Freedom Pass Project – Update

Circumstances often play a role in what we decide to do on any given day. Wednesday was a strike day on the railways. Friday was also a planned strike day. Thursday looked like a washout from a trainspotting point of view with many routes recovering from the previous day. I looked at the, very handy, Transport for London website to see what was running reliably. Most National Rail services were disrupted with no service first thing. But those lines not being operated by government controlled companies were running a good service. These included London Overground and C2C. I decided that I’d knock out one of the Overground termini in the form of Barking Riverside and then see where the day took me.

I travelled to Barking via the Northern Line to Bank and the Docklands Light Railway to Limehouse. Here’s 357034 arriving at Limehouse with a Fenchurch Street service…

…As you can see it was a grey day and quite chilly. From Limehouse, I caught a Grays train out to Barking.

Barking Riverside opened in July last year and is part of the London Overground network served by trains from Gospel Oak. I rode on 710267 for the short hop to the new station. It makes quite an imposing view in a utilitarian sort of way…

…It sits beside the Thames and connects with river boat services during morning and evening peaks on weekdays and all day at weekends.

When I’m on one of these largely unscripted outings, I sometimes see something that draws me away from the trains for a while – In this case, some trucks along River Road which leads upstream towards Barking Creek. I photographed this nice DAF XG+ belonging to M.J.Griffiths…

…I also took a look downriver and photographed a dredger at Hanson’s Dagenham aggregates facility…

Having cleared off Barking Riverside for my Freedom Pass Project, I now had to choose what to do with the rest of the day. I decided to head back to Liverpool Street and pick up one of the Overground services from there serving Cheshunt, Chingford or Enfield Town – I need all three termini. So it was back on the Overground to Wanstead Park and a short walk across to Forrest Gate to pick up an Elizabeth Line train to Stratford…

…riding a Class 345 unit. I took a short break at Stratford to grab some lunch before continuing my journey into Liverpool Street on a Greater Anglia service. now fate took a hand in the day – I was thinking of going to Chingford but I was just about to miss that train so I decided to take the next Overground service which happened to be going to Enfield Town.

It’s quite a slow trip with lots of stops along the way but I finally made it to Enfield Town station…

…and once more faced a dilemma – go back to Edmonton Green and pick up a Cheshunt Train or go even further back to Bethnal Green for a Chingford service. I did… Neither!

Remembering that I need to knock off Crews Hill on the Great Northern line to Stevenage, I decided instead to walk across Enfield from ‘Town station to ‘Chase station. Anyone who read about my Ewell West to Ewell East adventure might feel a sense of trepidation but Enfield is almost home territory for me and I know exactly where both stations are😎 So I set off across town and took some bus shots along the way…

…as well as photographing this pair of Swans and their Cygnets on The New River…

…This is a man-made watercourse that was built to provide fresh water to London and still serves that purpose.

At Enfield Chase I was lucky enough to catch a late running Stevenage service…

…delayed when the scheduled driver was unable to get to work on time due to the knock on effect of the previous day’s industrial action – The relief driver was apologetic for the late running. For me the effect was less waiting at Crews Hill for a train back. As you can see Crews Hill station is not exactly brimming with interest🤣…

…But if you’re a gardener or looking for pets – it’s ideally located for a host of nurseries and pet vendors! I have shopped here before but I usually come by car😅

Looking north from Crews Hill you can see the trucks on the M25. What’s that coming?..

…It’s 717004, one of the last two of the class that I need to see and my ride back to Alexandra Palace where I’ll get a train to New Southgate before catching a bus home. A very enjoyable trip out and three more termini cleared off my Freedom Pass Project list😎👍

Mix ‘n’ Match

A week of trains and steps… Today I completed a consecutive 7 days of doing over 8000 steps. That’s an important thing for my health and wellbeing. Now I think I’ll ease back for the weekend before setting out to put together a string of 13 days for the next level. Why 8000 steps? I know that most of the fitness trackers suggest 10k steps but many medical sources suggest that this is a figure plucked out of the air – around 20 minutes spent walking at a brisk pace being more beneficial. So I’ve picked 8k steps as a target that I know I can achieve most days and I think having a target that you can do is important because failing your target all the time is demoralising and leads to giving up on exercise. That’s the background and it ties in with my Freedom Pass Project, my general trainspotting and other activities. So let’s have a photographic panorama of some recent outings that I haven’t reported…👍

