Gazz292

i really am looking forwards to the day SimRail releases the home cockpit input/output system, I have this lot in storage to connect to a computer at some point: The driving desk from a BR111 Whittenberger steuerwagen, plus the drivers seat, the MFA panel, brake gauges panel etc... i do have an EBuLa unit, but it got damaged and the front glass smashed, but i think i will be using a set of touchscreens to replicate the MFA panel, gauges and EBuLa, then they can change for the different loco's (once we get the German routes and trains in SimRail)

Something like my 'Euro-Rail-Driver' that i was making a couple of years ago?.... (Excuse all the dust and debris on it, it's been sat under my 3D printing table for the past year+) I was making this back when i was playing tsw, i got the levers to work with a hack of their raildriver input (which was absolutely awful to use, extremely low resolution, especially when you had to split the combined throttle and brake channel in half for most euro trains, giving even less resolution for separate throttle and brake levers) One of the main features i'd built in was easily swappable 'notch plates' so the levers could be changed from an EMU style combined power and brake lever where 0 is in the middle, to individual power and brake levers where 0 is at the end of travel, the AFB lever could have the number of notches changed depending on the loco's v-max etc. The air and dynamic brake levers are coupled so move together, but pressing down on the dynamic brake lever's knob uncoupled them so you can slow down gently using just the dynamic brake, and the levers auto re-couple when both are in the same place again... it should be a twist of the knob to uncouple the levers, but i was making this at about 68% scale and the mechanism for that got too complex... this controller was sized to be portable and a comfortable size for adult hands to operate. Here's the obligatory Fusion 360 render, the controller's base was shaped to fit over my 16 inch laptop's keyboard. The list on the left hand side is showing mostly the 3D printed components for just one of the 5 levers, there were a lot of parts that all have to fit together to make this thing. The main box was laser cut 3mm plastic sheet (using my hackspace's laser cutter) The levers and switches are 3D printed, every switch mechanism is 3D printed and mimics the real ones as best as i could, even the push buttons for EMU door controls are 3D printed (the button in clear filament so they could be illuminated) I even had the reverser lever removable, and when it's inserted or removed a magnet triggers a hall sensor, sending the signal that told the tsw game that the reverser lever was inserted (one feature SimRail doesn't have... yet?) Below is the 'guts' of the beast, it needed to open easily to change the notch wheels... if i were to make this again i'd try and make force feedback levers, a high resolution encoder would track the levers movement, and a small motor would provide back force to mimic the notches as you move the lever. But as usual with me, i have these ideas and can do the mechanical stuff, but writing the code is where i struggle, hence why i went for simple 3D printed changeable notch wheels. I was building this back when i was playing tsw2, so it was using a hack someone had made for an arduino to mimic a raildriver signal, and due to the way in tsw2 it felt like no 2 loco's shared the same lever or button assignments for the raildriver, i had to have a way to change which lever did what on the fly as i changed trains in the game. I did this using a small Oled screen and a set of 4 Binary Coded Rotary Switches: i'd enter the trains number using the buttons on each switch to increment the numbers up or down until it displayed the train type number... ie.. 112.1 for the BR112 loco, then press the round button, this reset the arduino, which as it re-started read the binary code and displayed a graphic of the train i'd selected (the weird diagonal bands on the screen are only visible to a camera, the shutter speed does not match the screens refresh rate, so you are seeing the screen part way through refreshing here) If the number was for a valid train the arduino code was then to go on and set up which lever's potentiometers and switches performed which action for the serial stream sent out to the game, this was to trick tsw into thinking it was a 'real' raildriver connected to it (with all the limitations of a real raildriver like ultra low resolution, buttons controlling useless things rather than switches and buttons that were used to actually drive the train, having trains of the same type not share common controls (tho that was a tsw issue in the way the programmed the train controls so 2 identical train types had different controls depending on which DLC you drove them on) But i never got to programming the arduino to operate the controls fully... I was building this with the expectation that tsw would enable joystick support so everything could work properly, after all this was something they'd been saying they'd be introducing since 2018. But i lost interest when it was said that they pretty much weren't going to bother with joystick support anymore, something about market research said most players were happy using the keyboard, and more liked using a console gamepad. Then they said they were stopping DLC work for a few months to concentrate on fixing core game engine issues... but it turned out that they were really working on tws3, where for about £50 you get to buy the same game again 🤬 And that was where this little project died ☠️ When we get the German route in SimRail i may resurrect it ... if by then there is a joystick input system working in SimRail that is. This time i'll be waiting for the much needed analogue inputs before i make another floor ornament 😜

