Proper brake technique video

[Griphos]

Okay, I'm a noob. I've been reading and researching and think I have a handle (sorry) on braking on grades (minimum sets and throttle/braking). But I'm not sure how people brake coming into stations or yards. My usual process is to brake too early, dump the brakes, brake again, rinse, repeat... Apparently, I live in fear of barreling through where I want to stop, and have no sense of proper braking distances....

I've watched for tips in the many excellent videos made by people around here and at UKTrainsim, but never can see the levers operate, and usually not even the gauges. I sure hear what sounds like a lot of air escaping....

Anyone know of or care to make a little tutorial video on braking in the various typical situations? I'll bet lots of people would appreciate it. I'll bet lots of people looked at this thread hoping that's what I had to show them. Let's make those people happy.

[Kali]

Fanning the brakes is likely to run you out of air - which RW won't do and I'm trying to atm. You're also likely to get all sorts of funny things happening with the train bunching & relaxing as different parts of it brake and stop braking which I've tried to simulate but can't :(. If you want to see how NA brakes work ( they're far less forgiving than euro brakes ) there's a nice article here - note that once you've made one application and not given any recharge time, redoing the *same* application won't get you as much stopping power, if any. I'll let someone else chime in on how a real driver would do it, but in RW I'd probably run the speed right down on the dynamics, coast into the siding and some time before you think you ought to start braking set a minimum app; if you're pulling up short, don't let the brakes off, just add some power & drag the whole lot along a bit.

One thing I've wondered is if/when you use the auto brakes when you're switching.

[Griphos]

Thanks, Kali.

Yeah, I've read Krug's great article. It's quite informative.

As for technique, yeah, mine sucks, that I know....:-) And I worry about using dynamics, at least with long trains, since it only brakes the engines, right, and so the cars all bunch up and derail (in RW....not in real life, apparently). But I'll give it a try. I do try the minimum set and then drag it in technique, but I guess I still set way too early, because I have to drag too much.

I'm interested in hearing about auto brakes in switching as well. All views welcome, particularly those on how "real" drivers do it. And there's nothing like seeing it in action, all you video makers out there....

[arizonachris]

Would be nice to hear how it is in real life, BUT, that doesn't necessarily translate over into Railworks, as we have all found out.

I use a basic rule of thumb. Only train brakes. Depending on speed, lets say 60MPH, at .6 miles from my next stop, give it self lapping, then hit running, I'm slowing at 10MPH per .1 miles. I can do this pretty much every time, but I do run each scenario at least once or twice to get it down. Just like in real life. Don't expect me or anyone to come in cold and hit the nail on the head first time out! If you do, then I want some of what you are drinking.

I have given up on dynamics. Too many derailments, cars littering all over the landscape. It's funny I suppose but not how I want to drive. OK, my

And, yes, what Nick and Cody call "power braking" if I have to I'll drag that consist into the next stop with 50% or more throttle. Don't bail. Brake pipe will not recharge (except on the tunnel motors, they instantly recharge)

[robbit]

Would be nice to hear how it is in real life, BUT, that doesn't necessarily translate over into Railworks, as we have all found out.

I use a basic rule of thumb. Only train brakes. Depending on speed, lets say 60MPH, at .6 miles from my next stop, give it self lapping, then hit running, I'm slowing at 10MPH per .1 miles. I can do this pretty much every time, but I do run each scenario at least once or twice to get it down. Just like in real life. Don't expect me or anyone to come in cold and hit the nail on the head first time out! If you do, then I want some of what you are drinking.

I have given up on dynamics. Too many derailments, cars littering all over the landscape. It's funny I suppose but not how I want to drive. OK, my

Actually You came pretty close to hitting the nail on the head with this advise. Pretty much the same way I do it and have not to bad of luck with it

[Chessie8638]

There are some things you will grief over if they get into the sim. Imagine waiting 2 hours for the air to build again after dumping it.

[Rich_S]

I have given up on dynamics. Too many derailments, cars littering all over the landscape. It's funny I suppose but not how I want to drive. OK, my

That is probably because the MaxForce value in the DynamicBrakes section in the engine bin file found in the Simulation folder is set to a unrealistic value. Most of the values I've seen are 267 and above. Dividing the value by 4.5 and using the result will give you much better results went it comes to using the dynamic brakes.

Regards,
Rich S.

[Kali]

Yep, and the dodgy couplers. Try the SD40 I posted in the physics thread, which has sane levels of brakes, with one of the coupler fixes from the "long consist" thread - there's handy bin file replacements for both there. My test criteria was "does it hold the consist at the same speed going down Cajun", and well, my test consist speeds up marginally which I'd expect. Dynamic maximum of 45 instead of the Dash-9s 487 or something :p

[gege21]

Hi !


I'm interesting to modify dynamics brake value in the engine.bin file !

What is the right or the best procedure to adjust the DynamicsBrake section in the engine.bin file in the Simulation folder ?

Does I must use the servz.exe to edit the bin file in xml extension ? And after adjusting the DynamicsBrake value does I do recompile xml file to bin file with the servz.exe file ?

Does RW Tools make the same work to edit bin file in a more saved manner ?

Best regards
Gerard

[TrainMaster1]

Over the past few weeks, our staff has been testing equipment in anticipation of this week's Cajon Mini Operating Sessions. We have found quite a few settings from brakes to horsepower ratings that are not close to real world standards.

