A few quick thoughts

[SCLJim]

So I've been working on a route the past few days, with roughly 20 miles of mainline placed. I've run a few trains testing things out and I'll have to say I'm sorely disappointed by the results. My main issue, which I know has been discussed many times before, the poor handling. So I ran a 90 car coal train, with 3 SD40-2s, up the main grade at 34.5 mph, speed increasing. In real life we usually crested at around 15 mph, give or take, and that was with two AC44s that could pull like no tomorrow. Either way, it was definitely less than 20 mph and definitely did not experience an increase in speed. Once the train settled, it maintained. Even in one extreme situation I remember climbing that grade at 3.4 mph. The same poor sim handling goes for the opposite direction as I ran the grade and never even remotely needed to go into dynamics.

I'm just wondering, do any of you think we'll see physics that are at least a little closer in realism than what we have now?? That is without a doubt the biggest thing that is keeping me from jumping completely on board.

[BNSF650]

I agree that is the big issue

[PapaXpress]

The VORA folks seem to have some of the physics worked out. It does mean you need to alter the rolling stock.

Hopefully RSC figures it out too.

[jmslakings]

So I've been working on a route the past few days, with roughly 20 miles of mainline placed. I've run a few trains testing things out and I'll have to say I'm sorely disappointed by the results. My main issue, which I know has been discussed many times before, the poor handling. So I ran a 90 car coal train, with 3 SD40-2s, up the main grade at 34.5 mph, speed increasing. In real life we usually crested at around 15 mph, give or take, and that was with two AC44s that could pull like no tomorrow. Either way, it was definitely less than 20 mph and definitely did not experience an increase in speed. Once the train settled, it maintained. Even in one extreme situation I remember climbing that grade at 3.4 mph. The same poor sim handling goes for the opposite direction as I ran the grade and never even remotely needed to go into dynamics.

I'm just wondering, do any of you think we'll see physics that are at least a little closer in realism than what we have now?? That is without a doubt the biggest thing that is keeping me from jumping completely on board.

Hey SCLJim

You know I think the big problem is that we have all been playing MSTS far too long and we forgot what REAL feels like. What you described above sound's like somthing from MSTS. Needing six, seven and eight locos to pull a train up a little grade. My two cent's. Im actually glad to see that for the first time in a train-sim (RW3) I don't need ten SD40-2 to pull a one-hundred car train, because that's not how it is in real life. Look at some of the real life train pictures on the net. How is it in real life that two Dash-9's can pull and one-hundred twenty car train up a grade, but I can't do that in MSTS cause I dont have enough locos attached to my train? Maybe the guy's at RSC have the same idea on train power based on what they see on video's and picture's. just a thought----Justin

[drhemo]

Justin,
If you re-read SCLJim's post, I think he was comparing the performance to real life. I believe he built a stretch of track he used to travel on. At least that is how I read his post.

Chris

[glenn68]

I have been working on some scenarios for Rich S. Montour route. Three RSC SW1500's pulling 46 fully loaded 70 Ton hoppers from Golden Age of Railroading the P&LE versions. Going up a 1.8 percent grade I was only able to make 10 mph at run-8. Now talking to a few folks I knew from the Montour railroad that is accurate. The Montour had it figured out for their grades a SW9 was able to handle up 9 to 11, 70 ton hoppers, then when the Montour recieved SW1500's from the P&LE it was figured that 1 SW1500 could pull 14 to 16, 70 ton hoppers.
So figure it depends on who set the physics for the rolling stock.

Glenn

[SCLJim]

I have been working on some scenarios for Rich S. Montour route. Three RSC SW1500's pulling 46 fully loaded 70 Ton hoppers from Golden Age of Railroading the P&LE versions. Going up a 1.8 percent grade I was only able to make 10 mph at run-8. Now talking to a few folks I knew from the Montour railroad that is accurate. The Montour had it figured out for their grades a SW9 was able to handle up 9 to 11, 70 ton hoppers, then when the Montour recieved SW1500's from the P&LE it was figured that 1 SW1500 could pull 14 to 16, 70 ton hoppers.
So figure it depends on who set the physics for the rolling stock.

Glenn

No doubt! I need to get my hands on those numbers as they sound a lot better than the default figures.

[BNSF650]

Could you do a WIP Thread on your route?

[SCLJim]

Could you do a WIP Thread on your route?

I'll see about getting some screenshots together and getting one started!

[TrainMaster1]

MSTS has nothing to do with the fact that many locos do not have the correct HP rating...have dynamics that are 10x over the correct ratings and coupler slack action that makes train handling better than an amusement park ride. But yes, this is all fixable for those who want to go to that length and learn how to run a railroad. In our sessions at VORA we are only interested in running a railroad not playing a game that is why our system works on any sim anywhere on the planet where the route is a close match to its real world counterpart.