'Mind the doors please'... or should that be ''Uwaga na drzwi, proszę'' My EN57 door switch and SHP / Czuwak panel: The red doors open lights do not read any data from the sim, they are simply turned on or off when the relevant door side open switch is on. The toggle switches are the same ones used in my EU07 button box with the same 3D printed lever extensions, i can't seem to find a spring return / momentary version of the particular 'paddle switch' i'm using (which i chose partly due to the 2 screw mounting method) so i cut down a small compression spring and wedged it under one side of the switches lever, amazingly this works and the middle 'doors closing buzzer' switch springs back to off when released as it should, However that switch has less travel than the other 2 switches due to the spring when fully compressed stopping full travel, but i can live with that for now. The doors open lights are illuminated square push buttons with a 3D printed 'surround cap' to try and make them look a little like the real panel lights used in the trains (i can't seem to find the style of curved top, honeycomb diffuser pattern panel lights in the UK) As the 'doors open' lights are buttons, i am using them to change camera views. The SHP/Czuwak button is a 30mm diameter red anodized metal mushroom button, i really should use a plastic mushroom button, but finding one this size is hard, especially one that does not have a really tall switch mech that would not fit inside the box. The fusion 360 screenshot showing the insides of the door switch and SHP button panel, they should be separate boxes IRL, but i made them joined together with a 'wiring tunnel' to make it one item, easier to fit onto the double dovetail mount. I haven't modelled the toggle switches themselves here, so you can see how the 3D printed white switch extensions fit over the toggle switches paddles (i do need to trim them down so the upright bit of the paddle can fit up the switch extensions, as they'd be too wide and not look right otherwise, the switch extensions get glued onto the switch paddles, so no one ever sees the trimmed down bits. I'm using an arduino Pro-Micro in this controller, with 6 inputs and 2 outputs in use... i connected the door open led's to the arduino rather than simply connecting them to the switches, this is so that when we get the input/output system in SimRail i can easily make the door open lights light up with the ones in the sim with a code change on the arduino. The code for this controller looks for switch state changes and sends the relevant keyboard keys when a switch is operated, so when the left door switch is moved from off to on, the key for 'open left doors' is sent once, then the left 'door open' led is turned on, When the switch is moved back to off, the key for 'close doors' is sent once and the led turned off (as there is only a keybind for 'close all doors' if i open both sides doors with my 2 switches, when i move one sides door switch to closed both sides doors close in the sim, and both switches in the sim move back to the off position and the lights go out... meanwhile one of my switches is still in the open position and the light on until i move it to off, not the end of the world, separate keybinds for 'close left doors' and 'close right doors' would solve this, keeping the 'close both sides doors' keybind as i believe the modern trains have a single doors close button) The doors closing buzzer switch sends the keyboard key all the time it's held on, same with the SHP / Czuwak button. When i press the right hand square red button (which is also the right doors open light) it sends the keyboard key '4' so the camera view changes to 'look back along the train', if i press that button again it cycles to the next external camera... i use that button a lot as i like to check the doors are clear before closing them or moving off. If i press the left square red button it sends a '5', that switches to the last camera looking forwards along the train, but more often i use it to cycle the cameras backwards after switching to the 'look back along the train' view. Then if i press the left button followed by the right button (within 300 milliseconds) it sends a '1' key, which sets the camera to cab view, and if i press the left first then the right button within the time limit, it sends '6', end of train camera, which i use to check the whole train i in the platform sometimes. I am really bad at coding / programming, so i get help with arduino code from an Arduino forum, if you search on google for 'arduino SimRail' the first hit should be for my posts about the code for these controllers including the sketchs that i have loaded to the arduino's in these controllers.

