Greased Tracks In Winter Activities?

I have attempted to do some winter activities, but never feel that there is any realism because the traction appears to be so out of proportion to other seasons of the year. Today I was working on four SD60m's pulling a 60 car load of coal with two SD-40 pushers. That should be plenty of pulling power. The train pulls out of Mojave yard on the Tehachapi, and about the best I can get is 10 mph at full power and with the sanders on. When the sanders are stopped the speed drops. Even worse than that is when I couple up my four lead engines with the coal train the entire train starts sliding eastward through the yard so that I have to use full forward throttle and full brakes to get it to stop. Is this anywhere near realistic? I have tried different numwheel settings and they make a token difference. My feeling is that MSTS has greased the tracks with an out of proportion setting for winter activities. Does anyone else share this view? Is there a way to change the MSTS setting without having to adjust all the engines. I just think the traction should be better in the winter activities than what we are seeing with MSTS.Bob Edwards

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RE: GREASED TRACKS IN WINTER ACTIVITIES?, JohnDWW, Jun-04-04, 09:52 AM, (1) RE: GREASED TRACKS IN WINTER ACTIVITIES?, oakpalms, Jun-05-04, 08:17 AM, (2) RE: GREASED TRACKS IN WINTER ACTIVITIES?, JohnDWW, Jun-05-04, 11:53 PM, (3) RE: GREASED TRACKS IN WINTER ACTIVITIES?, oakpalms, Jun-09-04, 09:20 PM, (4) RE: GREASED TRACKS IN WINTER ACTIVITIES?, JohnDWW, Jun-10-04, 02:06 AM, (5) RE: GREASED TRACKS IN WINTER ACTIVITIES?, Coonskin, Jun-14-04, 02:57 AM, (6) RE: GREASED TRACKS IN WINTER ACTIVITIES?, oakpalms, Jun-16-04, 01:20 PM, (7) RE: GREASED TRACKS IN WINTER ACTIVITIES?, oakpalms, Jun-16-04, 05:03 PM, (8) RE: GREASED TRACKS IN WINTER ACTIVITIES?, oakpalms, Jun-23-04, 04:02 PM, (9)

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You have a 2.6% grade coming out of Mojave, plus you start in the Mojave yards on a grade. Your weight is approx 4200 tons, plus the weight of the engines and on a dry day you will only aquire a speed of 20 to 25 MPH. Take in consederation the curves, that will reduce your speed even more. Now add to it a wet day or even more, snow, then you will definately need to use sand for the 20400 HP you have. During wet times you will need more traction and 36 axels may not give you enough with the engines you have. So speeds under these conditions would be around 10 to 15 MPH @ notch 8 and assuming that you stay in the green.
John Dunbar

Senior Activity Developer
3DTS

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John,Thanks for your response. Is it normal for a train to continue sliding backwards down the uphill grade in the Mojave yard even when one hits continous brakes and 100% locomotive brakes? I've had to use Emergency brakes just to get the train to stop once the engines couple with the rest of the train. I've never lived around tracks with much gradient, but I still think MSTS has the friction too great for realism.I would like to see comments from some of the real engineers concerning the friction versus gradients used with MSTS.Bob

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Hi Bob,You are using engines that are not default so I'm not familiar with your settings for brakes or traction. I have not had the problems with our default equipment and have made activities with various weather out of Mojave. I suggest changing your settings to clear weather, spring, summer or fall. Try it under these conditions. John Dunbar

Senior Activity Developer
3DTS

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John,I have indeed gone to any season other than winter to get the realistic traction. This is something that affects all other routes and not just 3DTS routes--so it is no fault of the excellent products you are doing. I did not mean specifically for someone from 3DTS to respond nor did I expect it since I think this is a problem with MSTS and not any addons nor 3rd party software. I just happened to mention the 3DTS route because that was where I was having a problem, but I have had the same problem using winter activities on other routes. I guess it is possible that the problem could relate to the proper settings within the eng files. I don't feel that anyone has really hit the nail on the head there as far as traction and braking, but things are improving.I was hoping to find out if any one else felt the winter traction was out of proportion to reality.Bob