All of this takes time to do and yes we do also fix MSTS equipment and tune it so that it can be shown side by side with a 1:1 scale video and our train will be with .1 mph of what the real one is doing on the same route with the same engines and loads. We even did this with two train on RW Cajon and got within .5 mph between real and RW train. That is our goal...keep the eye candy game functions to a minimum and run a railroad.

You have to be dedicated (or nuts) to go to this length but it is possible. The thing that makes it work for us is having professionally trained crews, dispatchers, yard masters, maintenance employees and more. It is a real live working railroad that goes way beyond basic "multiplayer". That is much more a game function. Today we ran 28 trains from 1PM and we are still going at 10:38 pm as I write this...most any one train saw in the window? Five for one train for a total of 16 minutes out of a 3 hour and 44 minute run. "I can see you" is not the big deal if you know real railroading...it is nice to have but there is much more to a full crew experience than that.

We have just had to rip apart a route from the ground up...remove over 150 incorrect signals...try to fix incorrect mileposts...try to add missing intermediates and still have other changes to make which will have to wait for the next time we get back to this route...as this is going into session on Monday night!!! (two days away). Almost 40 hours into it and about 50% of the job done. Everything goes right we will have 9 trains on Monday and Wednesday and 16 on Saturday run on this route...if our current RW engineers show up to support the effort. 8 new engineers should qualify this week and that is why we do this to spread the knowledge of real railroading.

Nick

[jmslakings]

Justin,
If you re-read SCLJim's post, I think he was comparing the performance to real life. I believe he built a stretch of track he used to travel on. At least that is how I read his post.

Chris

That's what I get for skiming Also nice post Nick

[SCLJim]

Justin,
If you re-read SCLJim's post, I think he was comparing the performance to real life. I believe he built a stretch of track he used to travel on. At least that is how I read his post.

Chris

That would be correct!!

That's what I get for skiming Also nice post Nick

No worries. I'm bad about the same thing myself!

Anyway can someone refer me to the changes I need to make to rolling stock in order to make my simming experience more pleasing! I want to kick back and watch tv while dragging upgrade at 15 mph! I'm really finding myself getting more into RW and if I can get the speeds adjusted to the tonnage and grade, I'd be set!

[b737lvr]

I dont think this is a physics problem but a problem with the coal cars. I remember when I was at VORA they said the values were messed up all across the board, that even the LOADED coal cars were lighter than the UNLOADED

[GreatNortherner]

Anyway can someone refer me to the changes I need to make to rolling stock in order to make my simming experience more pleasing! I want to kick back and watch tv while dragging upgrade at 15 mph! I'm really finding myself getting more into RW and if I can get the speeds adjusted to the tonnage and grade, I'd be set!

Hi,

For the sim's strange uphill running behavior, I think the key values (that initially were wrong on most default Kuju cars) are only the MT weight ("MASS") and the cargo weight ("Capacity" in the cargo component section). On many of the default cars, these were way off, though after just looking I believe that RSC have edited these settings in one of their last updates -- for a more realistic setting. So watch out when you use older repaints of the default cars, these probably still have the original, wrong weight parameters.

Here are three examples from the updated default cars:
60ft boxcar -- mt weight 27.396 tons -- NO cargo component, so this car will always be empty. (The original Kuju settings were a much higher MT weight and also no cargo)
coal hopper -- mt weight 27.4 tons -- cargo capy 97.5 tons. So it shouldn't be THAT far off.
tank car -- mt weight 91.3 tons (no kidding!) -- no cargo component (the original Kuju boxcar was similar).

Using correct mt and capy weights on the cars (in metric tons, I think) and using locos that have about correct power and TE settings one can quite easily get "gradient speeds" and tonnage limits like in the real world (though my only point of comparison here is Al Krug's gradient/speed calculator tool.) I'm not sure where the SD40 stands in regards to its realism, but I think the F7s and Geeps are not too far off from reality when it comes to power and TE.

Cheers,
Michael

[railbard]

Strange uphill running behavior?

I was running one of the SD75 scenarios, two on the front and one on the rear.

We were a couple of miles into the westbound grade on Cajon Pass. The train had (supposedly) 100 loaded cars (unit train). The throttle was at 0%.

We were speeding up. Upgrade. Fully loaded. With no throttle applied.

I reasoned that if we were at the foot of the grade, that could happen, what with the momentum of the train behind me. But two miles up the grade?

No how, no way.

I'm not a rivet counter or physics junkie by any means, but I do like my trains to exhibit behavior somewhat related to real life.

And so here's a positive review for Dick Cowan's BritKit steamers--it's so nice to run a loco that actually acts like a steam loco should when pulling a string of heavyweight passenger cars, no jack rabbit starts and easy accelration, those Mikes WORK HARD to get up to speed! And I'll add if you get Michael Stephan's reskins of the Light Mike, you have a visual and performance treat without compare in the general Railworks world.