I am currently attempting to drive a service with two GP38-2s hauling a 32 vehicle, 4,063.6t coal train eastbound on Sand Patch. I have had the throttle at the maximum setting possible without wheelslip the whole way, and have been using sand for most of it. I am now stopped at Keystone (1.0% uphill gradient on a curve) as the train has stalled. When in notch 5 and sanding I am able to hold the train in position but not move forward. If I enter notch 6 the wheels slip and I go backwards. Is there any way to improve traction and get the train moving again? The rear locomotive is responding to throttle commands but the two combined do not seem strong enough to pull the train. Any ideas?
At least I thought that it was. Lower down I had been in the external camera and had seen smoke coming out of it but now I am sat in notch 5 and there is nothing happening on the 2nd loco.
Not sure if it's the exact same situation, but check out this thread, i think it will help you. https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/sand-patch-banking-locos.25948/
I have no bankers and the lead/trail switches are correctly set. On the rear loco all three desk switches are off. They are on on the lead. Brakes are set to cut-off on trail and freight on lead.
Ok i see what you're saying now. Doesn't seem like you have enough power with just the 2 Geeps to pull that train. Can you tell me the exact service? I'll try to run it later tonight and see what i can find out.
Other than putting it in full power and let the wheels slip there's not a lot else you can do other than not stalling it in the first place, you have the environment set to wet?
You can try in this way. When the train is stopped set the indipendent brake to 100% than release the automatic brake and start to apply power up to 5 or 6. As you see that the power the target ~550/600 fully release the indipemdent brake. In this way the train will be immediatly in traction, so as soon as you see that the train start mooving apply a bit more power with sand. Or be sure that all locomotive are set to work together.
I don't know yet if the game allows you to do this since it might not have been properly simulated, but in the real world, we hold on to a little bit of independent brake so that the shoes grab wheels and keep them from spinning out of control. Hang onto 10lbs of IND, and see if it holds.
Guess this is different to N542 - A where you get an immediate spad about 20 seconds after moving off?
So i ran this last night and was able to complete it, but it's tricky for sure. You really have to be on the throttle as much as possible before you get to the steeper part of the incline. I even let myself overspeed a little (like 37 in a 35) to avoid having to come off the throttle. Once the climb started the train slowed down quickly, and ended up doing about 9mph in notch 8 at the slowest, but i was back up to about 15mph when i hit the summit. So, if you hit a red signal or have to slow down early in the run i could see it being pretty easy to get stuck. Side note: I originally tried doing the preceding service (N542-A), where you load the coal for N542, but as another poster pointed out, there seems to be an erroneous SPAD at the very beginning that makes it impossible. The interesting thing is that the first time i tried it, the power was GP38-2 (x1) and AC4400 (x1), and when i reloaded i got an SD40-2 as the the trailing loco. Either of these combos would make N542 easier than 2 Geeps if N542-A could be completed. I wonder if you kept restarting N542, would the power units change at all?
