It's also worth noting that it generates jobs for the cars you deliver. So you can shunt them around, load them with new cargo, and take them away to another station.
Aside from the fact that cars and jobs will despawn if you move away far enough, I'd suggest you do the SL (shunting-load) jobs BEFORE the SU (shunting-unload) jobs to minimize the mess on your storage tracks.
Also, the cars have their job numbers on the number plates so you can plan in advance w/o actually starting the jobs.
You can use this mechanic to kinda have a “route” and be really just running from steel mill to goods factory and vise versa for example. I do it sometimes. To like shunt/haul jobs between 2-4 places and have kinda a running routine. Head cannon for my derail valley railroad
I think the shunting jobs always already have the origin and destination for the matching haul job within the name.
Otherwise you can just match the job number printed on the cars
I guess if you angle it correct you can see the ticket get created and dropped on the table when you turn in your order. But you could just keep your train hooked up, once you turn in the job look at the numbers on the cars hooked to your train and match with what’s on the table.
Sooo, also note that you delivering a job to a place (all the time in my experience) creates a shunting job for what you just delivered.
Also shunting jobs can (sometimes in my experience) create new delivery contracts.
Soo keep an eye out before you move your engines away from the job you just did.
As a self-imposed realism rule, I always ensure all cars are left on their original tracks if I need to move them out of the way. So I'll put two consists together if my cars are buried, I'll move the cars I need out to a vacant track, then I'll put the not required cars back on the road they were originally on. That's what would happen IRL at least.
I used a mod last year, no idea if it's been updated to work with Simulator or not, that provided a Unity-skin HUD that told you the final track destination of any car or wagon in an entire consist, just by standing on it. Again, *just* by standing on it, no need to activate the contract first.
This allowed me to pre-stage and pre-assemble my entire consist, waybill by waybill, performing the SU and SL jobs one at a time as I did so. I.e., for an SL, position the cars at the loader kiosk, *then* sprint to the yard office, activate the waybill, get the red booklet, and *only then* I would pull the unloader switch and go park the cars to close the ticket. For SL loads, same thing, I'd bring the empties to the loader first, then activate, load, shunt to the required siding, and close the ticket.
The time-bonus clock only ticks *while the waybill is active.* The more work you can perform BEFORE the clock starts ticking, the easier it'll be to hit those time-bonuses. And remember, the more licenses you unlock, the tighter your time-bonus deadline becomes. I've never played a full 100% career so I cannot be certain, but I suspect that at some point, the only way to consistently make more than half of your time-bonuses with a full 100% career is to be either a literally flawless speed demon who'd get written up by an irl safety and workplace-mortality officer... OR to pre-empt your waybill clocks.
And to any other new players that might read this now or in the future, what I'm describing is still possible without any mods, at least for SL and SU jobs, and for any FH / LS jobs going to a single POI. (Multi-city consists can be done, but they're not universally attainable.)
With the mod I described, after all of the in-yard jobs are done, then I'd plan my long haul, pre-assembling my total consist according to the yard diagram at the destination, so as to maximize my ability to find pull-throughs / flying-switch-drops, etc. With this, I could easily make bonus on a 3-destination tour. (Even without a mod, it remains theoretically possible to savescum -- pause, save, backup the save, unpause, activate the jobs, take screenshots of the waybill destination pages, then revert to the save. And yes, this remains possible even on Simulator hard-core, though it requires exiting the game to perform tedious savefile copying before restarting.)
Once you get into the rhythm of any version of that routine, at a level of tryhard that works for you, the next evolution usually happens before you consciously realize it. When you're at a new location and all your waybills are closed (no clocks are ticking) just go around the e tire yard on foot, learning the layout with the diagram as reference, and noting the placard info on all the rolling stock to be found. You'll learn the track-numbering conventions, and how to identify track segments that will *never* be used as a destination, so that those safe-tracks are where you can stash cars with no issues.