So... i can make the EN57 go, i'd better have a way to stop it... this should do the job. I did want to make the brake levers box similar to how it is in the real train, but there's lots of complex angles on that and trying to replicate them would be a nightmare, i struggled for over a day making the simple slight wedge shape on the underside of the brake levers main body, it's that bit which makes the lever stick up at an angle off horizontal, mostly it was getting all the edges to flow nicely together and go from a block to a round at the tip. (i wonder if i can get the 3D texture of the brake lever assembly and model off that) So i simply made the box that houses the working of the brake lever the same basic shape as the power and reverser levers box in the post above for now, this made it easy to have the rear dovetail mounting system incorporated, this is so i can place the brake lever in one of 6 positions on my desk, though in reality i change it between 2 positions, one of them being more a storage position so i don't catch the underside with my hand when i go to use the track ball. (The holes in the front lip of my desk are where the 2nd position dovetail mount should be, but i'd borrowed it for the door switch panel whilst i printed another when i took the above photo) I then decided to make a steel lever shaft out of some 14mm EN1a steel bar i had laying about (as you do 🙂 ) i simply turned it down to 10.5mm, the ends to 10mm and cut M10 threads on both ends (i did cheat and used a die rather than single point threading on the lathe) Then i screwed on a 32mm polyurethane ball i found in the shed to one end, and screwed the bar into the 3D printed threads in the main lever body. I did this to add a bit more weight to the feel of the lever, i could have re-printed the shaft and ball with 100% infill (i.e. solid) but i found the ball when searching for something else and thought 'why not' I can remove the lever from the square main rotational shaft (as i presume you can with the real thing), the knurled thumbscrew works to lock it on the square shaft (the knurled thumbscrew is 3D printed with the 0.25mm nozzle, then superglued to a length of M3 stud) I made the notch plate for this lever as close as i could to the real thing, after being sent a .pdf of the technical manual for the EN57 which showed each position the lever moves to, Simrail has an extra notch for the emergency brake position that's not there IRL... but i guess that was added as there's a keybind for emergency brakes and the lever needs to move round to it when activated from the keyboard. I also made the peg thing on the end of the lever a working part, mines spring loaded, not sure if the real thing is a sliding or pivoting part, but it's used to lock the lever in the 'disabled' position when you shut the cab down (and go and drive from the other cab) The Fusion 360 screenshot showing the working of the brake lever: Pretty much the same as the power and reverser levers (i've removed the 43 toothed main gear to make things easier to see, it drives a 26 tooth gear on the potentiometer this time, as the lever needs to move a bit more than the power or reverser levers did) The yellow disc is the notch plate, it's pattern hopefully allows lever to move the same distance as the real thing between notches, Again the red long thing is the 'twanger' as i call it, same pair of stacked 4mm OD bearings that give a smooth movement between notches (and less wear) i've drawn a crude spring to show where the tension spring mounts and pulls the twanger's bearing against the profile of the notch wheel. Again i used an arduino beetle board for the 'brains' of this controller, this time it's just a single analogue input pin being used, i could have had one arduino shared between all the levers and switches, but i wanted to make the levers self contained, and have an easy way to plug and unplug them using the USB connectors. Screenshot from fusion showing where the arduino lives, i use a right angle usb micro cable to plug into he controllers, The blue highlighted bit is the male dovetail mount, which allows these controllers to simply slide onto the matching female dovetail mounts on the desk.

