[steamer_ctn]

Up until the late 1980s the NSW (Australian) railway system had approx 13,000 4-wheel coal wagons which did not have air brakes ( hence called non-air wagons) fitted to them and thus relied on the loco and brakevan for train control. This made for some interesting operations, such as pinning handbrakes down on steep descents etc.

MSTS supposedly had a token for the setting parameter "BrakeSystemType" called air_piped, which was supposedly to cater for non-air wagons. I don't believe that it was enabled though, and it was therefore necessary to "mock" up these wagons by reducing braking forces, etc to very small values.

A question to the developers, is it possible to add the air_piped token to "BrakeSystemType" in OR to cater for these sorts of wagons?

Thanks

[Genma Saotome]

OR has a partial solution already for your unique situation... check the manual for Retainers. In North American operations retainers were a way to apply the brakes on individual cars w/o any change in air pressure in the brake line. They'd be set at the top of the descent and released at the bottom. How many cars to be set and how strong the set varied by the weight of the train and the grade.

I called it a partial solution because I believe the effectiveness is based on the performance of the air brakes and I'm just not sure how the one system, using fixed retainers instead of engineer control equates to the example you cite. Perhaps it's a full solution, or complete miss, but it sounds like its fitness is something you could investigate given your familiarity with the actual problem to solve.

[steamer_ctn]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for the response.

Based on what I understand from your response, I could apply the brakes on a number of cars using the retainers before starting down the slope. However my question then is, if during the descent, I wish to fine tune the descent by applying the locomotive and brakevan brakes through using the train brake, would this not also apply the brakes on all the other cars? The purpose is to mimic a train with only "automatic" braking on the loco and guardsvan.

My main desire is to,

i) to remove the "automatic" air-brake capability from all wagons,
ii) apply "handbrakes" on a number of cars at the top of the slope, (this acts as a coarse control of the train)
iii)and then use only the locomotive and brakevan brakes to fine tune the descent.

Does your suggestion still apply in this scenario?

Thanks

Peter

[Genma Saotome]

I think you can get what you want with the exception of the backend. For everything else I think the use of retainers and locomotive brake (not train brake) might be what you want. I think to have the retainers work you'll need to leave the basic braking data present. Absent a physical signal in a brake line, by what means does the rear car "know" what to do WRT braking?