The Railworks melting pot

[styckx]

The NEC thread RSAdam created was straying off topic (raises hand, guilty as charged) so decided to start a new thread that revolved around that topic.

Basically discussion of what you learned and liked about foreign railroading you never really knew or cared about before venturing into Railworks.

Now to reply to Johns post from the other thread.

Bill, I can't speak for RSC.com but I can speak for myself. I never really was into US railroads before Railworks came along. Only ever been to the US twice (1981 and 83), both times to visit family in Florida. In that time I only saw one train, a smallish consist hauled by an EMD SD or GP loco, don't know which. US railroads don't really feature in British railway magazines and the two or three US railroad books I received from relatives at various Christmases remained largely unread. What bits I did read related so very little to railway practice in the UK at that time that I didn't really go any further.

In 1979 my dad bought me some beautiful model trains. British ones were (and still are) bizarrely out of scale with the tracks - this was originally so that existing model motors would fit inside the smaller loading gauge locos here in the UK. My dad and I chose to model German railways instead. Fleischmann's and Arnold's models started me off with a love for German trains. There used to be a wonderful model shop at the time underneath Glasgow Central station, it specialised in continental models.

When Railworks came along the lure of both British and German routes and rolling stock made it an essential purchase, however to my surprise I found myself increasingly drawn to the Barstow to San Bernardino route. One by one I bought Rich Garber's routes, the G-trax steamers, and all of the RSC.com US addons!! Being somewhat of a hoarder, I still have the railroad books from my youth and when I dusted them off recently and strarted to read them I finally started to "get" US railroads. There's still so much I don't know which is frustrating, but the amount of helpful bits of information I'm finding out here are filling quite a few gaps in my knowledge. I read far more here than I post; I can't really contribute that much as I simply don't know that much about American practice.

Before Railworks I wasn't a fan. Now I most definitely am.

Before Railworks I honestly couldn't tell you a thing about UK railroads other than they had weird horns and graced us with Thomas the Tank Engine. :) Seriously. I knew NOTHING.

When I first got Railworks I didn't even bother with UK stuff. I just wanted to drive our big bad American trains. What changed for me though was the lack of any sort of dedicated American 3rd party development, or much of a effort by RSC to do anything about it (at the time). So, I started to use the other half of the game I never bothered with before.. UK railroading. You guys were out of the gates booming with development and tweaks. Just a continuous stream of new toys and routes to play with. Long story short, after some time, I ended up enjoying UK railroading more than American railroading. Every new UK locomotive release I bought and then read the wiki for that loco to learn the history of it, then Youtube videos of it etc. Every wiki of a loco I read ended up being an hour of reading. I'd go to read about the Class 66 and then end up also reading about it's predecessors. The odd thing about your locos, each of them has a very good story behind it that almost makes you just fall in love with it.

What really attracted me to UK railroading is sort of what attracted me to trains in the first place.. Steam and passenger service. The strange thing I noticed, and ended up respecting was while America has plenty of die hard railroading fans, some great museums, railroads, tourist lines etc, the UK as a whole just kind of lives and breathes trains almost culturally. Where railroading was once part of everyday American culture as a whole, in the UK it still is to this day.

I went from "Jesus, what junk! It sounds like a tractor and smokes more than a coal plant!!!" to "HOLY HELLFIRE! AWESOME!!"

[Chessie8638]

I'm in your boat. I'm slowly coming around and looking more and more at the UK stuff. Starting to get burnt out on N. American freights. And have given up on any steam locomotives except for NS' new steam program. Even Strasburg doesn't fancy me anymore.

I still think UK locomotives have funny horns.

[Kali]

Funnily enough you can fairly well match the decline in the UK's industry - and international influence on quite a few areas of science and industry - to the decline in favour of the steam engine; much as you can easily see how steam was one of the driving forces behind the industrial revolution which started here in the first place. The problem with being the first ones to do anything is that you make all the mistakes...

