fantastic video Mr. Rails, well told

"They died in their hundreds with no sign to mark where Save the brass in the pocket of the entrepreneur By landslide and rockblast they got buried so deep That in death if not life, they'll have peace while they sleep."

👻👻👻👻👻 so spooky 👻👻👻👻👻

what a niche video that somehow ended up in my suggested that i thoroughly enjoyed despite knowing nothing about trains

How peculiar, interesting though.

You see the other two models are quite close to their prototypes. When playing the game myself, I imiediately identified the Terrier (Or possibly the slightly larger E1 class in the final game as it looks a bit large for a Terrier) and the GWR Duke, but, the Assasins engine bears way more similarity to a GWR Dean Single than it does to the Stirling Single. I also noticed a lot of other things about the trains and the tracks, especially points are, laughable. But like you say, rarely do games get it right, with the exceptions like Red Dead 2, because the level of detail in that game is mindblowing!

This is the kind of content i look forward to on youtube

lmao the whole train just flying above the rails

So glad to see this game covered. The lack of points detailing plus the overuse of signal gantries is disappointing, but not surprising. On the subject of the locomotives, I would argue the Assassin's Train more closely resembles the Great Western's Iron Duke than Stirling's single. I was under the impression that locomotive was in the game as I'd seen screenshots of it in the past. Is it only seen in certain missions/cutscenes? Same for the Terrier, is that able to be found on the map anywhere? Also, speaking of the Great Western, my inner fanboy is crying out that the Duke class is branded LSWR, especially as it actually had Great Western and GWR on it in the art book. (Though given that they didn't start branding with "Great Western" until 1906 and "GWR" until 1947 maybe the devs ditched that for anachronistic reasoning) It's also red which isn't quite correct for that class, though I'm willing to let it slide as the GWR did use paint *some* of their locomotives red in the Victorian era. Plus creative liberties, yada yada... 😅

Mmm yes. That is the good one. It is very good, and nice.

It crosses my mind that some of the signal Gantries may be placed as a means to "dismount" or "mount" the train when it is in motion. So are placed where they are place for game play reasons too. They are (as shown at the start of this video) convenient to grapple on to. I do wonder though.. is there any Docks with cranes and train lines there. or anything notable about the rolling stock - I noticed the barges going buy & wondered about if they are offloaded anywhere. I also wonder in more general terms when a game is (mostly) pre-electrification of some of the lighting if they thought placing a lamp lighter NPC in the game or other people like conductors etc.. It would be kinda embarrassing if a game had not ticket booths say. & there is little bits of ambience you'd "expect" like a Newspaper seller for example. I would also wonder about things like how or even it time tables or arrivals & departures are indicated in a station too. This era likely being way before public address systems existed so you'd expect NPC for loading luggage and someone with a whistle etc.. (Some things to get right and wrong there too I guess) - I would be interested to see how often such NPC makes it into a game. I don't have all the DLC for this game so it is perhaps one of the ones I am the least familar with in the series. [ Am I remembering incorrectly or is there some train related stuff in BLACK - maybe it is a good yard or something like that ] There is plenty of Trains in Half Life 2 of course.

Cool, just checked for a new video yesterday! If you are willing to talk about something outside of games, would you comment on the story of jack the baboon signalman?

Happy for a new video from you, leaving a comment for algorithm

very interesting

I wanna believe that this dude doesn't even play the story missions or anything, he just admires the railway design. Very classy

Dayz chenarus please sir

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?

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!

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

I'm really impressed that the developers put so much effort into making the railways in their game realistic, even though only a small proportion of the players will probably ever notice it. It shows a real sense of pride in what they were doing. I assume they either hired someone with a background on the railways to work on the game, or at least got people who knew the subject to give feedback during development. One thing I remember from playing it was being impressed with the variety of visual assets you saw going by when you were just riding the train in between missions. A lot of games would have just had 10 seconds worth of looping scenery outside the window, but Metro Exodus managed to make it feel like you were genuinely travelling.

Happy to see my request got a video! 🙏🏻

Great stuff

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.

16:28 speaking of being picky, an Environment Artist is likely responsible for that, not a Level Designer

ew he plays modded with immersion breaking tacticool garbage weapons it so over trainbros

Have I ever played this game? No. Am I a railway engineer? No. Did I watch this whole thing? Yes.

Feels like I’m watching some college teacher’s presentation on railways using Red Dead Redemption 2 as the reference.

Very cool idea for a video!

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!

I know what next game to analyze hehe... Derail Valley. Also great deal in details and they try to make things look and work realistic.

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.

Very interesting video, going to watch some of your other videos now and you've got a sub from me

Your mics volume must be increased but great video

Thanks for the video. Have you ever thought about doing such an analysis on the movie Unstoppable?

I would really love if those switches were really working and you would be able not only to steel the train but also change it's direction.

never clicked a video so fast

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

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.

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.

Austria mentioned 🇦🇹🇦🇹🇦🇹🇦🇹🇦🇹🇦🇹🇦🇹🇦🇹

Some artist probably spent hours and hours researching and recreating this stuff just for 99.9% of players to never even notice its presence

fyi saint denis is pronounced 'san denee'

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.