Race Day Special - An activity for Thames Mersey V4.2 / V4.3

[Lad491]

Greetings

I have just uploaded this activity for the steam era version of Thames Mersey. Its another of my long, high speed runs, with limited coal and water, and challenges en route. It will take you about 3.5 hours to complete if you make all your scheduled traffic slots.

The zip file contains:

A readmefirst file
The briefing file - as usual my PC's crash whenever i leave the briefing window open to read it, so ive enclosed it as a separate file.
A tips file - Even though I wrote the activity, Ive found it very difficult to complete (but it can be done ) so ive included this in case people get stuck.. If you like a challenge ahve a go without reading it first
the apk file; - when installing make sure you DONT overwrite any existing services or paths.

I hope you enjoy it. Its taken me 3 months to write and test and at first was riddled with bugs, but I think ive got them all now and its had two end to end runs without problem. If you do get a problem, post a note here for me.

Race Day Special - An activity for Thames Mersey V4.2 [94781 bytes] - LAD_RaceDaySpecial.zip File ID: 20605 Date: 29 Jan 2009 - 415 Downloads

[Easilyconfused]

Nice one Laurie. Good to see it uploaded after your mammoth efforts.

I will probably download it next week sometime and give it a spin.

[Lad491]

Oh dear

Ive just remembered that I changed the coupling type of Ian's Horsebox from chain to automatic - all my stock uses automatic couplings - so you may have to use Route-Riter to change the coupling type if you find you cant couple up to the horsebox at Atherton. Sorry - I just knew that I would forget something

[ianmacmillan]

You should have included a replacement .wag file Laurie.

I've no objection to that provided you rename the file.

[Lad491]

Thanks Ian - yes I should have done. I forgot I changed it

[Geoffwright]

Yet again another absolutely outstanding activity.
I'm half way through it & discovered that the horse box coupling needed to be changed to automatic ( I think ) which seems to work. However, having coupled up and moved forward beyond the reversing point, I seem to find it impossible to reverse back to pick up the rest of the coaches. There seems to be some mysterious force resisting this movement & wheelslip always ensues regardless of sanding.
Perhaps the wag file for the horse box needs some tricky editing in maybe the friction entries, but I don't know how to do that. It's no good substituting another wagon for the horse box, because then the saves I have won't reload of course.
So, I'll have to wait until I see an edit for the horse box wag file used here.

[Lad491]

Thats a bit strange Geoff as, with the exception of changing the couplings to automatic, i used the horse box right out of the box, as they say, with no changes at all. It works fine for me. Now youve changed the coupling give it another shot, maybe that caused some other unwanted changes.

Edit later:

Geoff check the brake settings in the wag file. I dont recall changing them at all but i may have done - it was such a long time ago

Mine read :

BrakeEquipmentType ( "Handbrake, vacuum_brake" )
BrakeSystemType ( "Vacuum_single_pipe" )

Even later :

Nope Ive just rechecked the original download against my copy in my trainset folder and the only change i made was to the first coupling line to make it automatic. I didnt touch the brakes at all. How weird

[ianmacmillan]

I've downloaded the horsebox and can find no fault.

The brake and friction setting are the same as most of my other wagons so they should work OK.

Check the coupling settings and make sure the brackets match. I suspect an extra close bracket ) has creapt in shutting the file before it reaches the brake section and forcing a default air brake.

[perfnet]

I've occasionally found that if you're a bit rough coupling up it can stop the brakes coming off. Another suggestion is to make sure you have no brake acting as you make the connection, i.e your brakes are in running or released and you have 21 pounds of vacuum in the system, and don't put the brakes on until you're sure you have capture (or is that recycling another genre of sim?!!)

Richard

[dforrest]

I am confused. Can someone please help me!

I have version 4.2 of Thames Mersey installed which is the latest I can find for download. Is 4.3 a CD version? Do I need to upgrade to this to run this activity?

David

[Lad491]

David, I think ive got the versions mixed up. It looks like the latest is V4.2

Sorry about that I'll change the upload title

[MikeandDi]

Laurie

Fantastic activity, so far. Many thanks.

I have just reached the horsebox at Atherstone and found that I couldn't couple to it. I have reduced the bounding box lengths of the horsebox which seems to solve the problem.

Hope this might help others.

p.s. my driving is so bad that I couldn't face the limited coal and water, so I cheated. I hope you don't mind.

Thanks
Mike

[Lad491]

my driving is so bad that I couldn't face the limited coal and water, so I cheated. I hope you don't mind.

Oh no that defeats the whole object of the activity

You dont need to change the bounding boxes either - it works fine as is, with just a coupling change

Still im glad you are enjoying it

[MikeandDi]

Hi Laurie

I changed the couplings to automatic before I started, so that was not my problem.

Feeling very guilty now - i may have to start again at Euston.

[Lad491]

Mike - are you using the same consist i supplied (ie the Duchess of hamilton - from the TM DVD?) or are you using a downloaded loco or different loco? I cant understand how it can work on my two PC's, and for some others, and not for other people. msts is really weird