Here Come the Trainzes!

A different approach to Trainz sessions

While strictly technically these are session files for Trainz, they provide a completely different experience from what you are used to from traditional Trainz sessions. To mark this distinction, we coin the term "Super Session". The idea is like that of watching a model railroad that is running dozens of fully automated trains simultaneously. A sort of "couch train spotting", if you will.

• In these Super Sessions, you do not play train driver. Instead, you just sit back and watch trains. Lots of them!
• There will typically be 20 or more different trains running simultaneously. All that traffic means there is a lot more to see than in a 'regular' session. You'll encounter different trains. You may need to wait for another train, or see it waiting for you.
• Tracking cameras have been placed meticulously all along the route. You watch your train doing its thing, while it encounters other trains. You will see trains from many angles. This gives you a much more varied view of the scenery than just the limited view from the cabin of a locomotive.
• Because each train runs its own full schedule, you can at any time select any other train. You may be interested in another train that happens to pass by, or you may be bored with the one you are currently tracking. Just switch to any train whenever you like.
• When starting the Super Session, you'll be assigned a randomly selected train and provided with some info about it and its schedule. Thus, every time you start the Super Session, you are likely to be assigned a different train, on a different schedule, encountering different trains, etc.
• None of the trains are on a timed schedule. One train's schedule may take an average of 30 minutes to complete, another may take several hours. Each train repeats its schedule. This creates yet more variation. It guarantees that, on each iteration of a train's schedule, it will encounter different trains at the same place and/or the same trains at different places.
• Each train only knows its destination. It requests paths to that destination from a central system of interlocking towers, which assigns it paths to that destination. This, combined with the fact that no trains run a timed schedule, each train's schedule is of a different length, and each schedule is repeated, creates a situation where, on each iteration, the same train may be assigned different paths, depending on relevant circumstances. The variations are sometimes subtle, sometimes dramatic. A train may stop at a different platform, for example. But it may also be assigned an entirely different route.
• Super Sessions contain not simply many trains, but, crucially, also many different (types of) scenarios:
  • Some trains are on a pretty straight-forward schedule, running from station to station, yet one may stop at every station, another at only major stations, yet another does something inbetween.
  • Others run back and forth between end-points, where often a runaround is necessary. These runarounds are not the built-in ones you may know from Trainz, but are controlled by the interlocking towers. You may encounter spectacular sights like five different locomotives doing runarounds or other shunting actions at a single station, simultaneously, without failure.
  • Yet other trains attend to industries, loading and unloading freight. This typically requires a certain amount of shunting. The shunting too is controlled by the interlocking towers, thus ensuring safe shunting actions amidst the other traffic.
  • Some trains simply take freight from one industry to another. Others take multiple types of freight to and from multiple industries, working together with one or more local shunters. When a train delivers freight for some industry that has its own shunting locomotive, the locomotives actually communicate with each other. One will tell the other that a certain load has been delivered at a certain track, upon which the other deals with that.
• Due to all this purposely built-in randomness, the longer you run a Super Session, the more likely it becomes that you will see something happen that you haven't before, and won't again… Therefore, these Super Sessions have no defined endings. You literally run them for as long as you like – until you decide to quit. The point of this is unpredictability, to entertain you by surprising you. Given all the built-in randomness, the longer a Super Session runs, the less predictable the scenes will be. (In our tests, running them for over 30 hours works fine.)

Some other unusual features:

• For the sake of efficiency, passenger trains do not stupidly all stop at the same spot at platforms. Instead, they stop at a logical spot, taking into account their length and the station's lay-out (locations of stairs, escalators and such)
• Instead of the usual Trainz AI behaviour of moving away from a platform only to then stop at a red signal while still (partly) at the platform, in these Super Sessions trains only depart from a platform when they actually have an exit path available. Hence no risk of passengers jumping on a train that's already departed… ;)
• Super Sessions are designed to run continuously. Run them for as long as you like. Super Sessions have been tested to run fine for over 30 hours, but you may run them for longer if you like. Besides your computer's resources, the only limit is that, to avoid the ugliness of Trainz drawing distant objects as pure white at night, at dusk trains will wind down their schedules until reaching a safe place to 'spend the night'. At dawn, they will continue.

Credits

None of this would have been possible without all the authors who created and made available all the wonderful assets we make use of in our Super Sessions. A few stand out:

• pguy stands out as the author of the crucial "enhanced Interlocking Towers" and "MissionCode" assets
• kilanziom is not merely the author of a great many beautiful assets, but stands out by always providing useful information about where and when each model was used in the real world
• SlovakEagle stands out as the author of (and/or driving force behind) what can only be qualified as simply insanely great routes, not to mention a great many inspiring streams and videos