Hello all, I have gotten into US freight lately and have been playing Sand Patch, Sherman Hill and Cajon. I don’t use ‘dynamic’ weather as its not particularly dynamic, just predictable change ie fog to snow with an occasional thunderstorm. What I did this last trip was look at a Cheyenne yard webcam and custom set it to resemble what I saw! Brilliant right, but it seems the game only ships with fair weather power as I was SOL getting up the hill on a 20k ton manifest out of Cheyenne with 4 aces making it as far as the Cheyenne Chemical Plant before running out of momentum due to wheel slip, the sand being useless and ruining a good run. I enabled banking comms as soon as I sat down before configuring the air brakes etc. Its very annoying as theres always snow on the ground and there should be enough power for purpose. This happened on Sand Patch yesterday with a much needed coal train getting stuck due to a red light I was slowing for before it miraculously went green, robbing me of all my momentum and causing the wheelslip waltz. The same thing happened on Cajon also yesterday but that was because of the dynamic weather and of course it snowed after fog and stranded me in the middle of nowhere. I am very careful to set up correctly but it seems all it takes is a few snowflakes and you’re grounded. Has anyone any tips? I really like driving heavy trains in realistic weather conditions but it seems the power allocation gods are tighter than a ducks bum in usa freight TSW as 3 trains on 3 different USA freight routes have become stuck in identical conditions and it’s becoming quite vexing. If Cajon didn’t stutter that would be ok as it barely snows there and I repeated last nights fail with the same run today in the dry and was fine, it’s just the snow. Yes snow is a different beast but apparently trains still make the grades so whats going on. Sorry for the long post but any help or advice would be appreciated. Thanks Liam
Thank you for your timely yet utterly useless reply to my question, but to assure you I am familiar with ‘Scottish words’, taigh nam gasta ort!
Well now that’s taken care of Fred, you wouldn’t happen to be able to explain how to get 20 000 tonnes over a hill in the snow without the help of a warp drive would you?
I don't know what real procedures are like, but on Sherman Hill I like to take the Steam over Shap approach where you drive as fast as you can on the approach to the hill, then keep as much power applied as you can to get yourself up it. Admittedly, I haven't done any snow runs yet. In fact, in the UK today, some tracks require freight drivers to telephone the signaller and ask for a clear run up the hill to ensure they don't stop on it if they know their train won't start again. Indeed, I forgot about this on a clear Sherman run, and stopped the train to pick up a collectible. I then sat down again and remembered that the train wouldn't accelerate up the hill. I tried to spawn in another locomotive to help, but I was inexperienced with Free Roam so just left it. I believe the procedure for a stuck train is to get some help. So yeah. If you know you're approaching a hill that you can't stop on, perhaps wait a bit until you know it'll be clear. Alternatively, if you have to stop, use Free Roam to get some helpers to assist.
Thanks aeronautic for your reply. That’s interesting re UK freight operations thanks for that. Crossing the pond I am trying again on a snow run as Cheyenne WY is covered in the stuff at the moment and am currently crawling up the same hill in Notch 6 with 6 SD70ace’s hauling 15k tonnes whereas yesterday’s fiasco had a 20k ton load with only 4 and as I am writing just had to reduce to N5 due to wheel slip again and think this is going the same way as all the others. Where would I find a few spare SD70’s? My train is making 6 mph now in N4 and slowing further. I dunno, I only got back into trains because flight sim is a train wreck lately. Surely they tested this stuff, but why did yesterday’s train have only 4 engines for 20k and today has 6 for 15k. As I am making 6 mph with 6 engines up the hill, I assume I was doomed from the start yesterday and thats not a challenge, it’s impossible and that’s on them. I am all for realism and trains get stuck in the winter from time to time and how cool would it be to get some backup! However where are these spare engines, how do I find and control them? Is it a set the brakes and walk back to the yard, steal a couple of units and drive up to my train? Surely that’s impossible when the signal behind my train would be red. Anyway maybe it will make it today at 6mph for the next 21 miles! Either way thanks aeronautic for your insight.
And again using DTG’s light snow weather preset, my train cannot make it up the hill. I added a notch as it was stable at 6mph for a while but the wheels slipped so went back to N4 but the wheel slip persisted and thats that, another wasted gaming session. Not going to waste anymore time on this. I assumed it was a simulation but the more I look into this and the power disparity on display within scenarios and the inability to use a weather preset it’s not what I would call a simulator, its a game for taking pics or whatever and not for simulating real weather operations which is what I hoped it would be.
