Thursday, January 31, 2019

Railroad Dispatcher Web Game

I wanted to call attention to a new web-based North American style CTC simulation game.  It's still in beta and pretty much limited to a single layout, but it is a long overdue addition to the dispatching simulator market that pretty much consists of the increasingly long in the tooth Train Dispatcher 3 and the UK focused SimSig. You can find and play the game at http://randallhook.com/games/railroad-dispatcher/


As someone who has operated a real US&S style CTC machine, the simulation isn't perfect, but it's a lot better than nothing.  Currently the largest deficiency is the lack of delay between toggling a unit lever and coding the action to the field.  On a direct wire machine the switches will take a second or two to throw and of course over a code line the machine will click and clunk for quite some time before confirmation of the state change is received. 

It will be interesting to see if things like blocking devices are added or if additional styles of panel are supported as various railroads could use their own conventions for indication lamp colors and such.  Anyway, I'd advice everybody to give the game a play through and give the developer, randy Hook, some constructive feedback.

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