[Sid P.]

Peter,
After a compete close and restart , things are looking more as expected. The cars with the added "Retainer" string now hold 10 PSI and show "RV LP" on a "Low Pressure" and 20 PSI and "RV HP" on a "High Pressure" retainer set when running the downloaded X2770! The other cars have no retained pressure.
But I now have to add the extra string to all of the cars for which I want to have working retainers. Was that the intention? I thought I had it made when they worked by default with my compiled version!

But really, this is getting to be a great brake system simulation!

Cheers,
Sid.

[atsf37l]

When the retainer function was first released it worked just fine with all cars without the need for any modifications to the .wag files. Why was that changed? Now the low pressure and high pressure don't work at all. Only the slow direct setting works. Build 2769. :pleasantry:

[atsf37l]

Sid P., on 07 January 2015 - 02:16 PM, said:

Peter,
After a compete close and restart , things are looking more as expected. The cars with the added "Retainer" string now hold 10 PSI and show "RV LP" on a "Low Pressure" and 20 PSI and "RV HP" on a "High Pressure" retainer set when running the downloaded X2770! The other cars have no retained pressure.
But I now have to add the extra string to all of the cars for which I want to have working retainers. Was that the intention? I thought I had it made when they worked by default with my compiled version!

But really, this is a great brake system simulation now!

Cheers,
Sid.

Literally thousands of cars to update! I dug in an looked at my various mini routes and main routes with hills. Give or take a hundred or so link & pin and straight air cars, total wagon count on my system: 16,554

Please put it back. :pleasantry:

[Sid P.]

gpz, on 07 January 2015 - 01:26 PM, said:

You might not have a clean check-out, that's why your own compile behave differently. You may ask for "check for modifications" to see what files differ in your personal copy.

Hi Peter,
You were right - I had updated the wrong directory, and had compiled an earlier version that still had the old code- that's why the retainers worked without the added string in the .wag files.

Cheers,
Sid

[gpz]

Anything can be done, but how was it implemented in MSTS?

1. How the Retainer_4_position and Retainer_3_position BrakeEquipmentType() settings are used?
2. How to configure cars without retainers, which is quite specific to North American railways, and not used at the rest of the world?

My assumption is: include Retainer_3_position string into BrakeEquipmentType() if the car has a 3 position retainer, include Retainer_4_position if it has a 4 position one, and don't include it if it has no retainer valve.

A main menu option of "Retainer valve on all cars" may be added, as an MSTS-compatibility setting.

[markus_GE]

atsf37l, on 07 January 2015 - 03:52 PM, said:

Literally thousands of cars to update! I dug in an looked at my various mini routes and main routes with hills. Give or take a hundred or so link & pin and straight air cars, total wagon count on my system: 16,554

Please put it back. :rotfl:

I think, Route Riter has a cool options to process hundreds of cars with the same setting, adding parameter lines. IDK, however, if it can remove lines, too.

Of course, some options in ORTS to make it work without changing more than the tickbox would be a lot easier, still ;)

Cheers, Markus

[Sid P.]

I think that requiring a massive update to the .wag files by all users is not a good idea. Why not leave the retainers to be present by default, and if necessary add a constant like "Retainers_none" to cars that should not have them?
Many users are not comfortable doing mass tinkering with their files.
The old system looked pretty good to me, after I figured it out.

Cheers,
Sid.

[gpz]

Sid P., on 08 January 2015 - 05:42 AM, said:

Why not leave the retainers to be present by default, and if necessary add a constant like "Retainers_none" to cars that should not have them?

Please keep in mind that the majority of the world doesn't use retainer valves at all, the cars are not equipped with it. It is limited only to North-American railways. So the current situation is that one the affects less cars. :rotfl:

And currently feature expansion is disallowed, and MSTS didn't have a Retainers_none setting, but in contrast it had a Retainers_3_positions and Retainers_4_positions one.

[gpz]

I have added a main menu option to add retainer valves to all cars in r2773. By activating it there is no need for editing the wag files.

[Sid P.]

gpz, on 08 January 2015 - 06:41 AM, said:

Please keep in mind that the majority of the world doesn't use retainer valves at all, the cars are not equipped with it. It is limited only to North-American railways. So the current situation is that one the affects less cars. :oldstry:
And currently feature expansion is disallowed, and MSTS didn't have a Retainers_none setting, but in contrast it had a Retainers_3_positions and Retainers_4_positions one.

Your point about non-North-American cars is well taken. The menu option in X2773 works fine.
But incidentally, I could not find any examples of the "Retainers_3_Positions" or "Retainers_4_positions" setting in my own MSTS files using TextCrawler.

I notice that the "Initialize Air Brakes" command ignores the retainer settings (they reset to zero) - this continues to support the simplified (but not realistic) operation for coupling and setting up the brakes: \ (backslash) to connect the hoses and set the angle cocks, Shift+/ to fast initialize the brakes.
But the great new and more complete procedures to realistically uncouple and couple are still intact !

Cheers,
Sid.