You'd normally contact the HQ or something similar and ask for some help. Perhaps an investigation would be launched after you were rescued, but they'd send some locos over to help. In TSW4 and TSW5, pressing tab brings up Free Roam tools, allowing you to summon any train anywhere. Simply spawn in an extra loco or two, couple up, and try again. This doesn't work on scenarios, but weather is pre-set in scenarios anyway. As for the wheel slip, if you increased to notch 5, simply reverting to notch 4 wouldn't help. You'd have to set it to 0 and wait for friction to stop the slip. Only then can you apply power again. Applying power during a slip will not stop the slip. Remember that the HUD only shows the gradient under the lead loco, so even if the HUD shows the gradient start to flatten, remember that the back of your train is still on the previous gradient.
Much as I hate taking this back off topic, I can’t help myself but to point out that James Doohan, who played Scotty, was actually Canadian. Sorry aboot that.
Why was it no use? Did the train stop before the slipping stopped? If so, then that's just something to learn from if you decide to try again later.
Just to check, did you make sure banking comm was actually running and you're not just dragging the rear locos? You can use the external camera to peek in the rear locos' windows and verify that the controls are mirroring whatever you do up front.
You don’t say ay, slap me in the face with a German Sausage I never knew, nor Fred apparently but from what he has posted here that doesn’t suprise me one bit either but you cannot force original series canon into a train discussion without first establishing we are not actually mentally set in the Kelvin universe, just saying, or strange new worlds but we haven’t met that Scotty yet. In summary, this is all FredElliots fault.
I see no Scottish words here lol. Could be blind but. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ If your referring to the title. It's we dinnae have the power. But that's not bad. Dw
Back on topic I'm afraid I don't drive American freight routes. Not my kind of thing so I can't really help you. Hope someone else can though. All the best, Nathan.
There probably won’t be a next time as I am resigning myself to the fact that this sim is as dodgy as flight sim and about as useful for what I am trying to do with it but if there is, I shall be more careful when choosing a title but I really didn’t put much thought into it. I am very disappointed in it as its all vanilla stuff, dtg weather preset and timetable service, surely it should at least do that. I am not making my own senarios or anything that isn’t stock game functionality and it should work.
Which service/journey/scenario exactly are you running? Hopefully someone so inclined can try the same one and maybe find a solution.
I just posted myself not long ago lamenting the inability to complete some services in winter conditions in this game. The simple answer liamlikesviolin, is that some freight services on some routes simply can not be completed if there is any snow on the ground. Its frustrating but its just the way it is at the moment. As for Sherman Hill specifically, some services will stall out completely as you've experienced but others you can actually stay at Notch 8 and ignore the wheel slip icon and the train will still carry on up the grade. So if you start wheel slipping don't throttle back right away to stop it, stay full throttle and see if it will keep going forward. Another problem area you might encounter is trains starting at Hermosa heading for Cheyenne, sometimes its hard to get them going on the grade you start on. At notch 2 the train won't move but when you go to notch 3 and the engines really rev up you get wheel spin and can't get moving. With some of those services you can feather the throttle between notches 2 and 3, allowing the effort to rise enough that you start inching forward but not so high that you start wheel slipping. Doing this carefully you can slowly accellerate to the point where it will fully take notch 3 without slipping and you're off. But like I said, some routes you just have to try the service and bang your head on your desk when you discovery its another uncompletable one. DW
Unfortunately there are a few of these services you can't complete in rain or snow. Sometimes if you can get a run up to the grade speeding then you can make it. Other times just leave half the train at the bottom of the grade! On single track make sure you leave the rest of the train in a siding, so trains don't start backing up and cause red lights everywhere.
Thanks DarkWolf for your insight, I was just trying another scenario in light snow that I was going to mention for others to have a go as Calidore suggested but won’t bother now as it is a known issue but wow what an issue and what a let down in a train simulation you cannot operate in Wyoming in the winter and I don’t think that’s being overly critical. Surely someone from the team tested a trip or 2 in the snow before releasing it to the public. I am on a team of beta testers for a Flight Simulator 3rd party developer smaller than DTG, surely the routes are passed out to testers, surely someone had that job and surely they reported it’s no go in the snow. I understand the physics of wet and dry operations are completely different and the pull and braking is based on and I assume it’s primarily simulated for dry operations kb force vs friction that wouldn’t give the same result in the snow so why are there no snow physics? Seems to me to be a massive oversight or worse, dev indifference to the issue, near enough is good enough and in a sim, that’s not good enough.
Don't know the accuracy of simulation in TSW, but as Darkwolf mentioned above, feathering power notches up and down should work, if done properly - just expect to be doing this, as in real life, in excruciating increments, raising speed 1 mph or less each time - it might take 20 minutes to reach a point where you are out of wheel spin speeds. On occasion, a loco may be decoupled and make pre-sanding runs up a grade before making another try, often backing up and trying to build up some speed into the grade.
Thanks for responding but that doesn’t work, not always anyhow, a lighter train yes maybe with enough power but as Scotty would say, and here we go again, “You cannie change the laws of physics”, or notch drop around the lack thereof.
