Gazz292

because that's what everyone who has tried it say it's like. there were people speculating all sorts, from being able to drive the other trains like the pendulino, to getting the whole map available in single player and so on, i was expecting a similar experience to multi player just with all AI around you, But i wonder to myself if maybe it was changed at the last moment to be tutorials, due of the influx of new playtesters on the multiplayer who were shouting about how they cant figure out how to drive a train (when they have never played a train driving game/sim before) that if tutorials are not added right now customers will be lost etc. Even when they were pointed towards the prologue and demo it wasn't good enough, Discord even had people demanding others copy the files, compress and send them to them (piracy) and how they should get the full sim for free because they have joined the playtest, others complaining they haven't got the full 500Km of track or all the trains, i.e expecting the playtest to be a way to get the full sim for free.

wow, must be like driving a real life train from tsw with half the screens not showing anything 🥸

i'm trying to learn to read the train numbers too, i may be wrong, but for EC passenger trains, i'm thinking if they start with 14 they are heading north, if 41 they are heading south, People on discord who are helping others with running the signal boxes have worked out how the route the trains from their numbers, something about a 41 goes one direction at Łazy, a 42 number goes the other direction etc. But they see a lot more info and need to act on it that those of us driving the trains (tho we should know the routes and be ready to challenge being sent down the wrong track)

oh come on, can't you tell i'm joking about the shunting controls. I even have a shunting control panel from a German locomotive (not the BR-111 that my driving desk came out of) so i know what it's for. And the driver... we'll you can throw the book at him for breaking regulations if you want, but he was found dead on the tracks (the bit i deliberately left out to keep with the jokieness of my comments) it was also back in the 1980's i believe.

It would be cool if there was an actual AI person in the box you are learning, and they show you how to operate things first, then you have a go but they are there to correct your mistakes, IF you do well you get more and more trust and left to do things on your own, If you do bad, you have to sweep the box and polish the brasswork / computers.

i'm looking forwards to being able to drive 500Km in this sim, I've seen that there are random events in multi player, and that's before the randomness of your track routing and signals from the real people operating the signal boxes, and being held up by the real person driving the train in front who knows they are running early, so decide to do 60kph instead of the line speed of 125 so they arrive on time at their stop... but make me late to the place i should overtake that train. No run has yet been the same for me. I'm more than happy with the EU07, i can drive that forever and have been doing... over 1000Km's in it so far, and i still have tons to learn, all the signal combinations, the track side signs, where the braking points are for the stations, how differently a freight train handles compared to a passenger one... and switching the brake selector to the proper setting and using the high power switch to get upto 750 amps to the motors in series when hauling a heavy freight (then having to switch it off if you want any power in parallel) i'm wondering if breakdowns and user induced faults may feature later on too... i.e. burn the motors resistors out by holding it in a resistor notch for too long, damage the pantograph or OLE by not shutting off power over a neutral section, Accepting the wrong route and being sent down a dead line, not realising until you hear the pantograph go ping as it suddenly has no catenary wire to press against. I know that it will take a hell of a lot to get me back to tsw, with their ultra short routes and condescending 'congratulations' messages popping up every time you drive the same number of km's as the train number or something as stupid as operating the wiper switch. : But i am one of the weirder ones, i've been waiting for a realistic train driving simulator with good graphics and sounds for over a decade, that wait seems to be finally over. I can schedule the time to spend sitting for 4 or 5 hours at my computer to do a nice long drive, i'm kinda used to sitting infront of a monitor all day tho, and sp fsr my eyres ayr stull wotjong juat fone 🤓

I've had random signal failures in the multiplayer, 40 minutes worth of traveling at 20Kph, and stopping before every dead signal, then the 'walk of shame' as i pulled into the station over 40 minutes late and heard the 'we apologise for the lateness of this train' announcement.

some stations have announcements yes... i'm not sure about the other trains, but if you are driving the EU07, you need the side window open to hear them in the cab, seems Polish train windows really are fully soundproof 🙂

well... there is a reason most locomotives have alerter reset buttons near the cab door, : i recall reading about a German freight train that was found stopped on the line with no driver many years ago (the safety systems had stopped it)... he'd fallen out the door when having a pee whilst the train was in motion.