For my Freedom Pass Project I still needed to take a London Underground train to Ealing Broadway. I sorted that out last Wednesday by picking up the Central Line from Shepherds Bush to terminate at Ealing. I spent 3 hours on the station during which time I saw 15 freight trains – that’s roughly double the norm. The reason for this is the closure of the line between Didcot and Oxford for major repairs to a failing bridge over the Thames. Many of these extra freights are intermodal services from Southampton Docks to destinations in the Midlands and Northern England. Here’s one such train…

…66413 heading a service from Leeds to Southampton – This would not normally have routed via London as it’s quite a detour! There are a lot of diversions and it’s putting a lot of stress on the available slots. Some freights were clearly sharing the same slot, cutting margins and causing minor delays for passenger services. For my US friends, this loco is wearing a livery based on the Genesee and Wyoming as that company now owns Freightliner.

I post a morning photo on Twitter every day. This started because I was helping a young Serbian friend with his photographic learning. Subsequently I discovered, when I stopped posting, that a couple of my other trucking friends had been enjoying the images. In particular, Jürgen, asked that I continue. So that is what I have done. We now share morning photos for our friends. Jürgen has been displaying some great shots of where he lives and I’ve been doing a mix of my usual😅 Here’s a shot that I shared taken on Ballards Lane in Finchley Central…

A visit to Clapham Junction always gives a lot of steps – just walking down to East Finchley Station and then changing at Bank for the Waterloo & City line before riding a Southwestern Railway service out to Clapham will give you over 4k steps in one hit! Then moving around the station to try and catch a flavour of what’s passing through can easily add another 6k! – It’s a big station 🤣 Here’s a Class 455 unit – now nearly 5 years beyond its intended retirement – amidst the weeds on the Wimbledon side of the station…

…While on the Richmond side of the station we have a Bow depot to Tonbridge train of empty hoppers behind 66764 of GBRf…

Epi wanted to take a walk over to the garden centre in Bounds Green while she is having a week off work. This is only 2.4 miles (5 mile round trip) but in North London that includes a few sharp climbs and the boredom of walking Creighton Avenue😅 Here’s a 102 bus on Alexandra Park Road close to our destination…

A trip out yesterday saw me visiting Hampstead Heath station where I caught a shot of the Hoo Junction to Whitemoor yard engineers train…

…A train of ballast on this occasion. Then I walked home over Hampstead Heath. I’ve been promising Jürgen that I’d take him for a virtual walk across The Heath and I took several images to post on Twitter for him. Here’s a couple of them…

…And while I’m out and about, I mustn’t forget my Trucking buddies – Here’s a nice example of a Scania P500XT at a building site on The Bishops Avenue…

Hope you enjoyed my week of exercise 🤣👍

Trucking Digest

I don’t cover my truck simulator driving on here as much as I maybe should – it is a major part of my gaming activity. In some ways it has been usurped by the farming activity because I have been running a series of posts based on Farming Simulator 2022. My activity stats tell the real story though – 28% of my gaming spent on FS22 and 50% equally shared between Euro Truck and American Truck.

In this post I’m going to only talk about Euro Truck although I am also playing American Truck. The most recent update, while largely applicable to both, most obviously affects ETS2 – or, at least, that’s where the changes are more readily visible to me in daily play.

I changed truck again – it happens roughly once every 100000km although I did throw in a cameo 25km performance by a Renault Magnum which I named Cousteau. My current truck, named Lena, is a Next Generation DAF XG…

…There’s a lot being talked about regards these new DAF’s – in particular the aerodynamic changes that, combined with updates to engine technology, bring big fuel consumption dividends. I was interested to see if these have translated into the game. So… Currently, this truck compared with the Renault T – itself popular because of its good fuel consumption – is saving me around 3 litres of fuel per 100km and that’s broadly in agreement with the savings that DAF promise on their IRL website. The background to this is that DAF held back on their next truck until after new European rules came into being allowing a longer cab unit. They’re achieving a lot of this improvement by taking advantage of that rule change to make a good aero design. It is, and certainly feels like, a larger truck than the previous generation. But the smooth curvature of the front seems to reduce the impact of the increased physical length when parking. I’m loving this truck so much that I think I’ll be driving her for a long time 👍