For the past few weeks my 3D printer has been going almost non stop. If anyone's interested, it's a Prusa i3 MK3s, all stock except for a revo 6 quick change nozzle hotend and a raspberry Pi 3 running OctoPrint, The revo 6 nozzle allows me to change nozzle sizes in seconds without tools (or risks of leaks) and i regularly swap between the 0.25mm one for detail to the 0.8mm one when i want a quick 'prototype' of a basic shape, tho the 0.4mm one lives in it most of the time. ... OctoPrint allows me to send the printer it's G-code files to print remotely, so i only have to go to the printer when it's finished printing (as long as the correct colour filament is already loaded) This is very handy as it's a long walk from my bedroom to where the printer lives at the other end of the house. I built the printer from the kit version about 4 years ago, it just... works, i can count on my hands the number of failed prints i've had over the 4 years, and they were all my fault... forgetting a brim on tall thin objects. Anyway, back to the controllers, It's no secret that i love the EU07 loco, but i am also falling for the EN57, so i decided to make some 'mini' controllers to drive that cute little EMU at my laptop desk, then carry on with the EU07 style power wheel... tho when i have a simulator room i may concentrate on making full sized controls. If anyone knows the exact size of something in the EN57's cab, say the diameter of the brake handle's ball, let me know as i'd like to work out what 'scale' my EN57 controllers are, i sized them to fit comfortably in my large hands, i call them mini controllers but compared to a raildriver, they are quite large. And here are my controllers sat next to a raildriver for a size comparison. Below is a photo of my laptops overbed table today (12/12/23) it is a different table to the one in my first post, this one is a proper hospital overbed table that i fitted an extended top to, giving a total of 1 meter width by 400mm deep, plus i added a 'mouse/tracker ball' platform around the main 'leg' of the table (i had to change my bed from a divan to a wooden post style so the hospital table would fit... <i spend a lot of time 'stuck in bed' due to medical issues i have, hence why i have my laptop and controllers on an overbed table>) The EU07 button box is just sitting on the table top for now, i will re-print that sometime to take advantage of the extra width i have now, the EU07 style horn lever is the item in the lower right with the red ball, and the 'Radmor' style microphone is still the same one from before, still mounted to it's holder attached to the back of the small tablet mount. I got a 6 button 1 knob 'macropad' off amazon to use as a temporary radio controller, seen wedged between the left hand side of the laptop and the EU07 button box above: I had to set up a button for 'radio on' and 'radio off' as you can't bind the same key for radio on and off, when i make a 3D printed Radmor radio, it will have the proper latching power button that will be able to send the on and off keys when pressed, and i will use a 10 position rotary switch with different resistors for each position, then an arduino will read the analogue signal and send the correct channel number for the position it's in. This can be done thanks to the individual channel numbers we can now set keybinds to in SimRail, ATM my rotary encoder has no way of knowing which channel it's on, so i rotate it all the way left until the channel switch in the sim stops rotating, then count clicks to the right to change channel when needed (i.e. count 5 clicks to be on channel 5 etc) You probably noticed in the photo of my laptop desk that the controllers are mounted on the front of the desk, they slide into 3D printed dovetail mounts so i can quickly add or remove them, change their positions (i do that with the brake lever usually) And as i make more controllers for different trains, i will swap out the correct controllers before i take over a train in SimRail: My power lever and reverser: All the lever controllers have quite a few separate parts that fit together, i don't have a multi colour setup for 3D printing, so things like the reverser's top plate and the power levers plate are simple manual colour changes (printed with the 0.25mm nozzle for detail) The power handle was printed standing upright, with a colour change where the (M12) threaded part starts, and all threads are 3D printed, down to M3 x 0.5 threads for the screws to hold everything together. Below is a screenshot of Fusion 360 (hobbyists free edition) showing the insides of the power and reverser lever box: The levers rotate on 2 x (15 x 21 x 4) bearings housed in the 9mm thick top panel, the yellow disc is the 'notch wheel' which allows the levers 'click' between the notches (7 for power, 5 for reverser) The red long 'twangers' have a screw anchoring them at the far end, but loose enough so they are free to rotate, and a spring goes from the front threaded hole in the 'twangers' to one of the 3 sets of threaded holes to the left of the twangers (so i can vary the notch force) You'll likely notice the reverser's twanger is all plastic (i grease the notch plate and twangers pivot) that's fine as that lever does not get moved that much, but the power lever twanger has bearings where it rides against the notch plate, those bearings are 4mm OD, 1.5mm ID and 1.5mm tall.. a pair is stacked in the power levers twanger. Finally the rotation of the lever moves the 43 tooth (module 1) gear, which rotates the 19 tooth gear, and that rotates the shaft of a 5K potentiometer. An arduino beetle* then reads the potentiometers positions, and when it detects the lever has been moved enough to have moved from one notch to another, it sends the relevant keyboard key to SimRail to move the lever in the sim up or down a notch, or as many notches as the levers moved, i've found that a 70 millisecond delay between sending keypresses allows the lever in the sim to keep up with fast movements, and at each end of the travel, i.e. in the last notch, the arduino sends 3 keypress events, this ensures any missed movements is taken care of, And if i take over a train and the reverser is in 'forwards 1' but my reverser is in 'forwards 2' when i move my lever back one notch it will move the trains lever to position 0, but i then move my lever back to forwards 2, and thanks to the 3 keypresses it then sends, the trains lever moves all the way to the end notch too. * The Arduino beetle is a mini Arduino Leonardo with only a few inputs... i only needed 2 x analogue inputs for this controller, But you need a Leonardo or pro micro type arduino with an ATmega32U4 processor to send HID keyboard keys * So there isn't a massive wall of text, i'll post about the brake lever and door switch panel in the next post.