This country is old. I'm sure you get a sense of that as a visitor, but we basically breathe history - and since the 60s-70s decline in fortunes and lack of national direction ( let's not get into politics here though ) national heritage is naturally becoming something many people are more interested in. Britain's always sold it's pomp & circumstance though, it's a natural extension.

I love the - to european eyes - rather ramshackle way the US railroads are run and the way track seems to run anywhere and everywhere ( and it's much the same with the colonial systems ). Over here there was a legal requirement from almost the start that track had to be totally fenced in, which is one reason why there wasn't ever much running through streets as it had it's own rather restrictive rules.

[EliteMarksman]

This country is old. I'm sure you get a sense of that as a visitor, but we basically breathe history - and since the 60s-70s decline in fortunes and lack of national direction ( let's not get into politics here though ) national heritage is naturally becoming something many people are more interested in. Britain's always sold it's pomp & circumstance though, it's a natural extension.

Not to stray off topic again, but that is one of the reasons I enjoyed my time in Germany in 2006. My German class had a month-long exchange with a school in Bremen, and we spent 3 weeks in Bremen and a week in Berlin. There was so much history in Bremen, the city was founded in the 1400s as part of the Hanseatic League, and with Berlin, the scars of WWII and a divided Germany were evident everywhere, along with plenty of other old structures and culture.

Perhaps that is why I enjoy the UK trains also. Particularly the passenger traffic on the stock routes, as I don't have any DLC yet. UK freight doesn't have the same appeal as American freight, there is just something about mile long trains... One of the things that I was dissapointed with in the UK routes, is that is seems the route never actually goes into any of the cities. If I remember correctly, Paddington is one of the main stations of London, but it doesn't feel like you're in a major city at that station. That said, I have never been to the UK, so maybe that is what it is really like.

Cities is one of the things I am looking forward to in NEC, with the terminus of the line being the center of New York and just off center of Philadelphia, which I live just 20 minutes away from.

[johnmckenzie]

"It sounds like a tractor and smokes more than a coal plant!!!"

And those are their good points!

[johnmckenzie]

If I remember correctly, Paddington is one of the main stations of London, but it doesn't feel like you're in a major city at that station. That said, I have never been to the UK, so maybe that is what it is really like.

Yes, Paddington is the main station serving the South West of England. Perhaps Railworks could do with making it look busier - it really is busy, and it really does feel like a station in a big city in real life.

As an aside, Paddington was the main terminus of the Great Western Railway, designed by Brunel and most certainly my favourite London station, and probably my favourite station anywhere. An interesting little snippet is the unusual design of the roof - maybe you have noticed it - in that the main arches run in the same direction of the tracks (naturally) but at several places there are arches running at right angles to the track too. This is because when it was built Brunel had small turntables installed throughout the station so that carriages and wagons could be marshalled easily from track to track.

In fact, this gives me an idea for another thread....

[Samwolf]

I have to admit, I am finding the UK and German routes, scenarios and rolling stock "fun".I find myself playing about 50/50 US and European scenarios.

I've finally gotten down about 90% of the signaling without having to look them up and it's sometimes a challange switching between them all. Some of the UK engines have a charm all their own and they have grown on me. (I do wish they would get serious about their horns though)

Like most Colonials, I didn't know much about European railroading. Thanks to Railworks and various forums I found a new and interesing hobby and am becoming educated.

[micaelcorleone]

Not to stray off topic again, but that is one of the reasons I enjoyed my time in Germany in 2006. My German class had a month-long exchange with a school in Bremen, and we spent 3 weeks in Bremen and a week in Berlin. There was so much history in Bremen, the city was founded in the 1400s as part of the Hanseatic League, and with Berlin, the scars of WWII and a divided Germany were evident everywhere, along with plenty of other old structures and culture.

Oh no!
Bremen? - In my opinion, one of the worst places in Germany. Maybe nice to look at, but it has the worst schools and one of the hugest public debts of all German states.
Berlin is nice, at least the center with all the tourist attractions. But it's a poor house as well.

