Westbury Fictional Timetable

What does matter is that SimSig should adopt a consistent display approach to siding entries across all its sims.

The real-life railway is full of non-standard operational features, and I think it's good that Simsig does its best to mirror this chaos (emphasis mine) effectively.

'Man! ' said Nash in a voice of awe and wonder. 'Did you ever see the railways up on Cannis? It's a shunter's nightmare, a plate-layer's conception of hell. From an engineer's point of view it's a complete and utter impossibility.'

' Somebody must have constructed it originally.'

'Yes, a myriad crazy, bug-brained innovators, each working on a separate part to an entirely different specification and for conflicting reasons. It's a completely lunatic system which breaks every known law of elementary railway technique.'

'Tell me,' said Fritz testily, 'did they have remarkably small trains or is this multiple-rail stuff some sort of gimmick?'

'I asked about that. Seems that each branch line had its own gauge and some had several according to who built them. At a terminus like this you have to accommodate anything which comes, so you run one track inside another nice and tidily. One snag though—you should see what it does to the points.'

Fritz shuddered visibly despite the warm afternoon air. 'I'd better see the worst, I suppose.'

They walked out from the terminus to the huge switching grid which served to integrate the various branch lines entering the terminus. There was nearly a kilometre of patchwork mechanical desolation, liberally coated with rust and complex beyond belief. Gantries and galleries were solid with cranks and levers, bars and linkages, rods, and handwound helical springs. Cloth-covered cables and solenoids had dropped their sickly bitumen under the coercion of many summers' suns, and now lay bleached white and ugly across the rotting spans like the bones of some alien skeleton.

OK, I give up. No wonder it can be so difficult for the average Joe to make the transition from one sim to another when there are so many exceptions to the rule. The answer must lie in adequate documentation for each sim rather than assume that just because a particular object behaved in one way in a previous sim, it will do the same in the next. Nothing new here, of course.

Take nothing for granted!

OK, I give up. No wonder it can be so difficult for the average Joe to make the transition from one sim to another when there are so many exceptions to the rule. The answer must lie in adequate documentation for each sim rather than assume that just because a particular object behaved in one way in a previous sim, it will do the same in the next. Nothing new here, of course.

Take nothing for granted!

Something about this reminds me of Colin Kapp's short science fiction story, The Railways Up On Cannis (1959), now part of a collection titled Unorthodox Engineers.

Quote:

'Man! ' said Nash in a voice of awe and wonder. 'Did you ever see the railways up on Cannis? It's a shunter's nightmare, a plate-layer's conception of hell. From an engineer's point of view it's a complete and utter impossibility.'

<snip>
'I asked about that. Seems that each branch line had its own gauge and some had several according to who built them. At a terminus like this you have to accommodate anything which comes, so you run one track inside another nice and tidily. One snag though—you should see what it does to the points.'

Fritz shuddered visibly despite the warm afternoon air. 'I'd better see the worst, I suppose.'

They walked out from the terminus to the huge switching grid which served to integrate the various branch lines entering the terminus. There was nearly a kilometre of patchwork mechanical desolation, liberally coated with rust and complex beyond belief. Gantries and galleries were solid with cranks and levers, bars and linkages, rods, and handwound helical springs. Cloth-covered cables and solenoids had dropped their sickly bitumen under the coercion of many summers' suns, and now lay bleached white and ugly across the rotting spans like the bones of some alien skeleton.

PM me for a link if you are interested.