The EN57 has 2 toggle switches for the doors so each side can be opened and closed separately, but we only have a keybind for 'close all doors' Would it be possible to add 2 new keybinds for closing just the left or right side doors? as well as keeping the current close all doors key as i believe that's how it works in the more modern trains, So if the current 'close all doors' key is pressed, it does that, closes both sides with a single button, But if the left or right side close button is pressed, then only that side closes... for those odd occasions when you stop in a station with a platform on both sides of the train. : I do have a reason to have separate door close keybinds... apart from making it more realistic... when i use my switch panel to open both sides doors, when i flip one switch to close, in the sim both of them flip down and both red lights go out, yet on my panel one of the switches will still be up and red light on (the lights on my switch panel simply go on and off with the door switches, as we can't read data from SimRail yet)

i imagine that should be one of the stop markers... usually showing 200, or 400 etc so you know where to stop your train of that length.

right now, i've just been driving in the snow on EN1. The weather in SimRail is live, so when it snows in real life in the area you are driving in, it should snow in the sim. The exception is a few servers are set to a different date, like EN2 (i think it's that one) is set to september, so still has summer textures, not sure how they handle the weather in those servers... rain when it snows IRL? use saved weather data... or just make it up. I can imagine the servers set for September are so we can see the autumn season in SimRail without waiting till September 2024.

yes, IRL every single sleeper is different, every patch of ballast a slightly different shade, size of stone etc, every length of track a slightly different rust colour and amount of wear on the surface. But who it going to take on the job of walking the 500+Km's of tracks in SimRail and making individual textures for every meter of track, sleeper and ballast? (also, SimRail is set in 2018, so you'd have to rely on photo's of what the track was like back then... a lot worse condition than today, hence all the low speed limits in SimRail) And then imagine the performance hit for having to load new track textures all the time as you are moving, Sure it'll look amazing for those who stare at the tracks as they drive, but you have to call the line somewhere and use generic repeating textures to save computer resources.

doesn't TrackIr come with the reflective baseball cap attachment anymore? it just needs the 3 reflectors in roughly the right position, and enable the TrackIr cameras infrared leds, and theres no need to be 'tethered' Tho i used the IR led bar thing on a BVG drivers cap to drive Omsi, as i liked to drive in the dark when i was driving at night time, as the reflective thingy didn't fit on the BVG cap very well. You could always plug the IR led bar (thats made to clip onto headphones i think) into a usb power bank that you stick in a pocket, there's no data going to the led's just power. My laptop has a Tobii eye tracking webcam, so i use that, but it needs light to work, so if i turn the room lights all off when i'm driving at night in SimRail, it can't pick up my face / eyes, so i always have to have a side light on. The software i use to convert Tobii to TrackIr... 'FaceTrackNoIr' can apparently work with some standard webcams too.... i can't go back to any driving simulator without head tracking now. Occasionally i'll move my head around as if i was in the real train being bounced about, just to create my own cab sway effect 😄

Doh!, i get my left and rights mixed up, it is indeed left low, right high tone.

If they do that in real life, then i could be added, The communications options we have in SimRail are realistic for the time period (2018) hence no GSM radio... it's all analogue, and the land line phones between dispatch stations.

that is a great video, really shows how much you bounce about in these old trains. i can imagine that maybe one reason for very small 'head bob' movements in the sim is some people use the mouse to drive, it's already hard at times for me to operate the switches that are mouse only atm as i use TrackIr (well, a Tobii eye tracker webcam, with FaceTrackNoIr to convert the signal to TrackIr) and if i move my head whilst aiming the mouse for a switch, i will miss it. So maybe a way to have the mouse pointer move with the cab sway would be needed, or have a keyboard key to hold down to temporarily disable cab sway, operate the control with the mouse then release the key to get the cab sway back. Or just give us the ability to map every control to keybinds... and / or joystick buttons / axis, and there'd be no reason to touch the mouse once you've clicked the on screen button to turn the bot off and take over driving, The mouse would then just be used to move the view around.