Why didn't you come to Bavaria? - Nicest place to live in Germany. (Ok, obiviously I'm not unbiased. )


Railworks brought me into UK and US trains.
I always had an interest for American trains, especially the old steamers and diesels, but my main interest had always been German trains.
I guess, I have the general interest in railroading from my dad, who is a big railfan himself.
With MSTS and later Railworks, I began to love US railroading more and more. Now, even the modern American trains.
And, of course, I couldn't help to also play with the UK stuff that's in Railworks.

American Railroads still interest me the most, UK less and I've totally lost my interest in German trains.

[Chock]

In comparing British and US rail - both of which have a very different focus - it is my guess that the operational differences themselves are at the heart of what makes people want to explore them in a train sim, since the driving skills required for passenger or freight operations are markedly different. As we know, where simulating driving a train is concerned, passenger train operation principally requires timing, expeditious acceleration and deceleration, with 'stopping on a dime' alongside the platform being paramount amongst what is required, whereas for a freight train, energy management, smooth acceleration and deceleration is where the skill lies. Ironically, as different as these skills are, in both cases, knowing the route is a big help.

Since in UK rail operations there is plenty of opportunity to simulate relatively local stopping services for passenger trains, naturally that lends itself to having an appeal for those who enjoy the particulars of such meticulously timetabled aspects, where it is easy to completely stuff up a perfect passenger train run by getting on the brakes too late and missing a station when going through numerous high speed sections of track while that clock is ticking. Conversely, massive US freight trains with their distributed power traversing tricky gradients, means that North American freight operations will inevitably provide the most challenging scenarios for hauling freight, since a good portion of a mile-long US freight train could easily be climbing a gradient when the other half is already heading downhill in a completely different direction, so the potential for stringline derails, busted couplers, axle fires and even having no brakes are genuinely challenging concerns that would rarely be the case in the UK with a freight train. Thus I suspect that the differences in these two styles of operation are a lot of what draws people to them when they are not to be found in their homeland - take the quirky unusual Budd RDC for example, whilst passenger diesels are common in the UK, they are a comparative rarity in North America, likewise overhead catenaries, which are scarce in the US. Back on this side of the pond, the propensity of DMUs and EMUs means that loco-hauled trains are becoming increasingly rare, which is probably why the somewhat ironically EMD SD40-2-derived Class 66 is a favourite. So I think we look at what we have not got much of at home, and find it appealing because it is different.

Back on the original question though, what I've found appealing in Railworks, and indeed MSTS and Trainz too for that matter, is that although I was always fairly interested in US trains even though I didn't know a hell of a lot about them when first checking them out, the chance to drive them in a simulator has educated me in these aspects of the skills required to do it properly. And for any Yanks out there who find British stuff confusing, all I can say is you should try it from this side of the pond, attempting to get a grip on US locomotives, which go through so many iterations and upgrades, that even veteran US railfans can have trouble knowing what loco it is they are looking at. By comparison, the classification system for UK locos is a paragon of clarity! Nevertheless, the access to US rail operations that train sims have given me has been the catalyst for modeling a US railroad up in my loft here in dear old Blighty, which is tougher to do than you might think, since Britain's railway modeling scene is almost exclusively centered around domestic stuff, so one is definitely on the fringe when modeling US stuff in HO scale over on this side of the pond. Still, it does mean I'm getting pretty good at identifying US locos these days.

