Lok Simulator

At the DB Verkehrs Museum in Nuremberg, the children's section has a full scale locomotive simulator with some dumbed down software set up on it for people of all ages to experience running a train. The switches on the left are programmed to choose different locations. I chose Nuremberg Hauptbahnhof. When it comes to running the simulation, only the throttle and brake are tied into the software, though the gauges reflect the situation on screen. Regardless, it was fun to sit up in the engineer's seat, kick off the brakes, and notch a train out of a station, maintaining authorized speeds through a labyrinth of switches, then open it up on the mainline. It was also interesting to see how the brakes responded. To say the least, it takes more time than juice brakes on an automobile. Dynamic braking responded faster.

As an aside, the throttle is arranged opposite to the desktop controls of a North American engine. Namely, the throttle (on the left) is currently set in neutral, and the brakes are released with the levers on the right.