Birchenwood Duties Activity Pack for Potteries Loop

[dforrest]

Has anyone any comments, good or bad, on these activities?

[dforrest]

103 views and no comments! Is anyone running the activities?

[eholly]

Hi Dave

Don't panic mate. It's June and folks are away on hols - they'll be back soon and you'll get your answer. This is always the way with fresh activities - it takes time for folks to cotton on.

As for me, a busy time with family engagements at the moment, but I'll have look at them soon.

Cheers

Eric

[ianmacmillan]

I have run the first two parts without any problem.

one minor point is the gas tanks.
Gas was not transported by rail in steam days.
With every town and village having a gasworks and most connected by pipeline there was no need.
Only the railway companies had gas tanks for refilling gas lighted coaches where there was no convenient local supply.

The wagons would carry tar which was a bi-product of gas and coke production.
They would transport the tar to chemical works where various chemicals would be extracted. The principal product was motor spirit (benzine) which was used like petrol.
The left over thick tar was mixed with slag or stone for road building.
Some of the larger city gasworks had their own tar distilling plants. The output was carried in barrels and glass carboys loaded in open wagons.

The interchange of products from collieries, gasworks, coking plants and tar distillers was good business for the railways (and activity writers) until the motor spirit and tared roads took the traffic away to road competition.
Oil and north sea gas swept the whole industry away.

[dforrest]

Eric - enjoy the time with your family.

Ian - I am pleased you successfully ran two of the activities. Thanks very much for that additional information. As always, I am very grateful for it. The information I based the activities on was the following from a publication on the line - "There was a growing market for the gas by product produced at the ovens and this was sold to the City of Stoke on Trent gas works until North Sea gas became widely available".

______________
David

[MikeandDi]

Hi David

I have completed part one, and I have part 2 in progress.

I am running these in Open Rails, so have made some modifications to the stock (mainly the brakes) so that I can have better control over the locos and trains.

So far I have found both activities to be excellent, and the route is, of course, superb.

Thanks
Mike

[rufuskins]

Gas was not transported by rail in steam days.

Based on my limited knowledge this is not entirely true, well for the LYR anyway!

LYR Diagram 29 - Gas Receiver - used over their system for supplying gas to carriages
LYR Diagram 30 - Carried Gas Reservoir for supplying Fleetwood Buoys
LYR Diagram 37 - Gas Receiver - improved version of Diagram 29

[dforrest]

Hi David

I have completed part one, and I have part 2 in progress.

I am running these in Open Rails, so have made some modifications to the stock (mainly the brakes) so that I can have better control over the locos and trains.

So far I have found both activities to be excellent, and the route is, of course, superb.

Thanks
Mike

Mike, I would be very interested in getting a full report on running the activities in Open Rails, when you have completed them all.

____________
David

[MikeandDi]

I am posting a copy of this pm to David at his request -

"Hi David

I have now successfully completed your trilogy of Birchenwood Duty activities using Open Rails. They all reached a successful conclusion, without the need for “manual” running.

There were some fearsome gradients to navigate, especially in Part 3, and I was caught out leaving the tank wagons without their handbrakes on at one point. There followed a “keystone cops” chase with the Peckett to get them back!

I thought the activities were both interesting and enjoyable, and, as mentioned in the forums, the route is stunning.

When running MSTS activities in Open Rails, I always save at frequent intervals, as a short over-run at any reversing point loses the path. This seems to happen if the loco or consist strays over the next point – I do not recall whether or not the same applies in MSTS. There are many points very close to reversing points in these activities, so my saves were invaluable as I overshot on several occasions.

As far as the running stock is concerned, for me at least, vacuum brakes do not seem to work at all in Open Rails, so my first action is to change the driven loco and any stock to be pulled and/or picked up to air brakes.

I then reset the engine brake and other controller settings to make them more responsive.

As an example, the following adjusted settings have been used for the 5MT and the Peckett –

BrakeSystemType ( "Air_single_pipe" )
MaxBrakeForce( 140kN )
MaxReleaseRate( 40 )
MaxApplicationRate( 40 )
MaxAuxilaryChargingRate( 35 )
BrakeCylinderPressureForMaxBrakeBrakeForce( 70 )

EngineControllers
Regulator ( 0 1 0.1 0
NumNotches( 0 )
)
Cutoff ( -0.55 0.75 0.1 0
NumNotches( 0 )
)
Brake_Train ( 0 1 0.1 0.65
NumNotches( 3
Notch(0 1 TrainBrakesControllerReleaseStart )
Notch(0.1 1 TrainBrakesControllerRunningStart )
Notch(0.2 1 TrainBrakesControllerApplyStart

These settings are totally unscientific, and have been arrived at with help from reading the Elvas Tower forums and trial and error, but they do seem to give me a good driving experience.

Similar adjustments were made to the tank wagon brake settings, although I am not sure to what extent they make any difference in performance.

I do not make any adjustments to the AI stock, and did notice that a double-headed steam consist had madly slipping wheels in one of the activities. I always run the latest experimental version of Open Rails, so this could be an Open Rails "bug" which may be fixed in a later version.

The performance and display in Open Rails is so far superior to MSTS (on my PC, at least) that I have not run any activities in MSTS for a long time.

I hope that this is of interest to you, and thank you once again for these excellent activities. Let me know if you would like any further information.

Kind regards
Mike"

[dforrest]

Mike, there are several reverse points that overrunning in MSTS also causes a problem. There is a warning about this in the documentation. The need to change from vacuum to air brakes is a new one for me. Your other propose changes are very interesting and I will be looking into implementing these.

[ianmacmillan]

In real life both the Peckett and the tanks would no have train brakes.

I modified the wagon by giving it 0 brake force.
The wagon also has a mass of 9 tons which is OK for an empty wagon so I made a loaded .wag file with a mass of 23 tons.

No need to change the brake type if the wagons have only handbrakes.

Making these changes makes the activity harded but much more satisfying to complete.
Just remember to use the F9 handbrake.

[dforrest]

In real life both the Peckett and the tanks would no have train brakes.

I modified the wagon by giving it 0 brake force.
The wagon also has a mass of 9 tons which is OK for an empty wagon so I made a loaded .wag file with a mass of 23 tons.

No need to change the brake type if the wagons have only handbrakes.

Making these changes makes the activity harded but much more satisfying to complete.
Just remember to use the F9 handbrake.

Thank you for the advice Ian. I have modified the wagons and activities as you suggest. These revisions will be in the next Potteries loop Patch (although it may be a while before this is ready). If anyone wants them now, please PM me you email address and I will send them to you.

____________
David