That cuts nicely into the next subject – update 1.47. The new update brings a change to how we can view our in-game trucking career. I’d like to draw your attention to the screenshot below…

…We’ve needed this for a while. It’s great to see how you are doing. It’s not a competition board – unlike some games where you see opponents scores. It’s a reflection of the fact that in Truck Simulator, the buck stops with you and you alone. The 4th column is the one that I will be watching with care – Traffic Violations. As an example of how personal gameplay is – many players have fines turned off! I leave it on because I want to be reminded when I do something wrong. My commonest fine is No Lights – because it’s past ‘bedtime’, the game will issue a fine despite the fact that it’s a gloriously sunny evening out there🤣 That is annoying🙄 But on this first week with the new release, you can see I got a speeding fine! That’s as rare as hen’s teeth. So here’s the explanation and it relates to the v1.47 release.

One of the smaller changes in v1.47 was an upgrade to the engine sounds of the DAF new generation trucks. So there I was, accelerating down the road… Thinking, this sounds good… Then I got fined – I hadn’t been watching the speed and the Spanish Police were happy to take a donation for the policeman’s ball😂 Expect to see more ‘No Lights’ fines and the occasional ‘Red Light’ but that’s almost certainly my only speeding fine😎👍

The introduction of this new career screen has also encouraged me to reinstate the ‘Fatigue Simulation’ functionality. So I’m now driving with the threat of fines for going beyond my hours on each trip. Here’s a fairly typical run – Stuttgart to Nantes…

…The blue triangle in top centre is me at the overnight rest stop. Before reactivating the Fatigue sim, I’d been basically following the regime of stopping around the correct time – stretching or shrinking each leg as necessary, so I’m not really having to change my method of playing too much. The only difference is that I now have to carefully assess potential issues along the way and also to take into account my speed compared with the speed that the map uses to estimate the time that the trip will take. If you look in the top right corner, the map is estimating a time of 7 hours – well inside the 11 hours of an in-game shift. Am I good to go for a no-worries completion?… No! There’s a reason why we experienced players tell noobs to turn off Fatigue Simulation. To Quote the immortal Star Wars meme – “It’s a Trap!” Firstly the map assumes you’ll be doing 90kmh all the way – Not likely and don’t forget those toll gates. If you’re like me you’re probably driving slower anyway to improve fuel consumption. Then you have to allow for roadworks, accidents and other random events. There’s no way you will drive those 550km in 7 Hours. At the end, you also need to factor in finding somewhere to rest before you run out of hours. By the time I dropped off the load at the customer outside Nantes, I had around 1.5 hours left but it takes nearly 2 hours to drive to my Nantes garage. Fortunately, I could drive to a rest stop halfway between the delivery point and my garage. That’s a tight run and a beginner would probably have got a sleep fine – or a speeding fine for trying to avoid the sleep fine🤣

Another major change arriving with v1.47 is Adaptive Cruise Control and Emergency Braking System – Things fitted to real world trucks for a long time. It’s good to see these finally coming to the game. I saw a lot of complaints during the Beta testing but my personal experience following release is generally ok. If anything it’s about learning how to work with the new systems – when to turn off the cruise control for example. And no more drifting up behind another vehicle on a climb and allowing the gradient to slow you down to avoid a collision – the EBS doesn’t like that🤣 Overall, a major improvement to realism that players who prefer to drive recklessly can turn off😅

V1.47 has also brought in some major rebuilds of German cities – Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Nuremburg and Erfurt all have newly created scenes and road systems. I joked, after delivering a load of post to Stuttgart’s airport, that I was going to play ‘hunt the garage’….

…Found it ok – it’s there behind me😂 But the road system has totally changed and there’s lots of great new additions to the scenery. Oh!.. And from this angle you can get an idea of how stretched the cab of the DAF XG is!

I may not be reporting much on the Truck Simulator games but I’m in the cab most days…

…Enjoying the view 😎👍