Speed display

[MikeK]

This is a bit of a newbie question.

I have recently just realised that the speed display on the various HUDs is actually the speed at the end of the train, not the front of the train. The display on the 3D instruments seems to be the true speed at the locomotive, but in a lot of the locos it is very hard to read.

Does anyone know of a way to get the HUDs to show the head end speed, rather than the speed at the rear of the train? With a long 100+ car train it seems that it is not too difficult to get each end of the train moving at different speeds, and the speed at the rear seems to jump up and down a lot with the changes in slack.

[LoneWolfDon]

There's two speed numbers displayed on the Driver's HUD: the top number being your current speed you're traveling at, the bottom number just under that is the current speed-limit for the track you're currently driving on. Not sure if that's what you're referring to. If you're instead wanting to better view the in-cab 3D view speedometer, use your up and down arrow keys to zoom-in and zoom-out your view (and the left and right arrow-keys usually allow you to move from one side of the cab to the other depending on the loco).

[Machinist]

HI MIkeK,

Are your sure the speed displayed is from rear of train? I'm quite sure all HUDs (F3, F4 and F5) display loco speed. I've played many and many times a scenario with a 80 cars lenght consist, and I was used to choose the "Rear Vew" (pressing "3") to check when the last car started to move, and that usually happened when HUDs were showing more than 2mph, due to the lack of couplers. I was also used to check the opposite, i.e., viewing the last car when consist was going to stop: always saw the speed already showing zero (loco stopped) and last car still moving for a couple of seconds till fully stop.

[MontanaRails]

This is one thing I've been a little frustrated with for a while. And I've had a different experience than Machinist, - The default HUD (introduced with RW2) seems to show only end of train speed. To test this, if you create a long train, with lots of head end power, and accelerate carelessly, you will see the speed on the HUD stay at zero, while the locomotive gets up to 5, or 10 mph. Then suddenly, the HUD speed jumps from 0 to 10 mph as you run the slack out and jolt the car.

I think the old RW track monitor shows locomotive speed.

I wish the HUD would show both trailing car, and locomotive speed. It might be a little unrealistic, but then again, its a little unrealistic in its current version too.

[Machinist]

Hi MontanaRails,

Yep, in the case I mentioned the last car was a "normal" wagon, not a head end (power) loco, this maybe explains why I got a diferent result showing the loco (front end, alone) speed.

I was running RW2 (two months ago), didn't try again with RW3.

[MontanaRails]

Ah, that'll do it! But thats actually good news in disguise...because it means the pusher loco is actually PUSHING and not just along for the ride!

[LoneWolfDon]

Don't know if this info is of help:
F4 to turn-off the new Driver's HUD, F3 to turn-on the old style Driver's HUD, click on the Dest button there for speeds and such. Then you can use the F4 key to toggle back-and-forth between the HUDs as you like.

[MikeK]

Sometimes it seems like I am looking at head end speed, other times it is definitely the speed at the end of the train. I have had the same experience as MontanaRails, jerk the train into motion and you can get the head end moving for some time before the speed in the HUD moves.

I am wondering if it is possible that each HUD shows a different speed. After all, the F4 HUD shows the gradient at the rear of the train, while the F3 HUD shows the gradient at the front of the train. Perhaps it is the same with the speeds. I will have to test some more.

I wish the real instruments were fully implemented (and legible) so that we could do away with these dumb "playstation" controls.

[Machinist]

Being a RailDriver costumer, I use to play with F5, sometimes with F5 and F3 together. Eventually (especially when shunting or checking path ahead) I turn F4 on. In this case we can't see F5 or F3, whilst F4 is on. But, anyway, I never noticed any relevant difference among those 3 different HUDs, they look like showing the same speed, at least when in constant movement (stable G-Force). You can notice this especially when you are about to overspeed in a constant speed (40.9mph when speed limit is 40mph) and I never got that "overspeed alarm icon" when running with HUDs (especially swapping F4 and F5) showing the same 40.9mph, for instance.

[MikeK]

I did some more testing last night with a 150 car train, watching both ends of the train and all the various speed readouts as the train stopped and got underway.

The first test had 3 locos at the head end. Using the 2 and 3 views I could see that the F3, F4 and F5 speeds were all clearly the speed at the front of the train.

For the second test I added a loco to the rear of the train. Now the F3 and F5 speeds were the front of the train, but the F4 view was very obviously the speed at the rear of the train. In fact at times the 2 readouts differed by up to 10 mph!

On a related note, is there really that much slack in a train that long? It seems that either the amount of slack is over modeled, or maybe the couplers are under damped. A 10 mph difference between the front and rear of the train seems excessive, and with all the power at the front of the train it was probably worse.

[MontanaRails]

To me, 10mph difference being possible in a long train seems realistic. I remember watching a documentary on the B&O a long time ago where they showed a test video of a caboose going from 0 to about 7 mph instantly, with rust dust literally exploding out of the draft boxes. I believe it also knocked over the stove inside, which started a fire. If you assume only 2 inches of slack per each end of a car, thats 50 feet of slack to pull out of a 150 car train. If you were to assume 6 inches of slack per each end of a car, that's 150 feet of slack! It adds up quick!

This video has some good examples: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlzTqPfHrAI