Messed up the audio a bit on this one, game volume a bit too loud and mic a bit low. Discovered some new software settings that will make it better for the next ones though.
I love seeing the growth and development of a new niche internet micro celebrity in the train subgenre, especially one so hyper specialized as this. Keep it up, man
@@mildly_miffed_man1414 thanks mate, know you were here early so thanks for sticking around. I’ve been enjoying doing these videos and intend to keep going. One of the things I like is the great suggestions for games and shows people give me, like I never played Metro Exodus until it was suggested and I’m really glad it was.
And now i watched the video and it didnt dissappoint! I love learning about some of the mistakes since red dead was praised for being so beautiful but it seems they still missed some small details. Also very interesting was the part with the signaling. Again thanks for the video! Keep it up 🙌☺️
@@PaulKurz cheers mate. yes it’s a great looking game. I really liked wandering around St Denis at night, it’s very atmospheric and the lighting is spot on. Sound design of the trains great too. But yes just some minor details overlooked.
Im glad you mentioned the rusty new rails. The train line I take every day to work is getting its rails changed and they are all rusty and I was so confused by that. In my head I was like "does the MTA not have better quality rails" haha. Now I know why they were like that.
@@avee6630 yeah it’s a problem that needs actively managing or the track circuit stops detecting the train as it’s a bad contact surface. On my section I have some areas that don’t get run on very often, so I ask the signallers to route trains over some sidings and couple of times a week where it’s not going to disrupt the service so much, I also ask the welding and grinding department to go out rail scrubbing in areas with rust buildup. The best thing to polish them is a train.
@@Mittzys yes, game developers do a great job. The game has a great general ambience when you’re playing it and on occasion when you stop to examine something a bit closer the fine details are there, they really know how to make immersive worlds in gaming these days.
Some director once said that dozen of details ain't much but thousand paves a way. I feel the same. This game would not be what it is if they over looked even minor details.
One of my favorite games of all time, I love seeing passionate people in their niche specialized fields of knowledge bring attention to and critique these sorts of details. I genuinely learned some things from this video, keep it up!
Excellent video, subscribed! I have always found Rockstar's use of trains in their worlds interesting. They really did step it up for RDR2. I think the rolling stock is fairly accurate too, with use of a 4-6-0 in the 1890s. Something about the scale of the passenger cars seems a bit off to me. They almost look narrow gauge or like tramway coaches to me. I was just playing RDR1 and the fact that the coaches all had timken style roller bearings and and modern looking freight car trucks(bogies if you will). I kind of had the thought that maybe they looked at a Colorado Narrow Gauge railroad like the modern Durango and Silverton for influence, as some of their passenger stock looks a lot like this proportion-wise and they have been updated with timken roller bearings. There is one mission in RDR1 where you steal an armored train in Mexico, and the armored car is actually a big 1930s-40s oil canteen tender being pulled in reverse. I am about to watch your GTA 5 and Fallout 4 videos next. I have always found the UK influence in the Rockstar titles to be interesting. I remember finding old wooden 7-plank mineral wagons in the yards of Los Santos in GTA 5 along with UK style buffer stops. I do wonder how productive it would be to look at some older titles that featured railways as well; GTA San Andreas and RDR1 spring to mind. I imagine looking at them from such a technical perspective would just be nitpicky, as those older games don't come close to GTA5 and RDR2 as far as detail goes. I am interested in your thoughts on the railroad engineering in Fallout 4 too. Some of those grades and curves are steeper and tighter than what you would find on a rack railway lol.
As an Americanese railroad nerd, I have a some things to point out, and there's a lot so I'm just going to list it out because I do not really have the energy to be Socially Correct at the moment. Also I'm in the Western US (New Mexico Proud!) and that's where most of my knowledge comes from, so it might not look right to someone further east, and some of the stuff here might just be flat-out wrong, I'm not a professional after all. The US only really used flathead rail as there weren't really enough advantages to other types considering the expansiveness of the country. Sleepers in the UK are called Ties/Crossties/Railroad Ties in the US. Usually (though not always) a layer of ballast is placed before the tracks are installed to give better footing under high loads. What you refer to as "switches & crossings" are just called called "switches" in the US. The "crossing nose and foot" is called a "frog" in the US, the "check rails" are guide rails here. I've never seen a prototype for that switch stand at around 17:00, so I'm pretty sure that's just something they added on their own. The other switch stand at around 19:30 is plausible but not prototypical, that's a bit more European from my POV (maybe Eastern European? Idk, I'm terrible with US geography, let alone the EU.) The signals in the game are _very_ British, ours almost always have 3 aspects (Proceed, Approach, Stop in the US. Clear, Caution, Danger in the UK) and are mounted on grey poles rather than white. The signals and switches are controlled by an Interlocking Tower, which serves the same function as a Signal Box. What mostly happened with bridges in the US was they were built out of wood early on, and replaced with steel when the wooden one was too unsafe to be used anymore or was unable to hold the weight of more modern and heavier trains (some lasted until the 1980's!). Saint Dennis is of French Origin (based of of New Orleans) and pronounced "Sahn Den-ee" as opposed to "Saynt Dennis" as acknowledged by the characters in-game. "Goods Yards" are Freight Yards here. The game is set in 1899, and signals were still fairly new and most trains ran on timetables (as you said) and the technology to detect trains was still in its infancy, so on new rails that were rusted over on railroads fully equipped with signaling technology, they just ran to timetables for the first day or so. Glad to see a new train youtuber, much love from across the pond!
I think they tried to leave a gap for the wheels at the crossings, probably thinking that they only needed space for the flange. Still doesn’t make the switch work, but looks a bit more believable and real imo.
@@Riotlight yeah I think they probably just tried to make it look balanced, you can steer the trains both directions so probably needed it to just look believable. Metro Exodus had a working points setup on a switch but that was for a gameplay mechanic that RDR2 didn’t employ.
14:06 speaking of this, have you seen "hell on wheels"? What do you think of it? Would you cover something like that eventually? While the scale of construction is brought down to what can be affordability depicted in a show, I appreciate that it to some degree represents a bit of each aspect of construction, from survey to cut and fill through laying and so on.
@@stug41 I’ve not seen it, but I know that’s what they called the moving camps. I didn’t know it existed, but I’ll have a look. I’ve been doing gaming so far on the channel, but I intended the channel to cover a wide variety of stuff so I’ll research that show and see what footage I can get. Thanks.
Does that assessment take into account human error or poor maintenance of rail signals? After all, St Dennis is supposed to be a pretty gritty, run down and corrupt kind of a place, with plenty of people turning blind eyes or just not being motivated enough to do things right, or care enough about broken signalling covers?
@@Keerthi_0195 yes agree, I realised I’d messed up the volume settings in the first half of the video. I’ve figured out a few things on my software that should improve the next video going forward. Still learning! Thanks.
It's probably never going to be 100% accurate in games because they have teams of people putting this stuff in and some people on the team will just be trying to make it look passable even if other people are studying photographs. A 3D model artist probably put loads of effort into those signals and then an environment artist just placed them down without understanding how they actually work
