Falmouth Branch - a heretic's view
Posted: Fri Dec 24, 2010 8:54 am
Spurred on by the comments on this Forum (and the half-price sale, of course!), I have recently bought the Falmouth Branch add-on.
I will, no doubt, be branded as a heretic, but I have to say that I was disappointed to see that many aspects of route-building have not progressed, and that the naivity of Kuju in MSTS days, which was still evident in the default routes for Rail Simulator, is still being perpetuated in Railworks.
In some ways, it is unfair to pick on this particular route because the deficiencies I am about to mention appear and far and wide, even in default routes. Most of my observations are generalisations, and exceptions will, no doubt, be thrown up, but they need to be thought about and addressed.
Land/Earthworks:
When the railways were being built, the railway companies had to buy the land they needed. Where cuttings and embankments were needed, extra land had to be bought to contain the earthworks, depending on the type of terrain, and was fenced accordingly - embankments at the bottom, cuttings at the top. However, on flat land with virtually no earthworks, the absolute minimum of land would be bought and would be fenced as close as reasonably possible to the track-bed (and yes, I do realise that the Falmouth Branch was built as broad gauge!) All the infrastructure (signals, telegraph poles, signal-boxes, plate-layers huts etc. would have to be contained within the land owned by the railway company.
Bridges/Tunnels:
Just as land was expensive, the building of bridges and tunnels was expensive in terms of labour and materials. Obviously, the path of the railway had to be kept as reasonably flat as possible - hence the number of spectacular viaducts we have around the place. However, roads and tracks could be easily diverted sideways or deflected up or down to allow for the minimum size of bridge to be built over or under the railway. Bridges built to more than the standard loading-gauge are rare - hence the problems when electrification came along.
The same applies to tunnels - tunnelling is probably the single most expensive form of earth-working - and many tunnels are portrayed as being too wide and tall, often in terrain here a cutting would have sufficed anyway! Strangely enough, the tunnels on this particular route do not appear to have been enginneered for broad-gauge.
I appreciate the need to use existing assets, but there is really no need to routinely have overbridges with 10-15ft headroom above the train - it looks wrong. The stone bridge used on the Falmouth route is completely out of proportion, even allowing for the broad-gauge heritage, and the headroom is far too high in most cases. I am not a civil engineer (quite uncivil, really), but from a personal point of view, the flattened stone arched bridge looks totally wrong - I know Brunel managed it over the Thames, but I suspect that is more to do with the brick and mortar construction and would not work in stone.
An interesting aside is that several over-bridges have a smaller LOD than houses half a mile away - on lower performance machines with reduced detail settings, this leads to track infrastructure objects being apparently missing.
Track:
Ever since the second half of the 19th Century in the UK, the use of hand-operated points on lines running passenger trains has been outlawed, although the practice was re-introduced by Kuju at the start of the 21st century, and later adopted by RS! All turnouts on main running lines have to be interlocked, usually by a signal box, but sometimes by a ground frame.
Equally, connections onto main running lines from loops and sidings have to be protected from shunting errors etc by some form of trap or headshunt, again interlocked in the signal box.
Speed Limits:
There is a plethora of speed limit signs on routes produced by Kuju/RS - unlike on the road, where every idiot has to have it spelt out, a professional train driver would be expected to realise that while the main running line may have a speed limit of 60mph, that dead-end siding may be better approached at a lower speed, without the need for a sign.
Signalling:
Again it is slightly unfair to pick on this route, as it shares many signalling errors with other routes produced by Kuju/RS - there are books and other contributors to this forum who can give a far better insight to signalling than I can, but I will start the ball rolling.
In general terms, this route is gloriously oversignalled, which given the shortcomings of the RW signalling system, detracts in a big way from the illusion created by the route.
The signalling of the passing stations/loops is excessive - the route represents a sleepy branch-line - one sufficiently busy to have signalled passing loops, but not bi-directional loops. In general terms, the preferred path through the passing loop would be signalled with a conventional signal arm, but the alternative paths would be signalled with, at best, a subsidiary arm, or more often than not a shunt signal. One station features a bracketed starter signal on the "wrong-running" platform with the bracket signal protecting the goods-shed!
Splitting distant signals were a relative rarity, giving advanced warning of high speed junctions, but not on sleepy branch lines.
Sidings with hand-operated points cannot have signals - many countries have point levers indicating the setting of the points, but they are not signals as such, and, as far as I know, they were not common in the UK. This is one of the most frustrating errors on many routes because I appreciate the time it takes to instal them and they are utterly pointless (no pun intended!)
I can feel the arrows coming my way already - "if you think you can do better..." etc., but I do feel that, in most situations, it is just as difficult (or easy) to do something correctly as it is to do it wrongly
However unfairly, I have used this route as an example because it is the first add-on route I have bought since Rail Simulator/Railworks came along and I was disappointed that long-term flaws are being perpetuated. It would appear that rolling stock addons are being produced to a level approaching perfection, but that the background to the underlying infrastructure is being neglected.
