How realistic is the coupling system in the game?

[Darth Crow]

As a person who hasn't had much chance to spend time inspecting train coupling systems, I'm wondering about how realistic the in-game one is. Is something crucial missing from it? Or does it really work like that?

[KI-Natas]

Is not unrealistic.
Look here: https://www.forschungsinformationssystem.de/servlet/is/436177/Schraubenkupplung.JPG

[Taron]

Except maybe an hydraulics/electricty cable, it's pretty realistic.

[Randox]

I find it a little short on slack/play, but that might just be being used to the old system which was likely exaggerated.

The old system allowed cars so much slack that you could see them taking in or letting out slack on the speedometer (it would jump as cars rammed each other or yanked the coupling tight. The steam loco still does this with the tender). It was a nice indication of what the train was doing, but unrealistic and could cause derailments very easy.

But the new system is rigid. You can actually see cars being forced *apart* when you tighten the chain, meaning the chain is pushing cars apart more forcefully than the buffers are. On the upside, I expect it makes certain types of derailment much less likely. On the downside, it makes trains behave oddly.

The big one for me is that trains start as a single unit, and they shouldn't. Slack in the couplings between cars serves a few purposes, and one of them is starting heavy trains. A locomotive can only get so much mass moving (on level ground, let alone inclines), and trains can be (and often are) heavier than that limit. Slack allows the locomotive to get a train moving one car at a time. This has to be done very slowly mind, since each car that goes tight and starts moving adds it's momentum to the combined effort of starting the next car, which can lead to catastrophic forces in the coupler (there are forces that cause a static train to resist acceleration more than a moving one does, such as static friction in moving parts and the way rails deform under the weight of all the wheels, which is why starting is a particular issue).

I expect allowing a more realistically fluid coupling is/was causing issues, so maybe this will improve in the future. I will admit that this current system has probably saved me a few times though. A sure way to derail a real train would be to apply the brakes on a train with slack going into a turn, or accelerating a train that is all bunched up in a turn. It's problem enough anyway, but the massive spike in forces between two rail cars as they go tight or come together can easily be the straw that flings your rail cars off the track.

[Delle(DK)]

I would call it very realistic for a computer game
You can really feel and also see the physics when you accelerate and brake or couple wagons.
You can feel a train is heavy and stretch - compact.
The air presure system work really good and like in real life.
It matters if you tighten the chain or not since wagons can "decouple" during transport and the air presure system even react realistic to this when the air is gone the brakes will apply for both the train andthe wagon(s) that where decoupled.

All in all i would say its really good.