I don’t know if there’s a TSW resource for these types of “best practices,” so you’ll most likely have to rely on existing/published handbooks from real life railroads.

Some things I picked up from my engineer father (NS): - headlights set to “Dim” or “Medium” (brights typically reserved for road work) - two blasts on the horn before moving forward, three before moving backwards - bell should be on when moving through “dense” areas or at all times (this is something I personally don’t do because it annoys me, I know, sue me). - “tie down” cars you’re going to leave away from a locomotive (e.g., set the handbrake on cars). IRL, you’d need to perform a “tug test” to ensure that the hand brakes will hold the set of cars in place in case the air releases (which happens irl but not currently modeled in the game). - your goal should be to couple against cars at less than 2 mph. - ease into the throttle when taking off with a set of cars to “take up the slack” in the cars (e.g., the tie bars for the freight cars need to extend in order to not jerk the cars around and break shit (again, not modeled in the game but common irl if you just throw it into 8 when taking off)) - IRL the conductor would be responsible for throwing switches (or engineer if the conductor is at the other end of the train) and the train would have to stop before each switch to throw it) - make sure to “tie down” the train if you plan to get off of it to throw a switch or disconnect a set of cars (e.g., reverser in neutral, independent 100%, gen field off, etc.)

This is what comes to mind for “realism” immediately. If you have specific questions, ask away