Does anyone else struggle with this? I tried a few free roam runs with unrealistic consists, such as the Flying Scotsman pulling BNSF cars, a BNSF ES44C4 pulling Metrolink passenger cars, and a UK Class 66 pulling German freight cars. Maybe the latter two are semi realistic but not simulated in regular TSW timetable. Yet in none of them I could get it to work, as the brakes in the rail cars would be stuck, even though they were released on the locomotive and I could get tractive effort(to no avail). Actually the Class 66 could overpower the German cars a bit at notch 8 throttle to make them move, but as soon as you lowered the throttle to less than full power they'd stop. And yes, I waited a bit for them to release and the consists were short enough that they wouldn't take that long to release anyway. What am I doing wrong?
Glad you asked. I had some issues getting the Santa Fe F7 to move these Amtrak coaches. Couldn’t get the brakes unstuck. Curious what the solution is.
You need to keep it realistic. A US freight car needs a pressure of 90 psi on the brake pipe to release the brake cylinders. The Scotsman can't provide this much pressure (72.5 psi / 5 bar I think), and 64 psi still equals a full service application. No way can you pull these cars with a european loco.
But what about the other ones? Why would an ES44C4 not be able to release Metrolink brakes for example?
These are pure freight locos. Use a GP38 or SD40, as they are used for shunting their brakes can be set to 110 psi passenger mode via the cut out valve.
What about adding an EMD F125 behind the ES44C4 just to release the brakes? Multiple units in this game has always been buggy so I really doubt that would work, but if it's just a regular trailing locomotive with a direct electrical connection to the lead it should work?
For free roam it needs to stay realistic. If a loco never handles passengers, it can't be used for them.
It must be the lead loco then. Its Equalizing Reservoir controls the brake pipe pressure. But you can use Cane Creek's AC44 for example. It allows you to increase the pressure to 110 psi.
Wouldn't work, unless you would be driving the F125. The cut-in loco is controlling the brake pipe pressure, so coupling a F125 would not magically bump the brake pipe pressure to 110psi.
They don't use all available locomotives to release brakes faster and use only the single lead one? Doesn't sound very efficient
Having more locos pushing air would only benefit for the time it takes to bring the loco end of the pipe back to full PSI. This generally doesn't take long. After 90PSI is reached at the loco end, it doesn't matter how many locos would be pushing air, as they have to hold 90PSI. The speed of release is then only governed by the pressure gradient throughout the brake pipe, because that dicates how fast the air will move. So it realy isn't worth the additional complications such system would introduce. It only makes sense to have more locos release brakes when those locos are at different ends of the trains, becasue that means that the pressure change propagates from each end of the train. Cut-out setting in the brake valve means exactly that - cut out, and not connected to the brake system in any way.
