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I am using the HUD display values to analyse steam loco performance to upgrade the .eng files.Most of the units are either in pounds or are to 2 places of decimals so a fairly accurate figure is available for distance, time, firbox coal, tender water remaining and boiler gauge.The only difficult value is coal remaining in tender which is expressed as a % of full load.If the tender has a capacity of 20 tons of coal, then 1% is 400#Is there any way to modify this value to either pounds or to 2 places of decimals to let me get a more accurate analysis.Supergoods
I am not good with steam. The HUD display gets its data from the engine file. If you haven't already, download the Tech Docs from disc 1. Coal burnage is calculated at pounds per horsepower per hour.Cyndi
Thanks for the input, CyndiWhat I am trying to do is to record the consumption out of the tender in something less than 400# chunks to actually calculate an estimated drawbar horsepower using published actual consumptions for the class, it seems to work well except that, especially when running downhill, if I add coal to the fire, I can end up with a negative consumption.One improvement is to cut the tender coal capacity back to the quantity estimated for the job, this does reduce the error factor, but still I would like to change the head up to where it shows the percentage down to 2 places of decimals.One of the many inconsistancies of the sim is that coal burnage required in the .eng file is much greater than that recorded in published data.Ian
Ian, What I did when testing coal consumption was set the tender load to small amount of coal, say 100 - 200lbs and then look at consumption by looking at the difference between the beginning and ending tender loads and the beginning and ending firebox loads. Obviously this limits the length of any test, ut it still should allow you to determine things fairly accurately.
Bill,I had considered setting the coal capacity of the tender as low as I could based on required coal for the test, even so with a fairly small 2-8-0 working hard that would still be about 5000lbs for my test route.I am going to use 6 firing periods for each section between timing points which are from 1 to 4 miles apart and based on the known firing rates should get coal used fairly accurately.I don't know when I will do the next test but will post results later as I have family in town for the next three weeks.