i'm guessing that experience will be a feature, as the train selection screen has a bit for both Difficulty Level and Required Level (all set as zero atm) I am not really into the dispatching part, but i know that is where it really needs this kind of thing, as some of the signal boxes are hard to work and having someone in one who is out of their depth spoils it for everyone else, So having to work your way upto the more complex equipment makes sense. i think it's all the computer based boxes in use right now?, wonder what it'll be like when it's the manual lever type boxes are introduced, with presumably no computer to help figure out why a lever won't move due to you not having pulled the other levers in the right order to get the interlocks to release.

random events are part of SimRail. The other night i was driving an EC passenger train in multiplayer, and suddenly had a signal failure on my line (all Ai controlled boxes) i had to drive at 20Kph, stopping before each dead signal before proceeding at the same speed as before. i was running on time until then, i ended up making the next station stop over 40 minutes late, and hearing the 'we apologies for the late running of this train' announcement as i pulled into the platform. That was awesome, but i wonder how many would have quit after the 2nd dead signal... it's slooooow doing 12 miles an hour for 40 minutes. I've got the above totally wrong, and i've corrected myself in another thread, but i'll do so again here where too, You see, i have accidentally misled people, apparently random events are not enabled in the playtest, What i thought was a signal failure was the line i was on being set for a train to travel on it from the opposite direction! it was my normal line... the right hand one, and it was normal double track, the junctions were at the stations at each end of the ~20km section, So i don't know why my line had been set up for reverse running and i wasn't switched to the left hand line... maybe someone had done that at the relevant signal box then left, as they were all showing AI controlled in the area when i got there, and when i used the text box to enquire about the dead signals, no one replied. When i encountered the first dead signal, i should have stopped and not moved, and contacted the dispatcher! it was only because i saw the HUD change from showing a red signal 20m ahead with 0km/h to red signal 20m ahead with 20km/h that i passed the signal, I recalled reading about being allowed to do that at automatic block signals... BUT i forgot that the signal must show red to allow me to pass it as restricted speed. I apologise for misleading people, i got too excited thinking i was experiencing a random signal failure... something i think will be a feature in the full release, but not something that's enabled in the playtest.

yes it's interesting to watch the order they reset in, The last reset was at 20:00 GMT. you can spot the servers that were changed from another locality, like EN9, as it resets with other servers and not after the other EN ones.

If you're driving a freight train and need the toilet, get on the radio and ask the dispatcher in your area to put you in a siding... the one nearest the bushes please.

Yup... the English servers are named EN, German ones DE, Polish PL, French FR, Italian IT, Czech CZ, Spanish ES, Portuguese PT, Chinese CN, and there's a UA one, but i am an uncultured swine that can't read that language as it's not using the latin alphabet) So type the 2 letters for the language you'd like, for the english ones there are then european, american and australian ones, that can be selected via the drop down box to the right of the text box you typed the servers letters into, perhaps other localization's for the other servers exist... but being a dumb brit i haven't looked. I drive mostly on EN9, so i type that in the box, and wait for the server list to populate fully, and off i go driving.

i've only heard english announcements so far, and they are in an american accent 😕 I've got to find the announcement files and delete the 'english' ones asap 🤠

take a long freight train over a junction, and go to the outside camera, lots n lots of lovely squealing flanges from each wagon as their wheels go over the points, that i'm sure are different to the loco's flange squeel sounds, and that bounce you get when going over a junction in the loco, simply amazing.

My favorite way to operate the ELF / traxx's control levers is to use the mouses scroll wheel. Hold left click on the lever in the cab (the pop up helper box will apear that shows you what notch it is in, to help when dragging with the mouse) but instead of dragging the lever with the mouse: You can move the lever by rolling the scroll wheel. Usually one click on the scroll wheel moves the lever one notch forwards or backwards, so it is a bit like having a mini lever in your hand from the way it moves with the scroll wheel (assuming you have a notched scroll wheel that moves in indents, and not a smooth one that some gaming mice have) i even set up autohotkey to have a keyboard button i can hold down that is the same as left click on the mouse, so my left hand is over the left shift key that i use for czuark / SHP reset, and the '\' (backslash) key is my 'extra' left mouse click key, so i can have it held down and still reset the alerter without taking my hands off the mouse or keyboard. I've yet to figure out how to set this autohotkey thing up so it's only active when SimRail is active, it's script based, so you can do pretty much anything with it, if you know how to write code, but i've never needed to use the blackslash key yet, and a simple click turns the autohotkey thing off if i do need it (actually i did need to do that to type the symbol above 🤔)

