NEC - Out August 25th

[DCBickersteth]

Sorry, but didappointed: - so many identikit houses, no clutter around them, or on platforms, or around signal boxes - lack of growth (apart from abundant trees), a number of floaters - girders and trees I noticed. I too miss the lack of a passenger view and the cab view is poor, although the external appearance of the locos and rolling stock is very good. There is also a lack of any catenary equipment - the wires just hang there. The platforms seem high in comparison to the steps that drop down from the carriages when the doors open - quite a leap for the elderly!

There is little fencing - even alongside houses and highways and the inclines for the fly overs seem to have a very abrupt look at the top - enough to make anything jump the rails and the structure!

When compared to recent UK and German routes - especially the very talented route by SAD, it just feels like a return to MSTS - although it runs well.

DCB

[Kromaatikse]

Compared to the route supplied as default with MSTS, I think this is an improvement - and will be more of one when RW3 drops because then there'll be shadows. However, I played with it just now to see what the possibilities were for scenario creation, and found:

1) Placing trains in New York is nearly impossible, because the station is underground. Digging out the ground and covering it with the station building should have been sufficient visually, and would have allowed much easier placement of trains. This is going to make scenarios starting at NY very difficult to make.

2) Most of the track is bidirectional, so you have to pay a lot of attention to routing to make sure your train (and AI trains) use sensible tracks. On the plus side this allows representing severe disruption events much more easily, but some documentation of what the normal routes are is justified here.

3) The speed limits all appear to be from the AEM-7 era, and never go above 120mph, even with "Express Passenger" selected. This will be problematic when the Acela arrives since it won't be able to reach it's claimed 150mph.

4) The upper half of Philadelphia station is clearly not meant for player use, even though it is accessible from the mainline. Attempting to go there resulted in being routed through a flyover system including a 5% and a 3% hill in rapid succession. For reference, 5% is 1:20, 3% is 1:33, the Lickey Incline is 1:37.

5) Some of the modelling and texturing on scenery assets is downright crude by Railworks payware standards. It remains to be seen whether this is improved by RW3 to any significant extent.

6) The catenary is awful. The gantries supporting it are all to a single very large and prominent design in various widths, with no brackets to actually reach the wires and support them. Photographs found quickly on Google suggest that neither of these features are typical over the entire route, though the gantries are more-or-less typical for part of the route. Maybe I've been spoiled by WCML-N, but really...

EDIT: Here's a good video showing what appears to be more typical catenary on this part of the NEC.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AhE6sxzfpQ

[Wikkus]

so many identikit houses,
<snip>
The platforms seem high in comparison to the steps that drop down from the carriages when the doors open - quite a leap for the elderly!

There is little fencing - even alongside houses and highways

the inclines for the fly overs seem to have a very abrupt look at the top - enough to make anything jump the rails and the structure!

Just to address these aspects of the above post:
1) Not sure what the issue is with "identikit" houses; one could say the exact same thing of much of London, Birmingham, Manchester or anywhere else -- lots of terraced houses... Drive through many a US suburb and it's street upon street of identical houses with identical yards, etc.
2) The platforms vary in height in the route and in real life; the real Amtrak coaches have steps that lower to the appropriate height as required, but I doubt this is achievable in RW as it stands, so a compromise has to be chosen and they chose the lower of the two settings.
3) There is quite often little or *no* fencing for US railroads, even in urban areas.
4) Some of the inclines are, I suspect, for tramways/mass-transit systems and these often have much steeper gradients than heavy rail.

Rgds, Rik.

[Wikkus]

3) The speed limits all appear to be from the AEM-7 era, and never go above 120mph, even with "Express Passenger" selected. This will be problematic when the Acela arrives since it won't be able to reach it's claimed 150mph.

Pretty darned sure I've seen a couple of bits of 150mph near Philly...

Rik.

[msey0002]

1) Placing trains in New York is nearly impossible, because the station is underground. Digging out the ground and covering it with the station building should have been sufficient visually, and would have allowed much easier placement of trains. This is going to make scenarios starting at NY very difficult to make.

Have to say, this does not sound attractive

[michaeldono]

I havn't noticed any 150mph areas, but maybe im on the slow lines.

Anyone tell me how to work the cruise control?

And im i right with this:

|-slow up |- fast up |-fast down |-slow down

[Marleyman]

just set your throttle then 'twist' the Cruise Control Dial. I had my throttle on 7 and just kept messing with the CC Dial to play test it. You do need to use the mouse to turn that dial, I tried all the keys and none operated it.

