[rickloader]

I`m back from holiday now. I am somewhat ashamed that my route has taken up so much of David Peters and Carlo`s time. Clearly if such experienced users get trouble, I need to overhaul the GitHub title page for Nf Route. I am especially sorry to cause Carlo a big download when I`m sure he has many other demands on his time.
In British practice many wagons had hand brakes only, and no through vacuum pipe. These wagons are coloured grey. The only brakes for a moving train are on the locomotive and the brake van at the end. (operated by the guard or brakeman)
Some wagons did have vacuum brakes, or a vacuum through pipe. These are coloured brown. Where possible these braked wagons were put next to the locomotive, and the extra brakes allowed the train to run faster. Sometimes wagons with brakes were mixed in the consist behind wagons without brakes, and of course the vacuum brakes on these would not operate.
OR must be able to deal with any combination / mix of braked and no braked wagons and discontinuous brake lines . Nf Route has never been tested with "simple controls" Peters observation that brakes may not completely release in mixed trains is important.
NOTE for non- British readers. Wagons with brakes are called "fitted" - FITTED with vacuum brakes. Hand brake only wagons are "unfitted". Arranging a few wagons with brakes connected to the loco is called a "fitted head". All braked wagon trains are "fully fitted"


Timetables. New Forest timetables are in \RoutesWatersnake\activities\openrails. I don`t recommend trying to read a timetable-or file. tab is used as a separator. Instead open the .ods in Open Office or Libre Office. The tt files are too big for .xls format.
The static consists were split into a separate timetable because feedback suggested that users would get an error message "cannot find player locomotive" Players are expected to use the PLAYER timetable set.
I will seek help to improve the GitHub download
Thanks, Rick

[Peter B.]

Hello Rick,

Welcome back. I hope you enjoyed your holiday. And a big thank you for your explanation about the British practice of handling a mixture of fitted an unfitted wagons. It was very helpful for someone like me who has only a rudimentary grasp of the Westinghouse or Knorr type of airbrakes, but none so far of vacuum brakes.

In the meantime I had discovered my antipodean namesake's excellent "Brake Settings" page and had tried my luck at "re-fitting" through pipes on the unfitted wagons using BrakeSystemType ( "Vacuum_Piped " ). While not historically correct as I've learned now, it allowed saving and resuming without error in ORNYMG.

When time allows I'll do some more tests, especially to find what's sometimes crashing the Alt-F5 Brake Info HUD in ORNYMG. But then I'd rather use a daytime train, as literally running "Ferrovial Manoeuvres in the Dark" wouldn't do justice to your highly detailled modelling of that fine route.

Greetings, Peter

[rickloader]

Thanks for your continued interest.. The Coals to newcastle site is a very good resource.
You can run night trains in daylight by using the Offset found in the dispatcher window Ctrl 9
Night trains will load more quickly for testing, because only a few trains have to be run in the prerun phase
Rick