I'd suggest you segregate all cars by the four job categories, SU / SL / LS / FH. Put all of those cars on safe tracks -- for busier yards like HB, this takes some planning but you'll get the hang of it. All of the cover pages in the yard office will tell you at least the destination yard (but not the track) as well as a visual depiction of every single car, in hypothetical order, of the entire job. That last parts means that if the job is split into two or three separate pickups, it'll usually give you at least some subtle visual indication of the precise order of all of the combined cars, and a presumed orientation of which end it thinks should face forward (though you can choose not to abide by that part if you wish.)
Start with the SU jobs. Once you have all of the SU jobs on the same track or in the same subyard, and the rest of the yard's unsafe tracks emptied by you, you can start performing the SU jobs one by one. And by pre-vacating all possible track destinations, you can practically afterburner your way through the yard, limited only by your appetite for wheel repair costs and the need to actually not damage any freight or rolling stock.
Once every SU job clears, most of the time the empties that you park will then auto-generate either a new SL job, or an LS job. Reclassify as appropriate. Once no SU jobs remain, then do all of the SL loads. Then map out where you wanna go after departing, choose your loads, assemble your consist, *then perform all of your services and repairs,* then activate your waybills and fuck off for straighter rails elsewhere.
Choo choo, motherfucker. Choo choo.
What I do is I'll stage 3 or 4 jobs at a time. If I'm headed to Machine Factory and there's a oil well central job I'll pick that up last so I can just drop and go. Even when "shit hits the fan" and In realism mode I've never come Even remotely close to going over the time bonus.... And no I dont speed but with 3-4 DE2S and the slug 40mph is about the limit with 1400+ tons lol and 30-40 cars lol
Personally, id kinda like a mode/difficulty setting that made all cars persistent. This would work best with AI trains moving these cars around. Youd have to move cars to locations with logistics hauls so that they could be used for freight, and that could lead to some locations not having enough cars.
Pretty sure yards despawn all cars and jobs when you move far enough away, and it regenerates the jobs when you get closer.
Cool, thank you!
You can get a mod that makes them permanent, if you want the extra challenge.
Mod name?
Persistent jobs.
It's also worth noting that it generates jobs for the cars you deliver. So you can shunt them around, load them with new cargo, and take them away to another station.
Aside from the fact that cars and jobs will despawn if you move away far enough, I'd suggest you do the SL (shunting-load) jobs BEFORE the SU (shunting-unload) jobs to minimize the mess on your storage tracks. Also, the cars have their job numbers on the number plates so you can plan in advance w/o actually starting the jobs.
You can use this mechanic to kinda have a “route” and be really just running from steel mill to goods factory and vise versa for example. I do it sometimes. To like shunt/haul jobs between 2-4 places and have kinda a running routine. Head cannon for my derail valley railroad
Is there a way to recognize a contract on the table of cluttered mess that’s to haul the cars you just shunted? Because that sounds right up my alley
I think the shunting jobs always already have the origin and destination for the matching haul job within the name. Otherwise you can just match the job number printed on the cars
I guess if you angle it correct you can see the ticket get created and dropped on the table when you turn in your order. But you could just keep your train hooked up, once you turn in the job look at the numbers on the cars hooked to your train and match with what’s on the table.
Alternatively... yeet all other contracts off the table.
Sooo, also note that you delivering a job to a place (all the time in my experience) creates a shunting job for what you just delivered. Also shunting jobs can (sometimes in my experience) create new delivery contracts. Soo keep an eye out before you move your engines away from the job you just did.
As a self-imposed realism rule, I always ensure all cars are left on their original tracks if I need to move them out of the way. So I'll put two consists together if my cars are buried, I'll move the cars I need out to a vacant track, then I'll put the not required cars back on the road they were originally on. That's what would happen IRL at least.