Culturally, there is a big difference in the perception of trains too, which probably does have a bearing on matters. North America has a grand tradition of music and movies centered around railroads, they being staples of blues and country tunes in particular, not least because you can do a pretty passable impersonation of a Nathan P-5 with a diatonic harmonica if you bend the note. Such sounds have a haunting musical quality that one could never accuse British trains of having. In film too, US trains get the odd outing where the plot centres around the train itself for much of the movie, which is not something you see much outside of the USA, for example, Runaway Train, Unstoppable, Under Siege 2, Broken Arrow etc, etc. Write a song about building railroads across Canada, as Gordon Lightfoot did with his Canadian Railroad Trilogy and you'll have a big hit on your hands, one which gets revered as a classic and covered by John Mellencamp and George Hamilton IV amongst others. Write a song about a train in Europe and there's a good chance you'll get called a nerd, with the possible exception of Kraftwerk's Trans-Europe Express (culturally interesting again given that German trains are the other big player in Railworks), although to be fair, Britpop icons, Blur did get away with putting an nostalgic painting of a streamlined steam locomotive on their Modern Life is Rubbish album cover and still somehow managed to remain cool. Ironically enough given the subject at hand - and one for music trivia fans - the working title for that Blur album was apparently 'Britain versus America' which was because of the band's dislike for America at the time, unsurprising when we learn that modern life for Blur at that time was indeed rubbish given that they had been (deservedly) critically mauled after a disastrous US tour the year before and were about to be dropped by their record label because of it!

Al

[arizonachris]

Wow, interesting topic. One of the things I love about this Forum.

Altho I have run a lot of British routes and one German (or maybe it was Swiss?) route, my love is North American steam, and big diesels. So many new freeware routes, and Doug's new scenarios, plus more payware third party stuff, I'll never finish it all.

I moved from Phoenix to Southern California when I was 3. (but, I'll always be from Arizona ) Used to go down to the local tracks and watch the Santa Fe Warbonnets (rode on the Chief quite a few times, LA to Phoenix and back) Then came the Yellow Bonnets, then they had BNSF on the side, both the Yellow's and the War's. Still do to this day. I loved watching them marshaling a consist together down at the Alameda Corridor. It's one huge place to say the least.

I think I like passenger the most. Gotta make sure you don't start or stop too fast, don't want to spill that glass of wine! Takes real coordination, and usually, for me anyways, a few "trial" runs to get it right. Just need a few more scenarios for existing routes and equipment. Got enough freight to keep me busy until 2013.

[Kali]

Yes, Paddington is the main station serving the South West of England. Perhaps Railworks could do with making it look busier - it really is busy, and it really does feel like a station in a big city in real life.

It's also pretty much walled in until you hit Old Oak Common, which is starting to think about being suburbia - it's right next to Wormwood Scrubs for one thing and there's no major buildings further out from there. However the RW Paddington itself is... quite bad, to be polite.

What you also don't get in RW that makes a big difference as a passenger is the ambient noise of a city. Given the real Paddington has a well used road across a bridge that cuts across the platforms ( the RW one is off the end of the platform ), a major street behind it and a very major road just to the north, that is quite a lot of ambient noise.

I don't miss loco-hauled passenger trains much; they were all much the same colour, much the same shape, and 80% had the same number of wheels. I miss old comfortable stock to travel in, like the springy Mk1 seats and the slightly less springy but awesome Mk2 ones - and even the original Mk3s that had more table seats than not. I don't much like 66s not for the reasons people keep saying about replacing old ( and let's face it, worn out ) motive power, but because they're aesthetically displeasing and not very well made. UK manufacturers ( including BR ) used to employ design houses to style rollingstock, why can't anyone else?

[Chock]

Given the real Paddington has a well used road across a bridge that cuts across the platforms ( the RW one is off the end of the platform ), a major street behind it and a very major road just to the north, that is quite a lot of ambient noise.

I don't miss loco-hauled passenger trains much; they were all much the same colour, much the same shape, and 80% had the same number of wheels. I miss old comfortable stock to travel in, like the springy Mk1 seats and the slightly less springy but awesome Mk2 ones - and even the original Mk3s that had more table seats than not. I don't much like 66s not for the reasons people keep saying about replacing old ( and let's face it, worn out ) motive power, but because they're aesthetically displeasing and not very well made. UK manufacturers ( including BR ) used to employ design houses to style rollingstock, why can't anyone else?