After much tweaking we are actually pretty close in our test runs to maintaining the speed achieved by the real world counterparts on the grades and have actually gotten the brakes to do what they should be doing.

We have discussed at length in the dodgy physics thread what an actual train would be doing in order to safely get up and over the hill and come to a safe stop. Proper technique is difficult to achieve unless you are also willing to go into files and change the incorrect settings to approximate what the actual equipment does. Normally when running Cajon in non-RW sessions we follow BNSF SSI (Special System Instruction) guidelines for speed restrictions, TOB ratings (tons per operating brake which we cannot seem to arrive at a way to actually know how the game measures weight), empty car ratings and more. Right now we are settling for getting every train home in one piece from Barstow to San Bernardino or vice versa.

The trains running tonight and Wednesday evening are exact duplicates of their real world counterparts, so many trains apparently are longer than what guys are used to running. While it takes some doing, it is possible to get close to some of the proper rating for locos and many good people on here have really done a lot to advance that knowledge. The winner tonight is the S-CHILAC1-28 with 179 loaded tables west bound for Hobart Yard but tonight with a stop in San Bernardino. Here's to hoping that both dispatchers do not go prematurely gray this evening (or Wednesday) while working their respective desks.



Nick

[Kali]

Nick, while you're talking about tweaking something came up in another thread; I have to remind anyone fiddling with numbers that most of the units in the blueprints are in metric, so power is in kW rather than HP, and forces are all in Newtons ( other than maxforce for some reason, but that's only for AI ). Not only that, but the MaxPower number is what you'll get at rail - MaxPowerAtRail doesn't do anything at all ( for a player at least ). I've set it to 0 several times and not seen anything change.

So; someone said the ES44 was underpowered, lets get what the blueprints ought to say.

Rated engine HP is 4400
Let's be generous and say we get 81% of that at rail, so that's 3560bhp
1 horsepower is 0.746kW, so the blueprint MaxPower figure should have 2660 ( rounding up a little ).

What they actually have is slightly less than the engine HP converted to kW; obviously the generator/traction motors are wound with superconductors...

So, blueprint brake forces ( and pretty much any other force ) are in N rather than lb ft even though pressures are in PSI, weight is in tonnes although that's so near a long ton as to not matter.

[TrainMaster1]

Well if what they have is slightly less than what an engine should actually have, the physics in this game are in more serious trouble than I had hoped. Once we made our changes, we can now approximate real world speed and ratings for locos on all aspects of the grades for this line. Is it probably not perfect but now at least we can run a railroad without the sim getting in the way of the action.

We are fortunate to count multiple BNSF engineers and conductors among our ranks and have leaned on their knowledge of running the line to come up with what we need to make this session happen. This is far more work though than we bargained for originally but now that we have a better feel for how to get the performance of locos to match their 1:1 brethren that is one more hurdle down.

The slack action is hysterically off in the sim and we are seeing couplers pulled out of pockets (but yet somehow still connected), cars getting shoved so close and in some cases into other cars that the coupler is not even visible. We most likely will be working on fixes well into the new year as I am sure various routes and eras with different equipment will also need attention.

Our goal is to get performance to where it approximates what 1:1 does therefore making our training classes on proper engineer skills actually valid for running in an RW session.

BTW, thanks for all the work you have done to come up with many of these fixes and point us in the right direction.

Nick

[styckx]

It would be nice if all the folks who understand the physics a bit maybe clashed heads and put together a physics update package.

Here is my thing. UK stock has its own issues but they are less obvious and glaring then the U.S. issues. I've seen so many threads and files related to fixing this, fixing that, redoing this, redoing that. It is rather confusing. It is the major reason even though I am American can not get into our own railroading in the sim that heavily. Some engines are over powered, some under, some rollingstock grossly under weight, some grossly overweight, some have load values, some dont, Some engines that are like driving on ice and have awful traction, while others seem like the wheels and rails are covered in Velcro and can seemingly pull anything with no effort. It is all over the place, with everything.

[Kali]

Ugh, there's so much of it though, Bill - just think about updating every SD40 for instance. I'm not even going near 3rd-party stock who've understandably copied some flawed default setup. There's a point and click tool to do mass search & replace being developed which takes plugins, so hopefully we can just write plugins for that.

Nick - that MaxPower setting isn't the end of it; there is another file ( two if you include the throttle ) that caps the output at rail - yes, after everything else has been worked out, just says "that's all you're getting". You can get mostly realistic behaviour but you have to junk all the RW graphs and write the entire power control in a script, and as you can imagine that's not a quick job to set up right. It won't bother you guys but it also makes the F4/F5 hud useless which is why I'll probably never stick anything like that in the file library here ( because I don't want to support it! ). If you remove all the graphs, at full power the engine just obeys the TE = Power/speed ( and that would be N = kW/metres per s ) equation, so you can if you have a TE graph from the prototype, come up with a polynomial to convert the TE graph to the position the regulator has to be in to get the correct output. At this point graph solving programs are a lifesaver :P

Power isn't the end of it either - maybe the stock has too much rolling resistance. That will make everything seem underpowered, although it will seem less underpowered on hills. If there's a field divert file it will knock giant holes in the available tractive effort ( nobody knows what whoever wrote that code was thinking, just ditch it and put up with the needle not moving ).