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Bob,I was trying to be helpful. I have made activities climbing out of Mojave during a snow storm. Was using sand until Cameron. Suggest going to Krug's web page. He may have some info on the snow problems.He has a lot of info that has been helpful to me. You can also download his RR Forces Calculator which helps with choices of power verses weight of your train.www.vcn.com/~alkrug/home.htmlJohn Dunbar

Senior Activity Developer
3DTS

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Bob:If it continues to bothers you, consider editing the value on your installation of MSTS. You'll find the slip values inside the "DEFAULT" folder in the "TRAINSET" folder. Here's what the set of values looks like:Adheasion (
"0.9 # snow"
"0.55 # rain"
"0.8 # tunnel"
"0 # free"
)
Open the TRAINSET/DEFAULT file using WordPad, change the "snow" value downward and click "Save" to preserve the Unicoding.Andre MingVisit VSC's temporary web page at: http://www.vscalecreations.comVisit VSC's Forum at: http://www.3DTrains.com

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Andre and John,Thanks guys for your help. I will try Andre's suggestion and hopefully find a better equation than what came out with MSTS.
John, I agree that their is a method to calculate pulling force, but pulling force has very little impact if the tracks are made more slippery than what is reality. In fact, if the amount of adheasion is set too low (actually a higher number) then wouldn't this cause the driving wheels to slip even if the antislip is set to zero?Bob

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Andre and John,I played around with the snow, rain and tunnel settings found in the Default.wag file in the Default folder. Boy, what a screwup by MSTS. Did you notice that the tunnel setting was really high. I would think that in the winter the tracks in a tunnel would accumulate some pirmafrost, but boy MSTS has the setting higher than the effect of rain on the tracks which I don't think that would happen. I did some runs from Caliente up the EB grade there on the Tehachapi II always using the same track, same train ( 3 Dash9s in front 50 grain hoppers and a GP-38 and Dash9 pusher--all standard MSTS consist) and same time in the Explore track mode. In summer I had no trouble starting up grade and holding train with brakes, but in winter snow and fall rain the train would simply slide down the tracks.I kept reducing the figures for the adheasion. For me, I determined that a setting of 0.3 for snow, 0.2 for rain, 0.2 for tunnel was great. I felt the tunnel setting needed some balance--in rain it should not be as slippery as during winter snow conditions, and in winter snow it needed to still be slippery. So I set it the same as if it was raining outside the tunnel. The balance comes when running in rain at least the train doesn't slow down 2-3 mph going through a tunnel that is the same gradient as the track outside. With the 0.3 for winter snow, I could control the train with brakes, start off only using sand and at high power and the train was not able to make it over the mountain incline and would end up stalled half way up the mountain. In summer the train would take off without sand and easily climb over the mountain.With 0.2 for autumn rain, I could control the train with brakes but would also have to start only by the use of sand and high power, and I would have to use sand throughout the climb in order to make it over the mountain. If I stopped using sand then the train would come to a halt on higher, steeper grades.I felt that even though rain and falling snow would both have serious effects, I felt that the falling snow and winter cold would be a bigger problem. You guys may want to try these settings and see what you think. However, I feel that I can now do winter and rain activties without the train sliding back down a grade!Bob

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I have had to rethink everything about the snow, rain and tunnel settings. In repeated running of one activity up an incline, I have come to the conclusion that MSTS is more close to what should be than what I first determined. I will accept a .75 setting for the snow. However, what I determined today was that the rain setting also effects the train operation even in the snow setting. I tried all variables betwee .1 up to .8 with all three settings. Yeal, I know that is a lot of reloading the simulator. I think the .55 setting is fine for the rain and snow combination. However, I think the tunnel setting should be the same as the rain since a real engineer felt that the tunnels may or may not be more slippery depending upon whether it is a light rain or a heavy rain, and they are not any worse in snow than during rain.
What I am finding out is that it simply takes a lot more tractive effort (more engines) during inclimate weather than I realized.Bob Edwards

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