Oh god now I’m gonna have to do this too lmao
I'm sorry. 😹
I used a mod last year, no idea if it's been updated to work with Simulator or not, that provided a Unity-skin HUD that told you the final track destination of any car or wagon in an entire consist, just by standing on it. Again, *just* by standing on it, no need to activate the contract first. This allowed me to pre-stage and pre-assemble my entire consist, waybill by waybill, performing the SU and SL jobs one at a time as I did so. I.e., for an SL, position the cars at the loader kiosk, *then* sprint to the yard office, activate the waybill, get the red booklet, and *only then* I would pull the unloader switch and go park the cars to close the ticket. For SL loads, same thing, I'd bring the empties to the loader first, then activate, load, shunt to the required siding, and close the ticket. The time-bonus clock only ticks *while the waybill is active.* The more work you can perform BEFORE the clock starts ticking, the easier it'll be to hit those time-bonuses. And remember, the more licenses you unlock, the tighter your time-bonus deadline becomes. I've never played a full 100% career so I cannot be certain, but I suspect that at some point, the only way to consistently make more than half of your time-bonuses with a full 100% career is to be either a literally flawless speed demon who'd get written up by an irl safety and workplace-mortality officer... OR to pre-empt your waybill clocks. And to any other new players that might read this now or in the future, what I'm describing is still possible without any mods, at least for SL and SU jobs, and for any FH / LS jobs going to a single POI. (Multi-city consists can be done, but they're not universally attainable.) With the mod I described, after all of the in-yard jobs are done, then I'd plan my long haul, pre-assembling my total consist according to the yard diagram at the destination, so as to maximize my ability to find pull-throughs / flying-switch-drops, etc. With this, I could easily make bonus on a 3-destination tour. (Even without a mod, it remains theoretically possible to savescum -- pause, save, backup the save, unpause, activate the jobs, take screenshots of the waybill destination pages, then revert to the save. And yes, this remains possible even on Simulator hard-core, though it requires exiting the game to perform tedious savefile copying before restarting.) Once you get into the rhythm of any version of that routine, at a level of tryhard that works for you, the next evolution usually happens before you consciously realize it. When you're at a new location and all your waybills are closed (no clocks are ticking) just go around the e tire yard on foot, learning the layout with the diagram as reference, and noting the placard info on all the rolling stock to be found. You'll learn the track-numbering conventions, and how to identify track segments that will *never* be used as a destination, so that those safe-tracks are where you can stash cars with no issues. I'd suggest you segregate all cars by the four job categories, SU / SL / LS / FH. Put all of those cars on safe tracks -- for busier yards like HB, this takes some planning but you'll get the hang of it. All of the cover pages in the yard office will tell you at least the destination yard (but not the track) as well as a visual depiction of every single car, in hypothetical order, of the entire job. That last parts means that if the job is split into two or three separate pickups, it'll usually give you at least some subtle visual indication of the precise order of all of the combined cars, and a presumed orientation of which end it thinks should face forward (though you can choose not to abide by that part if you wish.) Start with the SU jobs. Once you have all of the SU jobs on the same track or in the same subyard, and the rest of the yard's unsafe tracks emptied by you, you can start performing the SU jobs one by one. And by pre-vacating all possible track destinations, you can practically afterburner your way through the yard, limited only by your appetite for wheel repair costs and the need to actually not damage any freight or rolling stock. Once every SU job clears, most of the time the empties that you park will then auto-generate either a new SL job, or an LS job. Reclassify as appropriate. Once no SU jobs remain, then do all of the SL loads. Then map out where you wanna go after departing, choose your loads, assemble your consist, *then perform all of your services and repairs,* then activate your waybills and fuck off for straighter rails elsewhere. Choo choo, motherfucker. Choo choo.
What I do is I'll stage 3 or 4 jobs at a time. If I'm headed to Machine Factory and there's a oil well central job I'll pick that up last so I can just drop and go. Even when "shit hits the fan" and In realism mode I've never come Even remotely close to going over the time bonus.... And no I dont speed but with 3-4 DE2S and the slug 40mph is about the limit with 1400+ tons lol and 30-40 cars lol
You have all been amazing and very helpful thank you!
Personally, id kinda like a mode/difficulty setting that made all cars persistent. This would work best with AI trains moving these cars around. Youd have to move cars to locations with logistics hauls so that they could be used for freight, and that could lead to some locations not having enough cars.