 

Where you need to lower the pantograph will indicated by these signs: 

I do not think there are any of these signs on tracks we drive on in SimRail yet, i have seen them on other lines as i pass them.

[[EN/PL] Wolne pociągi - Free trains]

This 'on the fly' timetable maker is amazing isn't it, hats off to Zapach Kreozotu for pulling this off  https://media2.giphy.com/media/l4tV2ZqvrLAHD896o/200.gif

On 3/26/2023 at 4:44 PM, stacode said:

Sad news :( does not work on a kindle for the paper look. But still epic stuff.

Unfortunately E-ink displays of the kindle kind are a little bit fussy with what and how they display things, they are after all designed to display individual book pages and refresh (sometimes only partially) on a page change, so they do not like re-sizing, zooming and scrolling things i found.

That's why i'm trying to make pdf versions of the timetables more suited to displaying on a kindle / kobo e-ink screen.

My idea is to make book timetables that would display as individual pages on a 6 inch kindle / kobo e-ink reader, maximising the relevant information shown on the small screen (so i omit the repeated train data from the right hand side of real timetables and show it only at the beginning of the timetable)

But i also wanted to show all information for the speed limits you will find along your route in my timetables even if it's not prototypical... basically showing the speed limits that would be shown by the 'F2 HUD' in SimRail (for signed limits, not signalled limits) whilst still looking like a real Polish train drivers timetable.

I put the extra speed limits in italics to differentiate them.

 

Regarding the different speed limit types, from what i've learnt (and i could well have got this wrong)....

The drivers timetable shows you the 'line speed limits' : 

Then you have permanent speed limits : 

And temporary speed limits : 

The permanent and temporary speed limits are found by reading extra papers,
The permanent speed limits (W9) are found in the 'Dodatek 2' a ~6 monthly publication covering different regions, listing individual tracks permanent speed limits... they are not very easy to read i found (and it took me ages to track down ones from all 8 regions for the year 2018 on google.... i believe only 2 or 3 regions are relevant to SimRail)

Below is just one page (of 97) from the June to December 2018 Dodatek 2, 'w Sosnowcu Nr 41' that covers part of the SimRail route (i don't have the dec 17 to June 18 one)

i think which speed limit applies to you depends if your a passenger or freight train, if you are joining the line from another one and which particular track you've been routed on, some stations can have can have 20+ different tracks / routes.

Then there's those temporary speed limits (Orange W14 signs)
From what i've read, drivers get daily printouts of the temporary speed limits... making 3 things you need to read to get the full picture of all your routes' speed changes. 

And i thought train driving was so easy, just follow the tracks, they will take you where you need to go 😄

 

[Dedicated fun server]

19 minutes ago, Kaito Kid said:

Don't know how many times I've said this, but I hope professionalism here as if we were playing Flight Simulator, anyone that wanna convert this simulator into a "DCC model railway" or do unrealistic things, should be shown the door. 

Exactly, 
There's plenty of train games out there that allow people to 'mess about' 

There's train games that allow you to :

Run it like a model railway.
Run a 'business' as if you decided to buy yourself a locomotive one day, and drive it from company to company asking to take goods down the line for a fee. 
Create unrealistic consists and drive about as if you owned the whole railway and it's your private playground.
Pretend you are a railway photographer and do nothing but set up screen shot after screen shot whilst your train trundles away driverless down the track.
Stop your train on the main tracks and jump out to search for soft toys, or walk the tracks looking for posters to 'put up' or signal phones to 'fix' to 'earn graphics of medals'
(who exactly is impressed that you've collected xxx number of gold medals in a train game anyway?) 
 

But when you want to drive a train in real time, realistically as if you were doing the job in real life (with some limitations of course), with other real people driving other trains on the line, and real dispatchers working together to keep those trains moving safely and on time, with good graphics, sounds, physics etc, well that's SimRail.

We are 3 months in and what we have is amazing and kinda unique.