[beresford]

I'm up to X3961 and recently these apparently spurious 'Boiler overfilled and priming' messages crop up, despite the water levels being 85% or so. Obviously I'm driving a steam engine, on the MSTS Black Country 1 route, under Windows 10. There has been another update since but this problem isn't mentioned in the 'fix' log.

[steamer_ctn]

To allow this to be investigated further, can you please provide the following:

i) Preferably a screenshot of the Extended HUD for the steam locomotive at the time that the Priming message appears
ii) The ENG file for the steam locomotive being used
iii) A description of what is happening when the priming occurs

Thanks

[beresford]

steamer_ctn, on 21 October 2017 - 04:54 PM, said:

To allow this to be investigated further, can you please provide the following:

i) Preferably a screenshot of the Extended HUD for the steam locomotive at the time that the Priming message appears
ii) The ENG file for the steam locomotive being used
iii) A description of what is happening when the priming occurs

Thanks

I'll try. The message flashes up so the screenie is taken just afterwards. The train is a passenger service going along fairly level track and I am not braking at this point. I had to put the screenshot in a zip file as for some unknown reason I'm not 'allowed' to upload .png files.

Attached File(s)

•  #ccw_br_b5_45058.eng (13.41K)
  Number of downloads: 235
•  ccw_br_b5_45058.eng (16.95K)
  Number of downloads: 219
•  Open Rails 2017-10-23 03-20-40.zip (2.34MB)
  Number of downloads: 223

[steamer_ctn]

beresford, on 23 October 2017 - 06:33 AM, said:

I'll try. The message flashes up so the screenie is taken just afterwards.

Thanks for trying.

Interestingly, once priming occurs, it should take a while to reduce the water level in the boiler. The message just comes up when the Priming condition occurs (if boiler water level exceeds 91% of the boiler volume. Did you get a message to say that priming had stopped?

Also in the screenshot that you sent me the parameter called "Prime" under Steam usage should be reading "Yes". Did it change at the same time as the message?

Off the top of my head the only thing that might be causing the problem is the boiler volume, which is shown as 160 ft^3. Is this correct for the Black 5?

beresford, on 23 October 2017 - 06:33 AM, said:

The train is a passenger service going along fairly level track and I am not braking at this point.

Is it possible to reliably reproduce the the problem by following exactly the same driving process?

beresford, on 23 October 2017 - 06:33 AM, said:

I had to put the screenshot in a zip file as for some unknown reason I'm not 'allowed' to upload .png files.

Try saving it as a jpg file.

I will look into it further when I get some further info from you.

Thanks

[copperpen]

Just been looking at a Black 5 diagram. 260 will be a better fit for boiler volume, not exact but should work better. I based it on an oblong, 5ft x 5ft x13ft and took 65 off for the volume of the firebox in the boiler.

[beresford]

copperpen, on 25 October 2017 - 01:37 AM, said:

Just been looking at a Black 5 diagram. 260 will be a better fit for boiler volume, not exact but should work better. I based it on an oblong, 5ft x 5ft x13ft and took 65 off for the volume of the firebox in the boiler.

Don't forget the volume of the tubes in the boiler as well :pleasantry:

I've never seen a message saying that Priming has stopped, the priming message just seems to flash up (pseudo-)randomly.

It is repeatable inasmuch as I can boot up the scenario and the same thing will occur. I will attempt to look at the extended display when the message occurs, but since it only flashes up.......

OK, done it once. As far as I could see the Priming flag in the display did NOT change (from 'No'). I also got another spurious message 'Your tender is empty, your loco will fail' which I have seen before.

[steamer_ctn]

beresford, on 25 October 2017 - 02:58 AM, said:

I've never seen a message saying that Priming has stopped, the priming message just seems to flash up (pseudo-)randomly.

Thanks for the further feedback.

I have identified a (probably unrelated) problem with the initialising of "MSTS" Superheated locomotives which I have corrected in #3969.

However at this stage I have not been able to duplicate the issue that you have described. As far as I am aware no one else is experiencing the problem.

If you can describe a step by step process to allow me to see the problem occurring in my test version, I am happy to explore the issue further.

Thanks for raising the issue.

[beresford]

Of course I can't give you an example you can test without us owning a common route.

I also experienced two other problems:
1. It was impossible to finish one activity because of a logjam of AI trains. This was apparently caused at a junction where the signal was set for an immobile DMU.
2. On another scenario I encountered missing panels of track, the train ran over the invisible rails and rejoined the visible ones.

Black Country 1 is a very large route with a lot of AI traffic. Do we know that OR can handle any route or activity that MSTS can handle? it is unlikely to be memory capacity on my computer because I have recently upgraded the mobo, doubled the RAM size and switched from XP to Windows 10 (so the graphics card memory (also doubled) doesn't overlay the system RAM any more).

[copperpen]

OR can handle ANY route or activity that MSTS can. You could probably double or even triple the number of AI trains in the activity for OR and still have no problems.

The AI "log jam" was probably caused by a too low value for SignalNumClearAhead for each signal type in the sigcfg.dat file. As supplied, it has a mix of 4, 2 and 1, probably one of the latter two that caused it. I usually change all to SignalNumClearAhead ( 6 ) and let the signal logic take care of things.

Missing panels of track indicate that your track packs are not up to date, or lack of memory causing them not to be loaded.

Now, as for testing with a common route, Peter has a test route on his website that quite a few of us now use. It is relatively small, has plenty of level track and several different gradients, a number of stations and a couple of fuelling points.

[vince]

copperpen, on 01 November 2017 - 08:43 AM, said:

OR can handle ANY route or activity that MSTS can. You could probably double or even triple the number of AI trains in the activity for OR and still have no problems.

Absolutely! I coded an activity for the PRR East Region Route with over 80 AI trains and about 25 running at any particular time.

copperpen, on 01 November 2017 - 08:43 AM, said:

The AI "log jam" was probably caused by a too low value for SignalNumClearAhead for each signal type in the sigcfg.dat file. As supplied, it has a mix of 4, 2 and 1, probably one of the latter two that caused it. I usually change all to SignalNumClearAhead ( 6 ) and let the signal logic take care of things.

Much of the signal problems I encountered on the PRR were SNCA values of 1 or 3 or 3!
I used Context ( http://www.contexteditor.org/index.php ) to set all the SNCA values to 6.
The activity I wrote, sort of as a 'stress test' for Open Rails and my system, performs flawlessly and this with every yard track visible to the player along his path from New York to Washington filled to capacity with useable loose consists.
I will release this activity when I finish fixing Philadelphia which is coming along fine.

regards,
vince