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| Phone calls during disruption 26/10/2010 at 14:29 #1944 | |
jdtech
69 posts |
If, say, a train has failed at a station or there's been a key points failure, the number of phone calls you receive from angry drivers wanting to know why the signal in front is set to red gets to be insane! There's no way you can get through all the calls and still run the rest of the sim, and if you just ignore the phone you'll miss important calls about other delays/calls from the technician/other trains that are rightly ringing you up. Perhaps a new option for responding to telephone calls could be introduced; "Wait for signal to clear" with no time limit. Personally, I'd find it very useful, and it would also be much more realistic than the current system - surely the signaller would tell the driver "Train such and such has failed in front, you're not going anywhere for the next 60 minutes", rather than have the driver ringing up every 15 minutes to be told he's got to wait another 15 minutes to ring back! Would anyone else find this useful? Log in to reply |
| Phone calls during disruption 26/10/2010 at 14:29 #12158 | |
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jdtech
69 posts |
If, say, a train has failed at a station or there's been a key points failure, the number of phone calls you receive from angry drivers wanting to know why the signal in front is set to red gets to be insane! There's no way you can get through all the calls and still run the rest of the sim, and if you just ignore the phone you'll miss important calls about other delays/calls from the technician/other trains that are rightly ringing you up. Perhaps a new option for responding to telephone calls could be introduced; "Wait for signal to clear" with no time limit. Personally, I'd find it very useful, and it would also be much more realistic than the current system - surely the signaller would tell the driver "Train such and such has failed in front, you're not going anywhere for the next 60 minutes", rather than have the driver ringing up every 15 minutes to be told he's got to wait another 15 minutes to ring back! Would anyone else find this useful? Log in to reply |
| Phone calls during disruption 26/10/2010 at 15:15 #12159 | |
postal
5190 posts 
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Seconded.
“In life, there is always someone out there, who won’t like you, for whatever reason, don’t let the insecurities in their lives affect yours.” – Rashida Rowe Log in to reply |
| Phone calls during disruption 26/10/2010 at 16:35 #12162 | |
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Late Turn
696 posts |
Isn't that half the (realistic!) battle when dealing with a particularly disruptive event? I've no doubt that a Driver would be back on the phone chasing an update well within an hour anyway, especially if he himself is being chased by his passengers. And then, in reality, there's various control offices, station staff etc. who'll no doubt need to phone the Signalman. The challenge is prioritising phone calls - and we're lucky that a whole conversation can be condensed into a couple of clicks (though, in Simsig, we can't deal with the telephone and work the panel simultaneously...). Even in a preserved box it can be chaotic - I'd challenge anyone to just watch a couple of hours in our Loughborough box during a busy gala! A couple of weeks ago, I had - simultaneously - the internal phone ringing, someone trying to raise me on the 'circuit' phone, three Drivers waiting on various SPTs...and the internal phone was ringing again by the time I'd got through that lot. And that's with a 4-5tph (each direction) service over a relatively simple (by Simsig standards...!) layout, albeit with plenty of light loco and shunt movements. The final thing - from my own experience, of course with a lack of any other means of contacting a Driver in our pre-NRN world - is that you need to be pretty sure that you're not going to need to get the Driver back to the phone before you tell him to go away and await the signal indefinitely. Log in to reply |
| Phone calls during disruption 26/10/2010 at 17:47 #12164 | |
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Zoe
251 posts |
That's why they used to have booking boys.