Frankly, they'd be better off having a decent stab at modeling Euston for Railworks, since that is the station where most trains heading to and from the bulk of the UK depart from and wind up at, given that it does now handle more passengers than Paddington. Having a mainline station such as Euston done properly would make complete routes to Birmingham, Stoke, Manchester and further north more likely of course, including up to Scotland if someone was a glutton for long-distance modeling punishment. But even taking a route out to Guildford or Milton Keynes would be a start, and heading that way really is where railway tradition is in the UK, since you are moving nearer toward historically important places for the birth of railways such as Crewe, Stockton and Darlington etc. Perhaps more importantly for modeling in a sim, Euston is mostly enclosed by fairly high walls and simple residential buildings on the route into the platforms, and completely enclosed once you are in the station - as indeed are a lot of stations in major UK cities - so there is little need to model much scenery around it from a driver's or even a passenger's perspective.

I'd have to agree with you that most BR-era locos look very similar. Of course most British train fans would call me a blasphemer for saying that, but it is nonetheless mostly true. Then again, to the uninitiated, I daresay you could claim most US diesels look the same, so maybe they'd have a point. And again I agree with you that the old compartment slam door suburban trains with those heavily-upholstered ultra-springy seats were more fun than the stuff we ride in these days, especially the glorified Leyland bus that is the Class 142 Pacer. But I do actually quite like the look of the Class 66, whereas the UK loco I think is fugly, is the similarly American-derived Class 70 (aka the GE Powerhaul). I know the appearance of the thing is largely due to the anti-climbing features necessary for improved collision crew safety, but even so, that is one hell of an aesthetically-challenged loco. What were they thinking, when they sketched that monstrosity and thought 'that's the one!'?

Al

[simer4]

Well, I can't say I learned as much as I was reinforced with the passion I have for foreign equipment, as I have been into stuff from the UK, Germany, France, pretty much everywhere, for as long as I can remember. Railworks just brought that love up a notch. I have a few imported magazines (The Railway Magazine) as well. As per the horn thing, I'm pretty sure it is like that so people can recognize that it is a train, much like the regulation to have yellow ends. Remember the reason why we have Air Chime horns? It's because people were mistaking it for other things. In the UK, they have dual-tone horns, so people can tell that it is a train, not a ship or something else, just like the Air Chime which resembles a steam engine's whistle. Anyway, I really do love foreign equipment, especially from the UK. In my opinion, my favourite British engine is the Class 37. Not because of it's popularity, but more because of it's guts. It was definitely a very reliable engine. The best of it's time I believe. And yes, some of the old engines in the UK did really, really, smoke (like the Class 52 http://www.brdw.co.uk/picd1041-6.jpg. Lots of "clag!" (I didn't want to clutter up this thread with pictures)).

[Andimax]

For myself, I am fan of the german railroads. I was born on the tracks, so they say .
With MSTs there came the love for US Railroads (Maria Pass and NEC, i like the ACELAs). Today, I am a big fan of UK Railroading and US Railroading. The love for UK railroading came with Railsimulator, because the UK routes where the only ones that had passenger and commuter services. The Hagen to Siegen Route that was provided with Railsimulator, hmmm, don´t need to talk about that .

My love for German Railroads is still alive and i use the german series of Trainz (ProTrainPerfect) for simulating with german rollingstock.

But Railworks gets better and better. it´s a long way to go, but i am looking forward to it.

[Kali]

In my opinion, my favourite British engine is the Class 37. Not because of it's popularity, but more because of it's guts. It was definitely a very reliable engine. The best of it's time I believe. And yes, some of the old engines in the UK did really, really, smoke (like the Class 52 http://www.brdw.co.uk/picd1041-6.jpg. Lots of "clag!" (I didn't want to clutter up this thread with pictures)).

Well no-one is going to argue about 37s :) or any other EE gear, especially since EE were the only major builder to use entirely UK sourced parts. Sulzer are Swiss, and that really smoky 52 is powered by German engines built by the same company that now power the HSTs. EE is a bit of a sad tale of "what on earth happened", they seemed to succeed at practically everything.

There's no "was" about 37s, btw, they're still out there.