i remember reporting things like this in tsw, and being told, it's low down on the bug list as it doesn't break the game, so may not be fixed for a while... a while was 2 years and counting in some cases.

ahhh... they had the horn key binds backwards in a lot of trains... i noticed it as i use a 2 way joystick switch as my horn lever (EU07 based) so left should be high tone, right low tone. The keybinds were fixed with the last hotfix update.... but i guess there was more to it than just switching the key binds, and the animations in some trains need changing too. Any drivers of the other trains that were affected with the reversed horn keybinds noticed if the horn lever / switch / pedals move the wrong direction?

yes, having a slider to set how much sway and bounce you see would be nice, i know some people hate cab motion, i recall they had it in tsw but people were complaining it was making them 'sea sick'... so rather than give players the option of turning it on or off, or varying it's intensity, it was switched off altogether for a while.

before the update, most servers had 1 or 2 players in them, even EN1 could be deserted half the day. So add in private servers taking away people, and the official servers would be even more depopulated, how long till the dev's think 'hardly anyone playing, may as well cancel the project and shut everything down' ? a lot of people who want private servers say they want them so basically 'they can play god' the 'my server, you play it how i like or get out' i know some people just want to mess about, crash trains, go as fast as they can in reverse and do other 'weird' things. But SimRail is supposed to be a consumer version of the professional train driving training simulator, i bought it so i could pretend i am a real train driver and drive as if it was real life, each time i drive i try to learn something and do better than my last run, be it learning the route, braking points, running to schedule etc.

the timetables should all be the same size no matter what train you are in, i 'think' in real life they are printed on A5 paper, or 2 parts of the timetable side by side on A4 in landscape format? but i could have that totally wrong here. i presume the driver would pick up a print out of the relevant timetables (and O orders etc) when they book on duty, i'd imagine they are printed on demand nowadays. Some 1980's German cab ride videos i've watched showed the driver preparing for his duty, where he was handed a typewritten scrap of paper with his duty on it from the booking on clerk, Then he went into a room and picked out the relevant sheets of pre-printed paper to make up his timetable and 'notices' from a load of pidgeon holes under a very long desk.

The past few months i've mostly been enjoying SimRail... plus getting back into my Omsi bus driving cab build ... I began to get the bits together for the force feedback steering system i'm building for my bus driving rig, i'll be using 'EMC-FFB' software, and it's firmware that i loaded onto a STM32F black pill board, a 4000 pulse per rotation optical encoder will sense the wheels position, a 150 watt E-scooter motor will provide the force feedback (add in a couple of big H-bridges and a 24 volt 30 amp power supply, i then just need to make the mechanicals to connect the motor and encoder to the bus steering shaft. But that's in my shed, and winter is here and it's far too cold to be in there... so i'm waiting on having a wall taken down in the house so i can have a nice warm simulator room. So i had a play with the encoder at my laptop, just to prove that part of the system works, it does... i have a full 6 and a half turns lock to lock (or about 2360 degrees) so i will have 1:1 steering in the sim, miles better than using the consumer FFB wheels that max out at 900 or 1024 degrees (half the number of turns a bus has) Here's a video of my 'proof of concept' with a quickly 3D printed wheel, showing the 6.5 turns, even tho the wheel in Omsi goes out of sync a little.. that's something in Omsi doing that, the wheel slows down towards the end then the last half turn speeds up.. weird: I also had a play with a different way to get the dashboard data out of Omsi using BusBoardInterface2, and managed to get a few things working that weren't possible using Komsi : Anyway, enough about the bus sim, this is the SimRail forum... Whilst i had the encoder mounted on my laptop desk i decided to try and use it to control the EU07 in SimRail, i tried 'Joystick Gremlin' to read the encoder rotation and send button pulses every few degrees, which JoytoKey made into the up and down keyboard presses to control SimRail. That kind of worked, but with no notches it was very hard to control the train, so i 3D printed a mini EU07 style wheel and a notch wheel, and thinking ahead i made the 'twanger' that the notch wheel flicks as the wheel is rotated hit microswitches, so turning the wheel one way hits the up microswitch, turning it the other way the down microswitch is hit, all the time giving nice heavy notches to push the wheel past to move it. The Fusion360 render below is showing how it works a little better, the yellow 'twanger' has a pair of springs going from the end hole to the holes in the plate, and the microswitches are not shown in the render either, but you can see them in the photo above... this is just one way to get notches, (i have a better more compact method that i'll show in the next post... but it doesn't hit the microswitches, so instead i use a potentiometer to read the position, then an arduino to read the position and send keyboard commands as the controller moved from notch to notch... that is going to take a lot of messing in the code for the 43 notches, but it can be done.) The microswitch method actually worked pretty well so i gave up on using the encoder (i might try again reading it with an arduino some time) But for now i was using a STM32F blue pill board loaded with FreeJoy to read the microswitches, i've mentioned these before as i use them in my button boxes and i highly rate them... Especially as the cost is about £5 for the STM32F board, plus £3 or so for the programmer (one time purchase, you use it again on other boards) And the FreeJoy software is as it's name hints at... free). I did get a bit of contact bounce if i rotated the wheel too fast, but when i tried again with an arduino and using interrupts to read the switches, i was able to spin the wheel far faster than i would normally and the wheel in SimRail moved perfectly in sync with it..... That is until the November 2023 update, i think the new animations on the controls are messing with inputs, as now if i rotate the wheel faster than about 3 to 5 notches a second the wheel in SimRail stops moving 😞 I get this with my macropad's encoders too, so i can only hope that something can be changed to allow faster inputs again, or i'll be stuck waiting for the joystick axis input to be introduced to the sim (which i really thought was happening with this update, but apparently it was a miscommunication and it was gamepad support we got in this update...... ....erm, ok.... ...thanks.... .....i guess. 🤨 I really am not a fan of gamepads for train simulators, leave them for the shooting games where they belong, there are just too many buttons, switches and levers to operate in the good train sim to make a gamepad of any use i think... but others think differently, and some think me messing about making controllers is madness when the keyboard and mouse can do it all, but i do like immersion, and having to drag a lever or push a button with a mouse breaks immersion for me. Right, i've got a 3D print that's finished, so i need to go and get it and start another, next post i'll show one of the mini controllers i am building right now for the EN57.