I think all you can do to get a long run at the moment is chose a train with the longest 'Duration' left in the menu: i've seen some with over 2 hours showing as the time you'll get to drive the train for (i got kicked off it well before the end of that time when the servers reset) but i think i have only once spawned into a train that was stopped at a station, every other time i'm taking over a moving train. I've logged into a server just after it had reset a few times, chose a long duration left train, and still was put in a moving train, so i'm not sure there are any trains to chose yet that we start at the 'first' station, and none that we take over as a dead train that needs setting up, as far as i know. The servers seem to be on 6 hour resets now, they show on that map app when they are resetting by the server names going red, the PL ones start off resetting first, then each one after that, so it can be nearing18:15 before the last server is reset (if the reset started at 18:00 CET) So thats the best time to grab a train that you can drive for a long time, Sorry it's not the answer you are looking for, and that i use too many words to describe things. I too would like to walk to a train in the depot, set it up / prepare it, go and couple up to my coaches, then drive to the first station and do the whole run, maybe even taking the coaches to the sidings and parking the train up and shutting it down and securing it. But i hope that's something to look forwards to in the full release.

Just stop all input to the sim, wait about a minute or so, and autopilot will take over, Tho i noticed it's been tweeted with the latest release, driving a passenger train at 120Km/h i had zero warnings about being idle, I noticed the czuwak was going off a lot more in the EU07, so i was pretty much having input at least once a minute even when going slower and having 2Km between signals.

i really hope that if SimRail is not ready for release in January, they hold off releasing it, please please don't do a dovetail and release on a date just to keep the people who can't wait happy, Those kinds of people will never be happy, once they have the full version they will get bored and be looking for the next new thing to demand be released early, but the damage will be done with their bad reviews like: 'this release is years late and its rubbish, it's got too many bugs, it's too hard to drive the trains, and i have to learn what the buttons say in Polish to operate a signal box, it's not ready for release, don't buy' Thankfully some of us can see the huge potential this simulator has, and are looking forwards to it's future. But there have been a lot of toxic/entitled people suddenly on the Sim, more playtest slots opened up the other day, and i think a lot of them had just clicked to join because they thought it was a way to get a game for free (some have no interest in railways and it really shows) There's already people moaning there are not enough different trains to drive and the route is boring, it's a simulator not a game (not to mention it's a playtest) you are supposed to drive the same train over the same route again and again, but the beauty of multiplayer is no 2 drives will be the same due to real people controlling the signal boxes, and driving other trains around you, plus the random event thing built into the sim... seen with things like dead signals etc.

the play-test does track your distance you have driven tho, one of the 'did you know' messages on the loading screen will be something like '... you have traveled over xxxxKm already' Mine showed a very low number for the first few days of testing, slowly increased to about 150km, but last night it jumped to over 1000Km, which is roughly what i think i've really traveled... i've only really been driving one or 2 trains a day, but trying to get ~2 hour drives.

i think the HUD timetable is okay... gives you the absolute basics, but a paper schedule will give you more info like speed restrictions and where they change based on the hectometer boards that are along the route, Having the ability to show a PDF of your schedule on a 2nd monitor, a phone or a tablet would be even better, clears the main screen thats showing the view out the cab windscreen and adds to immersion greatly, especially if you drive with a raildriver or other controller instead of the keyboard / mouse. and on the modern trains the polish equivalent of an EBuLa screen... if that can be made to work like TS-MDF* does with train simulator, it'd be amazing (you use tablets or extra monitors to display working versions of the EBuLa and MFD screens from the trains dashboard.. as SimRail will have a SDK, hopefully stuff like that can be made) *https://www.ts-mfd.de/

the points mean nothing, you will lose them all when the playtest ends, and start again when you buy the full simulator.

https://panel.simrail.eu/main/map.html Remember the servers are running already when you are on the selection screen, so it depends on the time you are selecting a train to where it is on the route... and it can be running early or late etc. So if you want to drive from the start to finish of the the route... first you need to wait for the full simulator to be released, as we only have about 140 kms of the full 500Km of tracks available in these tests. then you need to be on the server at the time the train actually starts, the servers auto reset atm, i'm not sure if we are still on 3 hour resets or 6 hour resets, it was every 3 hours starting from midnight they reset... LOCAL CENTRAL EUROPEAN TIME, so i'm in the Uk so the servers reset starting from 01:00, that also means you can be driving a train and get booted as the servers restart... this is a playtest after all.

ahh yes, have it as an option, I forget that i'm likely the odd one out who likes learning the 'local' words in the country i am driving in, and i want to have an experience as if i am actually in that country, hearing the local language.