[FoggyMorning]

1) Placing trains in New York is nearly impossible, because the station is underground. Digging out the ground and covering it with the station building should have been sufficient visually, and would have allowed much easier placement of trains. This is going to make scenarios starting at NY very difficult to make.

Have to say, this does not sound attractive

It's a also touch misleading in my opinion, since two of the included standard scenarios do start in NYC

[Wikkus]

Anyone tell me how to work the cruise control?

Just set the dial until the desired speed is at 12 o'clock or thereabouts (it's kind of 3 minutes past 12...) and I've had the speed control button on the panel pressed in.

Rik.

[chrisiveson]

I've only run two of the activities so far and I'm less than impressed, there's something about this route that reminds me of the "FPM Surfliner" route for MSTS.
I sold my "O" scale AEM7 a while back and I wish I could sell this one, was hoping to use my Raildriver, but it just doesn't work with the AEM7 and I've tried an activity using David Brindley's F40PH and it just locks up the computer wherever I try to place it, yet it runs perfectly on other US routes.
The Dash8 from train-sim.com does run on NEC for a while before the PC lock up, but it isn't an authentic Amtrak engine anyway.
I've noticed the guy walking in front of the engine at Trenton, ( posted elsewhere ) and when I went walkabout with the #8 key into the Amfleet coach the rain was coming in through the roof, ( maybe that will change when/if we get a passenger view? )
Wish now I'd spent what little money I have on Bristol - Exeter, won't be running NEC much in the near future, so it's back to WCML for now.

Chris.

[Kromaatikse]

1) Placing trains in New York is nearly impossible, because the station is underground. Digging out the ground and covering it with the station building should have been sufficient visually, and would have allowed much easier placement of trains. This is going to make scenarios starting at NY very difficult to make.

Have to say, this does not sound attractive

It's a also touch misleading in my opinion, since two of the included standard scenarios do start in NYC

I have no idea how the authors set up the included scenarios, but I found that simply putting a train in a partucular NY platform, behind the signal where it should be, in the editor was exceptionally difficult. Since it has many platforms, populating it to a realistic extent would get very old very quickly.

The other stations are at most enclosed only by the station building, so trains can be placed and moved much more easily.

[OboRex]

And im i right with this:

|-slow up |- fast up |-fast down |-slow down

Michael:

Don't really have the up/down concept for track direction over here. Trains travel on the right and the middle tracks are indeed the express ones.

Regards,

Rob.

[zatnikitelman]

Um, I'd like to point out that with the route as-modeled, the Acela won't even be able to reach 150mph. Between New York and Philadelphia, Acela tops out at 135mph for now. It only reaches 150 in parts of Connecticut, Rhode Island and southern Massachussets. There IS however a project being funded that will allow the Acela to reach 160 in a section of New Jersey (included in the Railworks NEC of course) in a few years.

[GenesisMan]

First impressions:
The Route:
Not being from USA, I cannot tell if this route is accurate...
- I have seen one or two places where the track was not correctly aligned.
- I doubt this route is like this to have speed of 120 MPH.
- I also saw some bumps in the tracks.

The route will certainly need improvement to correct those and make the rails SuperElevated for High Speed.

The Keystone Scenario:
- I first had to fix it:
- I then give it a go:
- I tried 2 times from the start and was not able to succeed.
Failed because exceeding the ETA by less than 1 minute.
And I had more than 10 speeding faults.
Passengers not getting in or out (In real life, it does not happen...Your are simply late.

- I decide to verify with an original timetable of Amtrak, for this section of the route, with Northeast Regional train service(Not Acela).
- I found this for a trip beginning at 10:05 AM at NEW YORK, NY:
Newark, NJ 10.21 on timetable, 10:17 in the scenario.
Newark Liberty Intl. Airport, NJ 10:27 on timetable.
Metropark, NJ 10:40.
Trenton, NJ 11:03 In the scenario 10:49. 14 minutes shorter than in real time.

We already had scenario ended for passing a red light.
Now, we have passenger scenarios where travel time is shortened to make players hurry for top speed.

Can we have scenarios that are realistic with the timetables ?
A little bit of search on the Web might help...

Will try other scenarios.

Robert

[Kariban]

There is little fencing - even alongside houses and highways and the inclines for the fly overs seem to have a very abrupt look at the top - enough to make anything jump the rails and the structure!

Not only is there no fencing around track, generally - there's quite often nothing between people's gardens either. It's quite a culture shock after English enclosures.