Never seen this before, after 14 years of trainsimming. On the PRR East V2 route ... a deer ON the tracks, glances up at the oncoming train ... and stays there - does not move - as the engine runs over it and it disappears. Never saw that happen in MSTS. More realistic Open Rails? A feature or a bug? I was taken aback. Once saw a YouTube video - real life video, not simulation - where a stubborn bull on the tracks refused to budge as the engineer in the cab blasted the horns and lamented the huge dumb beast for not saving itself.
A Serbian film comes to mind, a dark comedy about an old engineer who takes on a young apprentice. The engineer holds the infamous record for 28 deaths caused by train collisions with cars, trucks. He explains to the youngster that a grim, secret tradition on the Serbian railroad is that you're not a real engineer until you've killed someone with the train, an unavoidable and inevitable risk of the profession. The apprentice becomes paranoid and confused, eager to join the esteemed train drivers, but dreading the guilt of causing a tragedy. It is, indeed, an Eastern European dark comedy, so if you have mental\emotional issues about train accidents, better skip the movie. That said, it's very much tongue-in-cheek, and it made me laugh out loud more than once. That's how good dark comedies work.
"Comedy is merely tragedy happening to someone else."
-- W.C. Fields
Train Driver's Diary (Serbian: Dnevnik mašinovođe, Дневник машиновође) is a 2016 Serbian drama film directed by Miloš Radović. It was selected as the Serbian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 89th Academy Awards .
It happened in MSTS, too. It just depends on how the route creator set up the hazard. On one route, the same happened to a hiker. Personally, I think that it sends a bad message. I know how upset a real-life engineer friend of mine felt when, years ago, the heavy train he was running 60 mph came around a curve only to find a herd of 100 sheep huddled in a cut on the track. He put the train into emergency, but the train took nearly a mile to get stopped. You can imagine the carnage.
I'm not fond of deer - real or animated - but I agree. It's not a good thing. Having never seen it before, it was a "did I really see that happen?" moment for me. And PRR East does seem to have more than its share of questionable oddities, so this is another one, I guess.
I discovered the Train Driver's Diary film with embedded English subtitles is available on YouTube, here:
.haz files govern how hazards act. They generally aren't edited all that much from the original MSTS days, but even then, deer strikes (among other things) do happen. I saw the aftermath a few years ago, the day before the opener for hunting: a bloody rail and two halves of a deer and some hungry ravens and wolves. A not so subtle reminder that trains play for keeps
Deer strike
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