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| Phone calls during disruption 26/10/2010 at 19:38 #12165 | |
DriverCurran
683 posts
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Also remember that a real signalman does not have the means to hit the pause button while all these phone calls are coming in. Not every driver will come to a stand at the same time. Multi calls are part of the real life job. Paul You have to get a red before you can get any other colour Log in to reply |
| Phone calls during disruption 26/10/2010 at 20:15 #12166 | |
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postal
5190 posts
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In defence of what jdtech was asking, the real signaller assuredly doesn't have a pause button, but on the other side of the discussion we have to remember that when you are playing a sim solo, you are usually operating a number of panels handling far more trains than a single operator would need to oversee in a real box. JG “In life, there is always someone out there, who won’t like you, for whatever reason, don’t let the insecurities in their lives affect yours.” – Rashida Rowe Log in to reply |
| Phone calls during disruption 26/10/2010 at 23:16 #12172 | |
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UKTrainMan
1803 posts |
jdtech said:Perhaps a new option for responding to telephone calls could be introduced; "Wait for signal to clear" with no time limit.What happens if the signaller selects that option and then totally forgets about the train. Example; Points failure for points into/out of a yard or siding. Train enters at this yard or siding but signaller forgets to interpose the headcode. Signaller instructs that train to "Wait for signal to clear" (with no time limit). Signaller totally forgets about the train until they finally notice it in the train list. Train finally gets out of the yard or siding but is heavily delayed by now. This therefore makes me wonder if this idea would work well enough. Perhaps adding longer "Call back in xx minutes" options would suffice? Any views and / or opinions expressed by myself are from me personally and do not represent those of any company I either work for or am a consultant for. Log in to reply |
| Phone calls during disruption 27/10/2010 at 11:40 #12180 | |
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jdtech
69 posts |
Well, you could always put down a note to remind yourself? Still, perhaps a "Ring back in... minutes" option and then text entry to specify how many minutes may be a better solution. postal said: In defence of what jdtech was asking, the real signaller assuredly doesn't have a pause button, but on the other side of the discussion we have to remember that when you are playing a sim solo, you are usually operating a number of panels handling far more trains than a single operator would need to oversee in a real box.In addition, I don't know about other people here, but I rarely play sims at anything less than double speed, normally higher. Log in to reply |
| Phone calls during disruption 29/10/2010 at 04:40 #12222 | |
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UKTrainMan
1803 posts |
jdtech said:In addition, I don't know about other people here, but I rarely play sims at anything less than double speed, normally higher.That changes things. It sounds like your problem is that you're running the simulation so fast that you're having a problem keeping on-top of the phone calls. The only quick-suggestion I can think of around this is to hit 'N' on your keyboard to return speed to normal so you can deal with the phone calls then speed it up again afterwards. The long-term solution I've just thought of would be to change the way calls are handled so that regardless of the speed setting they still come in at normal speed, but I don't know anything about how much extra work that would require from the developers. I also don't think this would go down too well with others, I certainly wouldn't want it myself. Any views and / or opinions expressed by myself are from me personally and do not represent those of any company I either work for or am a consultant for. Log in to reply |
| Phone calls during disruption 29/10/2010 at 09:44 #12233 | |
GeoffM
6287 posts |
I've canvassed the opinions of a few signallers - surprised no signallers have replied here actually. The general consensus was that signallers don't ever say "don't phone me back", and that they would likely be reported if they did (this latter from a former signaller, LOM, and signaller assessor). What they can say is to call back if something happens, such as phone me if the signal clears (on an auto signal; phone me before moving). Also, apparently the 2-minute rule has been removed, so as soon as a driver stops, he should phone in - unless there is something obviously holding him up like being able to see a train in front of him, or crossing over a junction in front. In theory this should mean that SimSig should change to phone sooner than it does now, but since it doesn't know what's geographically visible, I won't change that. I note Postal's comment about operating more area than in real life, though jdtech has kind of spoiled his own argument by saying that he can't handle the phone calls, but runs at double speed! I wouldn't know how to implement UKTrainMan's suggestion without having multi-dimensional time. In SimSig you can answer and reply to a driver in a couple of clicks, a second or two max. In reality the signaller would be on the phone for far longer. I did think of text-to-speech to delay conversations thus making them more realistic. I guess that would be unpopular with those that don't want the reality of lengthy phone calls. Therefore, with all that taken into consideration, my compromise suggestion would simply be to add an extra time option, somewhere between 30/45/60 minutes (which UKTM also said). SimSig Boss Log in to reply |
| Phone calls during disruption 29/10/2010 at 13:21 #12239 | |
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jdtech
69 posts |
Yes, an extra time option would probably be better than a simple "go away" option, I'd settle for 30 and 60 minute options; sometimes trains are delayed at stations for well over an hour so it'd be nice to be able to cut down phone calls here. With regards to high speed simming, I really don't have the patience to play at normal speed, but I do sometimes pause the game to answer phone calls - justified by the fact I've gained a lot of time on a real life signalling by playing at twice speed, but a lot of the phone calls could easily be avoided with a longer time option. It really depends on the simulator, on Southampton or Westbury for example I never play at anything less than double speed, normally higher, and on Waterloo I tend to play at double speed or slightly slower as the only complex routing is at Waterloo itself. Log in to reply |