Clinchfield Journey Help

I was able to find a more workable solution than driving at 0.6mph for 80 minutes. I backed the train down all the way to the edge of the play limits which is right where the two south facing signals sit near the yard limit. The gradient is slightly less there and allowed me to get a "running" start. I say in quotes because I topped out at about 7.3mph on the way up and the speed fell off from there. I was able to get to notch 5 on the way up where the AMP's sat around 800 and the speed was around 6.3mph... I wouldn't call this an ideal solution, however it beats crawling along at 0.6mph for 80mins. Hope this helps anyone who encountered this same problem as I did.

 

I haven't tried the scenario mentioned in the OP yet, but just have to ask what may be a stupid question: what about sanding?

 

Sanding is absolutely mandatory here. But, if You want go under 3 hours with this scenario, choose this method:

 

I feel your pain, 23 miles to go and its taken 17 minutes so far at 0.6mph and I'm not clear of the siding. Made a coffee and came back

 

So if you go through the thread, there is another method which is better. You need to slide down a little bit where the grade is a bit less steep. Then you start from there and build up speed. With this method, you will hit around 10 mph by the time you get to the start area and its much smoother from there.

 

that makes no sense, the one time in order to get the train moving I had to set it to 3. this was regular weather, no wetness or rain or wind, summer season, some manifest train IDK which one.

 

Placebo effect. It actually doesn't matter whether it's in 1, 2, 3 or 4, since the SD40 was a a fully auto-transition engine. The only purpose of that lever is to control transitioning in any manual-transition engines in the MU (and there are none of those in TSW). Again, the SD40 had no manual transition mode;; playing with the lever does nothing.

 

I agree with what has already been written. You need to set up the train absolutely correct, in particular wait for appropriate brake pipe pressure to build up. Then it takes quite long until you have mastered the gradient (and you need to be very disciplined with notch 3 and the famous 0.6mph).

But I still recommend this scenario. Once the train is running at line speed, the route is very atmospheric at night with the snow and the illuminated road and loading facilities. Stunning!

 

I am having a little success* by rolling back as far as possible down the grade to where it is a little flatter.

*I have got up to 2.7 mph by time I was back where I started from in notch 4.

A fun update! I touched the controls, spun out, and am now doing 0.9.

 

Trying this one now as of writing this, Ill add to this comment as I go. Got a great start, up to 10 mph in the first 4 min. Still 23 miles, will add updated speed Going into tunnel. 16mph into first tunnel. Hit 25mph had to throttle down to 7 going through second tunnel. Back down to 20mph, slowly dropping chugging up the hill. 18mph and 22 miles to go. 24mph and 21 miles to go. Had to stop as there was another train coming my way so I was hoping for sub 2 hour but still may get it if haul butt. Still waiting after 5 min, maybe I just got here too quick? Got out and ran up to the next curve to wait and see when he is coming so I can start a slow crawl to get a jump start on moving. Got going again, now crusing at a steady 30mph, looking to finish strong. 20 miles to go. 18 left feeling good! Gotta stop again at 16 miles. Yet another train I have to wait for I DID NOT HAVE TO WAIT FOR LONG OR EVEN STOP I slowed down to 10 mph and slowly approaced, and they passed and i got to accelerate early! We are looking good! Now at 13 miles to go still at 30mph. Finally finished but not without its hurdels, I cant belive how long this took and seeing others setting this to crawl at 0.2mph or 6mph is insane to leave running. Final time of 1 hour 51 min and 15 sec.

 

Ludicrous!! Almost comical! Clinchfield should have been fixed years ago. Such a shame for an otherwise excellent route.

 

I'm not sure what's wrong in this account: CRR is a slow route, even slower if you're lugging a heavy train uphill.

The one mistake which needs fixing is the dispatcher routing northbounds through the passing loops even when there's no meeting: but that doesn't seem to have been the case in this run (i.e. there were meetings)

 

And the missing helper locos/banking coms.

 

And not to mention the classic issue with Clinchfield (among others) is that the mileage remaining is wholly inaccurate due to the insane curvature but TSW showing the "as the crow flies" distance rather than the track mileage. So that 10 miles left, get it done before bedtime turns into a two session marathon.

 

You can get round the lack of banking comms by using CTRL+ and CTRL- to cycle through the cabs - if the view looks a bit strange then try pressing 1. Make sure you are facing the right way, if you are looking at the caboose then you are facing backwards. Set up the helper as normal, but leave the brakes cut out - you want to control the brakes from the lead loco. You should be able to get the helpers to at least notch 3 without getting wheelspin. Then go back to the lead loco. It should be much easier to get going. You can jump between the helper and the lead loco as you want. I usually set the helper to idle once I reach the end of the steep bit.

 

Thanks, but no thanks. As I said to Matt when the error was discovered, I don't care for jumping between locos.

I'll wait until it's fixed.

 

I am now (tsw5) running this and i had no problems starting.
You still have to be carful with wheelspin but going to 20 mph was quite easy. So i think it is fixed.

 

What's the point of having rear locomotives if you cannot use distributed power? They just make the train heavier without any purpose. The workaround makes sense to me unless they add distributed power.

In real life you would have another engineer in there rather than taking a lot of risk of just using the front locomotives for power.