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Associated rail geeking
One thing that I noticed riding out to Newburyport is that there are a lot of interlockings on the Beverly commuter rail line. Part of this is that there are a lot of river crossings implemented as drawbridges, and there's an interlocking at every drawbridge. (This actually makes sense, but it took me a bit.) The tunnel under downtown Salem is also single-track, so coming northbound into Salem there's an interlocking where two tracks merge into one, followed by an interlocking where it goes back to two tracks, followed by an interlocking at a drawbridge, followed by the interlocking where the Newburyport and Rockport lines split. The right-of-way through Chelsea and Lynn seemed very wide for what it's being used for now, with room for three or four tracks. The Ipswitch-to-Newburyport extension is single-track, and it seemed like there was no freight at all there. I kind of wonder where the occasional freight train that goes north from Sullivan goes, since my impression is that the Saugus Branch is mostly abandoned and both of the main lines end before running into the ocean or the Merrimack River.
At any rate, I wasted more time this weekend playing with Microsoft Train Simulator. I supposed I should be somewhat ashamed to own a Microsoft product and have paid money for it, but it does amuse me, and they seem to have done a good job on extensibility. One of the routes that comes with the game is supposed to be the Northeast Corridor between Washington and Philadelphia, but the implementation of the signalling system, among other things, was pretty atrocious.
There seem to be a lot of downloads for MSTS, though, largely from www.train-sim.com (free registration required). Among this is a reimplementation of the Northeast Corridor, "NEC v4.0", which actually has fixed up a lot of things: the signals are properly spaced, and aspects have the right meanings. (There were "traps" on the MS implementation, where you'd be happily cruising along at 110 mph, and suddenly within a mile there would be three automatic signals in a row, with the first two showing green but the third showing yellow-over-flashing-green -- "approach limited", which seems to mean "advance approach" in Microsoft land -- with a mandatory 45 mph speed limit. And if you didn't know about this, you triggered the penalty brake, which sucked a lot, but there was no way to know without having run the route before.) The NEC v4.0 route has proper interlocking signals, and you can tell by looking whether a signal is an automatic, approach, or interlocking signal if you know what you're looking at. And the installation instructions say "the signalling is more authentic, you probably want to look online to figure out what's going on".
It occurred to me yesterday, though, that the approach signals don't have yellow signs with "D" on them, and that stations in between approach and interlocking signals don't have a yellow sign saying "D.I.B." at the end of the platform. It seems like, since this implementation tries to get everything else right, it should also have the signage for the delay in block rule; looking at the text, though, this only applies to lines that have push-pull trains on lines without cab signals, and MSTS effectively gives every train cab signals (even if only the Acela cab has an actual display).
At any rate, I wasted more time this weekend playing with Microsoft Train Simulator. I supposed I should be somewhat ashamed to own a Microsoft product and have paid money for it, but it does amuse me, and they seem to have done a good job on extensibility. One of the routes that comes with the game is supposed to be the Northeast Corridor between Washington and Philadelphia, but the implementation of the signalling system, among other things, was pretty atrocious.
There seem to be a lot of downloads for MSTS, though, largely from www.train-sim.com (free registration required). Among this is a reimplementation of the Northeast Corridor, "NEC v4.0", which actually has fixed up a lot of things: the signals are properly spaced, and aspects have the right meanings. (There were "traps" on the MS implementation, where you'd be happily cruising along at 110 mph, and suddenly within a mile there would be three automatic signals in a row, with the first two showing green but the third showing yellow-over-flashing-green -- "approach limited", which seems to mean "advance approach" in Microsoft land -- with a mandatory 45 mph speed limit. And if you didn't know about this, you triggered the penalty brake, which sucked a lot, but there was no way to know without having run the route before.) The NEC v4.0 route has proper interlocking signals, and you can tell by looking whether a signal is an automatic, approach, or interlocking signal if you know what you're looking at. And the installation instructions say "the signalling is more authentic, you probably want to look online to figure out what's going on".
It occurred to me yesterday, though, that the approach signals don't have yellow signs with "D" on them, and that stations in between approach and interlocking signals don't have a yellow sign saying "D.I.B." at the end of the platform. It seems like, since this implementation tries to get everything else right, it should also have the signage for the delay in block rule; looking at the text, though, this only applies to lines that have push-pull trains on lines without cab signals, and MSTS effectively gives every train cab signals (even if only the Acela cab has an actual display).