WHL South from DTG and Milepost Simulations

[almark]

Which direction from Corrour? Never known any throttle usage on all the loco hauled trains I've been on once over the summit going towards Tulloch,going the other way they seem to let them roll most of the way,I think with units they use throttle on some of the sharp uphill bits but vid only been on a 156 a couple of times along there.

I would be interested to see how using the coasting tactic would work with the career scenario timings. Fort Bill to Corrour on the sleeper with 37039 is very hard to make the timings. Lose a lot of speed on the 1/59 climb with the poor tractor getting the full hammer. Real challenge.

Sadly it doesn't really work in Career scenarios as if you go more than 1mph over the speed limit you are "speeding" and therefore penalised,once you get up to 50 out of Corrour its easy enough (on load 7/8) to just let gravity get you to Sword Loch (The bit before you dive down the 1 in 53 before Rannoch) to just leave everything and let speed hover around 48-53/4 mph. As I'm sure others will agree,speeding (not massively,but 3-5mph) wasn't unknown back then (I'm pretty sure with loco hauled trains it still occurs now) on the long straight sections.

Regards,
Mark

[Ximmy]

which brings me to a WAY off topic question - do modern trains have a "spy in the cab" that can be checked for breaking speed limits?

[almark]

which brings me to a WAY off topic question - do modern trains have a "spy in the cab" that can be checked for breaking speed limits?

The "black box" (OTMR) if checked (certainly would be if an "incident" occured?) would I believe show the speeds/data log of the journey(s),but I'm not 100% there.

All trains on UK Main Lines must have a black box fitted in order to operate on the main line these days (including steam locos).

[Drogba11CFC]

Which direction from Corrour? Never known any throttle usage on all the loco hauled trains I've been on once over the summit going towards Tulloch,going the other way they seem to let them roll most of the way,I think with units they use throttle on some of the sharp uphill bits but vid only been on a 156 a couple of times along there.

The sharp descent towards Fort William.

[almark]

Which direction from Corrour? Never known any throttle usage on all the loco hauled trains I've been on once over the summit going towards Tulloch,going the other way they seem to let them roll most of the way,I think with units they use throttle on some of the sharp uphill bits but vid only been on a 156 a couple of times along there.

The sharp descent towards Fort William.

In that case then I can't recall ever really hearing a loco working going down between Corrour and Tulloch (and much of the way to Spean Bridge in actual fact),obviously there's little bits here and there but from what I can remember the throttle/regulator is eased or shut for 75-90% of that section of line.

[holzroller]

The only time it was acceptable to have the throttle open whilst making a braking application was being made was when you were using the anti-slip on certain loco's. It wasn't just that it would be frowned upon, it would also produce a world of pain with all the problems it would cause. In real life when you drive a train you have to look much further ahead than you would with a car in regards to braking and accelerating. As one old driver said to me, only a fool goes over a hill at full throttle and then brakes like crazy on the other side. Normally you would go over at less than the limit to allow for your train speed picking up on the other side. Unless of course you couldn't go fast enough to cause a problem Rather than maintaining a steady speed downhill you might drop below line speed allowing the gradient to bring your speed up again on a long drop, meaning that you didn't keep the brakes on all the time and lessening the problem of overheating brake blocks/pads. Which wasn't just inconvenient, it could be lethal. And yes black boxes do record speed, and the records are kept for years afterwards. If a driver is caught speeding now, they will look back through these records to see if there is a pattern, at least Scotrail does anyway.

[pjt1974]

I'm converted
Bought the route yesterday with a couple of add ons for FSX. Tried the FSX addons, didn't like them so applied for a refund and it was duly granted. Unfortunately that meant refunding the whole purchase, including the route, which I hadn't tried yet. I didn't notice Steam make any move to remove the route and it's assets from the game so I quickly went offline just to see what would happen.

When loading a Quickdrive on the route, I fully expected it to either fail or at best to have a blank canvas of a landscape, as I've had before when Steam's anti piracy guard wrongly kick in on me with GARL a couple of years ago but no, the route was fully functionable in all it's glory so I took it for three test drives. From Fort William and from Helensburgh for 20 miles or so and I also ran a 70 minute career scenario. Happy days. I went back online with Steam and repurchased the route. How's that for a demo before you buy?

As for the route itself. I have to admit that my impression from Twitch and all the screenshots was wrong. I could show 30 good screenshots of the route and any doubters would still have doubts, I was one of those doubters and screenshots don't do the route the justice it deserves.

The 37 is reworked from the legacy one and takes a little to get used to (personally I don't like it compared to the West Highland Extension one)

The route is not WCML Trent Valley, that's for sure, but it's not trying to be. Personally, on first impressions alone, I would put it up there with Thomson's West Highland Line Extension or JustTrains' Kyle of Lochalsh.

The only negative I'd give the route is I found I had to gain permission to enter a passing station when there's a service waiting on the opposite line, but I never got penalised for it on the Career scenario I ran so it's not a big issue for me, the signals worked as they should otherwise.

As with WHLE and Kyle of Lochalsh, this route is a Quickdrive for me, early morning/late evening, shadows and details turned right up, just right for a nice relaxing drive.

Now I've looked at the route myself, I don't see how extending to Oban or Queen Street would've made a massive difference to the value of this DLC addon. No doubt, someone will eventually cover Queens Street to Helensburgh Central and if I'm personally honest, you don't need it here.

Well done to all concerned

[atlasduff47]

Thanks for the review, I have to admit that on the strength of the twitch and screenshots (not so much), I was highly dubious of purchasing, even though this line being reasonably local to me, and was high up on my ''routes I would like to see built" wishlist. Thanks to the reviews by yourself and Jimmyshand, I now feel a lot happier and will take the plunge when pay day comes around.

It does beg the question though, why did the live twitch fail to communicate the qualities of the route to some, myself included? Is there anything else that DTG could have done with that to better show off the route? Not bashing them at all, in fact quite the opposite, trying to work out how the previews could be done better and therefore generate more potential income for them.

[pjt1974]

I'm another who didn't see the qualities from the stream or screenshots. I think the issue is the perspective. I watched the preview and subsequent Trainsimlive's and Matt was doing everything he could do to show off the route in all it's glory but I just think this route, similar to Kyle and Thomson's West Highland, is a little different where much of the pleasure is from actually driving it from the cab. I wouldn't for one moment proclaim any of the three Highland routes are my favourite's but they are slowly but surely working their way up my list of routes to load up for a nice drive.