This is a peculiarity of the GP38-2 (UP version) in Pen. Corr; it does not seem to happen with the CSX version or the other Sand Patch locos. When you couple to a rake of cars, often the PCS valve pops and you have to reset it. It's easy enough to understand, conceptually; those idle cars' brake pipe is empty, and as soon as you hook up air rushes in from the loco pipe, with flow exceeding the PCS trip threshold. What I'd like to know is, is there a way to prevent this happening?
Did you earlier switched alerter on? After coupling to the cars try switching it off and then on again.
It’s because you can’t open the angle cocks manually, the air rushing into the cars trips the PCS Valve in the same way uncoupling the cars accidentally dumps the air. It’s a really unfortunate by product of not being able to actually interact with the coupling process.
I have tried to avoid doing that because in real life the alerter can't be turned off (and any engineer who managed to do it would be fired). And of course in real life the PCS has nothing to do with the alerter anyway; it's a purely pneumo-mechanical system integrated with the brakes. But it may be a necessary workaround given the abstracted coupling procedure. It's interesting that this only seems to be an issue with PC and not SPG; the UP and CSX GP-38s do seem to be slightly different game models.
It is an interesting discussion. I would think that it should not happen giving the coupling is automated, so the automated "person" on the ground doing the coupling should be opening the angle cocks slowly to avoid the problem. Run8 covers this nicely by giving you manual control over the cocks and giving you three positions, closed, partially open and open. It would be awesome if this was added to TSW2. I'd be happy to connect couplers, hook up air hoses and manage the cocks. Adds to the fun and realism.
