[beresford]

The train starts in Kidder station headed by 8F 48773 (which I have actually driven). Looking across the cab, one gauge glass is completely full and one is completely empty! The stats display says 8". When the train starts to move a message comes up 'Water level has dropped too far, plug has fused and loco has failed'.

[copperpen]

I have taken a quick look at this and the fault lies somewhere in the eng file. When you open the throttle for some reason the cylinder usage goes very high and this uses all the water above the fusible plug very fast.. There is also a coupler problem somewhere, keeps on breaking, and the engine is more slippery than a banana skin. The two glasses are for the boiler water level and the tender water level. I don't think we have yet linked the second glass to the tender water level.

I will take a closer look at the eng file and see if I can identify the culprit. I also drove one of the panniers that also looked a bit suspect, so this may be a problem with more than one engine on the SVR.

[copperpen]

Bug is in the eng file. Cylinder diameter has no units after the figure so a default is used. It should be CylinderDiameter ( 18.5in ) but the in is missing. The broken coupler was caused by the very high TE generated by the vastly oversized cylinders.

[dennisat]

This isn't the only weirdy with the SVR. There is a "dead" version of Manor 7802 (which is the subject of "Out Of Puff") which has "BrakeCylinderPressureForMaxBrakeBrakeForce( 0 )" specified. If you couple up to it and initialize the brakes ("Shift /") OR immediately throws an exception. If you set "BrakeCylinderPressureForMaxBrakeBrakeForce( 25 )", the value in the non-dead 7802, everything works fine.
MSTS must have an amazing set of workable defaults to fall back on when "silly" values are specified. However, it leads people to believe they've constructed a good eng file when in fact some of their values are being ignored.
Perhaps OR should give a message to say that a default is being used either because a value wasn't specified or the value is out of range or incompatible with other parameters or whatever.

Dennis

[beresford]

 dennisat, on 23 January 2014 - 01:36 AM, said:

This isn't the only weirdy with the SVR. There is a "dead" version of Manor 7802 (which is the subject of "Out Of Puff") which has "BrakeCylinderPressureForMaxBrakeBrakeForce( 0 )" specified. If you couple up to it and initialize the brakes ("Shift /") OR immediately throws an exception. If you set "BrakeCylinderPressureForMaxBrakeBrakeForce( 25 )", the value in the non-dead 7802, everything works fine.
MSTS must have an amazing set of workable defaults to fall back on when "silly" values are specified. However, it leads people to believe they've constructed a good eng file when in fact some of their values are being ignored.
Perhaps OR should give a message to say that a default is being used either because a value wasn't specified or the value is out of range or incompatible with other parameters or whatever.

Dennis

Thanks guys, that's a terrific service. Seems the 8F is a very powerful engine, but only for a while! Perhaps the list of recommended OR edits for each Activity should be gathered somewhere.

[copperpen]

 beresford, on 23 January 2014 - 01:52 AM, said:

Thanks guys, that's a terrific service. Seems the 8F is a very powerful engine, but only for a while! Perhaps the list of recommended OR edits for each Activity should be gathered somewhere.

There is no need for edit sets for each activity. It is only the eng file that needs to be set up properly for OR to give standard and sturdy results across the board. I have exaimined the BA 8F and compared it with the CCW 8F and have the following observations.

The BA 8F animations cannot be altered in the s file, trying to do so results in a frozen animation and an invisible engine. Using the correct WheelRadius in the eng file gives a slow animation, so this has to be "massaged" to get things looking right. Comparing the two engines, I have adopted the CCW radius of 0.49m in the engine section of the eng file. This gives a pretty good animation rate for the wheels and motion and gives a reasonable steam usage figure when running.

If you have not done so, add these lines to your 8F eng file in the engine section after the Injector lines,

ORTSEvaporationArea ( "2250*(ft^2)" )
ORTSGrateArea ( "28.65*(ft^2)" )
ORTSFuelCalorific ( 14526btu/lb )
ORTSSuperHeatArea ( "230*(ft^2)" )

These lines will enable the correct OR power and usage figures. Using these mods to the eng file I have driven this engine at a steady 31-32mph while pulling about 980 tons on the level. Control settings at this speed were 29% reverser and 60 % throttle, and steam usage was about 2000lb below production.

The evaporation area is a bit higher than it should be because OR currently under-estimates the true figure for maximum steam generation. The figure on that line dictates how much steam is produced and thus how fast the engine can go without using more steam than the boiler can produce.

[cjakeman]

 copperpen, on 23 January 2014 - 06:28 AM, said:

If you have not done so, add these lines to your 8F eng file in the engine section after the Injector lines,

ORTSEvaporationArea ( "2250*(ft^2)" )
ORTSGrateArea ( "28.65*(ft^2)" )
ORTSFuelCalorific ( 14526btu/lb )
ORTSSuperHeatArea ( "230*(ft^2)" )

You should be able to use the simpler format:

ORTSEvaporationArea ( 2250ft^2 )
ORTSGrateArea ( 28.65ft^2 )
ORTSFuelCalorific ( 14526btu/lb )
ORTSSuperHeatArea ( 230ft^2 )

It's only MSTS that insists on the cumbersome "2250*(ft^2)". Don't insert any spaces though.

[copperpen]

 cjakeman, on 23 January 2014 - 10:41 AM, said:

You should be able to use the simpler format:

ORTSEvaporationArea ( 2250ft^2 )
ORTSGrateArea ( 28.65ft^2 )
ORTSFuelCalorific ( 14526btu/lb )
ORTSSuperHeatArea ( 230ft^2 )

It's only MSTS that insists on the cumbersome "2250*(ft^2)". Don't insert any spaces though.

That certainly simplifies things. I only used the old MSTS notation because that is what I was given originally.

[beresford]

When I talked about collating edits for all Activities on a given route, I wasn't just thinking about the 8F. For example dennisat has identified a reversing point that needs shifting to make another Activity work properly. BTW I played Santa Special Southbound Part 1 with 45110 and that worked beautifully with OR.

Looking in my BA_BR_8F_48773 directory I find I have three ENG files, one preceded with 'Dead', one preceded with a hash, and one with the missing 'in' against cylinder diameter. Which one(s) should I edit?

[markus_GE]

 beresford, on 24 January 2014 - 03:53 AM, said:

Which one(s) should I edit?

If you don´t know which files are used in whichever activities, best would be to back up all files in a subfolder of the engine´s folder inside trainset, and edit all three...

Cheers, Markus