have you driven a 141xx / 411xx service yet? from Katowice to Warsaw takes about 3 and a half hours if all goes well. some people say that's too long !! Then when you get to the end of the map and get kicked out... (because not all of Poland's rail network is modelled in SimRail ya know, 'only' 500 Km worth of it ... so at the end it really is the end, you can't keep driving as there's no more scenery to drive on (yet) ... you can always take another train back in the opposite direction... just like a real driver would ... so they can go home after finishing their shift (after a rest break of course) i don't think you'll get much more realistic that SimRail, it is based on the simulator used to train real life train drivers (parent company SimKol makes them, what we have is that software slightly modified for consumers) We don't really drive scenarios, that implies scripted runs and events, i.e. the same every time, in multiplayer you will never have the exact same run twice, other humans driving trains and human dispatchers mean things can't be scripted, even the Ai has to be able to make 'decisions' to adapt to what's happening around it. In the paper timetables there should be a ;zd for the entry for Katowice and Warszawa Wschodnia, that means 'crew change' i.e. thats where you'd get off the train and take a break, there are laws regarding how long a train driver can be at the controls for... but we can spend 20 hours driving in SimRail if we wanted, just chose from the many different services in the timetable (hint, chose an empty server to see all the services available, should be 70 or so every hour)

I've posted this in the 'community made content' part of the forum, but i can imagine a lot of people don't know that exists, I made an explanation sheet to help understand what is going on with the drivers timetables we now have in the sim... As usual, pictures with text seem to be shown fuzzy in the forum preview, click the picture and it should open up much clearer... a .pdf version is also included. Let me know if i've got anything wrong and i'll correct it asap. Timetable explanation for SimRail.pdf

Thought this might be of use to people now that we have realistic drivers timetables in the sim. The preview looks fuzzy, click it to see the sheet in full resolution, also included is a .pdf version. Timetable explanation for SimRail.pdf

Is this thing i made of any use... sorry i couldn't make it neater, but there is so much info in the timetables all over the place. Please click the image to see it clearly, it is fuzzy in the preview only, also included is a .pdf version. Timetable explanation for SimRail.pdf

it's the same in the EN57.

easier to have the conductor tell you over the radio that you can depart now.