Silly but useful information: Blowing your horn!

[Leigh]

Between TSW and Transport Fever I have been looking up videos of American freight trains, mostly for ideas, but to just have a look at them, too.

I wondered why the horn blowing was rather elaborate, especially at level crossings. As a UK player, we don't see many American freight trains in England (haha), so I wanted to look this up.

There is in fact a whole Morse Code esque language for horn usage, here is the Wikipedia page on it (assuming the link is allowed).

Just scroll down to the US section!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_horn

[G550Flyer]

be nice if the game held you to those rules

[Leigh]

Yeah, I really think there should be a "less accessable mode", meaning that you have to start all locos from cold every time, maybe limiting the HUD elements, possible failiure if you don't conform to the speed limits etc.

But leave in the current "more accessable mode" for those short on time, or who just want to drive.

[G550Flyer]

true

[Dipper]

Indeed, we have a large variety of horn sequences each meaning different things. This mostly comes from history when radios were not used. Hand signals and horn signals were the only way for train crews to communicate with each other. However, the two-way radio has resulted in many horn sequences being fazed out. Plus settlements around railway lines have requested "quiet zones", meaning no train can whistle whilst in city limits. There are few exceptions such as events where lot's of people are on and around the tracks.