Atomic Systems

Hi, I'm currently writing an activity which involves changing cabs from a diesel to a steam loco. Everything works well until the steam loco pulls away - then the coal load ( a freight anim?) can be seen flying several metres above the tender! Oh, and the water level steadily drops too - same as I previously reported when changing cabs between two steam locos.

Guess you're out of fuel, you need to refill the tender completely at a coal and water tower.

/Jonatan

Jonatan, I always use the Automatic Fireman.

Did a test with my DASH-9 and a Northern Pacific and find all working as it should.

Coupled the Player DASH-9 onto the Northern Pacific:



Switched to the NP cab and uncoupled it. Reversing it away from the DASH-9, water and coal readings are as expected:




and no coal flying either !



Would appear that some abnormalities are down to the *.eng file data and not MSTSBin 1.6.1 !

O t t o

Otto, I'll test the 'flying coal' with another steam engine. How far did you take the steam loco after the cab change? Were you able to confirm the steady loss of water level?

dee4141 wrote:How far did you take the steam loco after the cab change? Were you able to confirm the steady loss of water level?

Did not drive it very far in that test but did another one just now, reversing it to the next set of cross-over points and then driving it forward on the adjacent track let it run at 50% throttle at 75 mph..

After many miles of driving there was no decrease in either water nor coal. "Automatic Fireman" un-ticked !

Repeated the test in EXPLORE ROUTE Mode, but the quantity of coal and water shows more now and again there was no water nor coal decrease. Also the second part of the F5 HUD shows more details !



The same happens driving the NALW BIG BOY !

Will bring this thread to George's attention !

O t t o

I tried another steam loco and on this occasion the coal didn't fly! I'll do a few more trials on this aspect.... As for the water, I was still losing water level consistently using Automatic Fireman. Strange. I'm off to try a 3rd loco!

Did another test, this time using the "Automatic Fireman" and coal was being used but water was not. Got a water drain . open somewhere ?

In the activity the second part of the F5 Steam HUD shows 5 lines when driving the loco, but in EXPLORE ROUTE Mode it shows 9 lines.

With the "Automatic Fireman" off, the HUD shows 20 lines in EXPLORE ROUTE Mode and has 16680 gallons of water but still only 5 lines in the activity and only 8000 gallons of water !

O t t o

The test with loco no.3 produced flying coal again.......decided to continue the run (without Automatic Fireman this time) but the activity ended after about 6 miles with a "Fatal Blowback" message! Not looking good......

dee4141 wrote:The test with loco no.3 produced flying coal again.......decided to continue the run (without Automatic Fireman this time) but the activity ended after about 6 miles with a "Fatal Blowback" message! Not looking good......

Hi
Were you in a tunnel?

Cheers
Jon

Now you mention it Jon I think I was - or just entering. Would this be significant?

The sudden change in air pressure as the loco enters a tunnel would cause the air flow through the boiler to be reversed, thus blowing the flames out into the cab.

Under normal circumstances the auto-fireman should shut the firebox door to prevent a bloowback from injuring those on the footplate. I wouldn't mind betting that you were holding the F key down to keep a good flow of air over the fire.

Regards,

Dan

I wasn't doing anything as clever as that, Dan I'm not familiar with the steaming controls so it was strictly hands off for me! Tried it a 2nd time though and it happened in the same place - entering the tunnel.

OK, so next I tried switching betwen steam locos - using Automatic Fireman again. I noticed that the coal in the 2nd loco was properly in position in the tender as I passed, and it stayed in the tender on first hitting the F9 key - but after switching cabs the coal became airborne! Steaming along the same route as before we passed through the tunnel without problem but then ran out of water after about 8 miles.

The water level problem has been a consistent feature of all my trials so it's strange that Otto didn't meet the same effect too. I'm running out of ideas now, so I think this activity will have to be shelved for the time being - or at least until the next version of MSTSbin arrives.

Are you sure the tender realy is a tender?

Check the Type line in the .wag file.

If it's not set as Tender then you would get no water from it and the freight animation coal would not be positioned correctly.

Yep, it's definately a tender, Ian. I've been using a BATS BoB rebuilt as the 2nd (after switching cabs) loco and it's this that has given the "flying coal". The BoB unrebuilt did the same too. The loco where the coal remained in the tender after switching was a BATS "King Arthur". The water level on all of these has steadily dropped while steaming after switching.

I recently uploaded the activity "Redhill and Back" which includes a cab change. The journey of the 2nd loco had to be restricted to the limit of the diminishing water level - it would only make about 7 or 8 miles.