Merry Christmas
Phil
I will, no doubt, be branded as a heretic, but I have to say that I was disappointed to see that many aspects of route-building have not progressed, and that the naivity of Kuju in MSTS days, which was still evident in the default routes for Rail Simulator, is still being perpetuated in Railworks.
In some ways, it is unfair to pick on this particular route because the deficiencies I am about to mention appear and far and wide, even in default routes. Most of my observations are generalisations, and exceptions will, no doubt, be thrown up, but they need to be thought about and addressed.
Land/Earthworks:
When the railways were being built, the railway companies had to buy the land they needed. Where cuttings and embankments were needed, extra land had to be bought to contain the earthworks, depending on the type of terrain, and was fenced accordingly - embankments at the bottom, cuttings at the top. However, on flat land with virtually no earthworks, the absolute minimum of land would be bought and would be fenced as close as reasonably possible to the track-bed (and yes, I do realise that the Falmouth Branch was built as broad gauge!) All the infrastructure (signals, telegraph poles, signal-boxes, plate-layers huts etc. would have to be contained within the land owned by the railway company.
Bridges/Tunnels:
Just as land was expensive, the building of bridges and tunnels was expensive in terms of labour and materials. Obviously, the path of the railway had to be kept as reasonably flat as possible - hence the number of spectacular viaducts we have around the place. However, roads and tracks could be easily diverted sideways or deflected up or down to allow for the minimum size of bridge to be built over or under the railway. Bridges built to more than the standard loading-gauge are rare - hence the problems when electrification came along.
The same applies to tunnels - tunnelling is probably the single most expensive form of earth-working - and many tunnels are portrayed as being too wide and tall, often in terrain here a cutting would have sufficed anyway! Strangely enough, the tunnels on this particular route do not appear to have been enginneered for broad-gauge.
I appreciate the need to use existing assets, but there is really no need to routinely have overbridges with 10-15ft headroom above the train - it looks wrong. The stone bridge used on the Falmouth route is completely out of proportion, even allowing for the broad-gauge heritage, and the headroom is far too high in most cases. I am not a civil engineer (quite uncivil, really), but from a personal point of view, the flattened stone arched bridge looks totally wrong - I know Brunel managed it over the Thames, but I suspect that is more to do with the brick and mortar construction and would not work in stone.
An interesting aside is that several over-bridges have a smaller LOD than houses half a mile away - on lower performance machines with reduced detail settings, this leads to track infrastructure objects being apparently missing.
Track:
Ever since the second half of the 19th Century in the UK, the use of hand-operated points on lines running passenger trains has been outlawed, although the practice was re-introduced by Kuju at the start of the 21st century, and later adopted by RS! All turnouts on main running lines have to be interlocked, usually by a signal box, but sometimes by a ground frame.
Equally, connections onto main running lines from loops and sidings have to be protected from shunting errors etc by some form of trap or headshunt, again interlocked in the signal box.
Speed Limits:
There is a plethora of speed limit signs on routes produced by Kuju/RS - unlike on the road, where every idiot has to have it spelt out, a professional train driver would be expected to realise that while the main running line may have a speed limit of 60mph, that dead-end siding may be better approached at a lower speed, without the need for a sign.
Signalling:
Again it is slightly unfair to pick on this route, as it shares many signalling errors with other routes produced by Kuju/RS - there are books and other contributors to this forum who can give a far better insight to signalling than I can, but I will start the ball rolling.
In general terms, this route is gloriously oversignalled, which given the shortcomings of the RW signalling system, detracts in a big way from the illusion created by the route.
The signalling of the passing stations/loops is excessive - the route represents a sleepy branch-line - one sufficiently busy to have signalled passing loops, but not bi-directional loops. In general terms, the preferred path through the passing loop would be signalled with a conventional signal arm, but the alternative paths would be signalled with, at best, a subsidiary arm, or more often than not a shunt signal. One station features a bracketed starter signal on the "wrong-running" platform with the bracket signal protecting the goods-shed!
Splitting distant signals were a relative rarity, giving advanced warning of high speed junctions, but not on sleepy branch lines.
Sidings with hand-operated points cannot have signals - many countries have point levers indicating the setting of the points, but they are not signals as such, and, as far as I know, they were not common in the UK. This is one of the most frustrating errors on many routes because I appreciate the time it takes to instal them and they are utterly pointless (no pun intended!)
I can feel the arrows coming my way already - "if you think you can do better..." etc., but I do feel that, in most situations, it is just as difficult (or easy) to do something correctly as it is to do it wrongly
However unfairly, I have used this route as an example because it is the first add-on route I have bought since Rail Simulator/Railworks came along and I was disappointed that long-term flaws are being perpetuated. It would appear that rolling stock addons are being produced to a level approaching perfection, but that the background to the underlying infrastructure is being neglected.
Merry Christmas
Phil
But I agree about the point of continuing errors consistently especially when the tools are available to rectify it at the time of track laying with a bit of effort, I know I am in a minority about angular horrible totally unrealistic gradient changes, but that's my bugbear for this "new" route since they are so obvious. 
would have a hard time finding the right lever to actually use, I guess.