Waiting for the brake pipe to charge & release in a painfully slow task, made worse by TSW not properly running a DPU setup, of which the DPUs do not assist in recharging the train. Currently (speaking for 80-100 car trains), my experience has been the front will charge up to 89 and the rear to 64 in about 5 or so minutes. About 20-30 minutes later the rear will be 70-75, and an additional 45 minutes or so after that for the train to be fully charged, over an hour in total. This conflicts with some research I've been doing on US air brakes, including a WABCO brake test that showed a 100 car train should be fully released in ~20-25 minutes, albeit from full service and not air dumpted. Still, TSW is 2-3 times that. Unfortunately, I didn't save these links and now I can't find them, otherwise I'd share. In search of getting that down to something less painful I went experimenting. This is where I discovered for sure that the DPUs don't assist brake recharge in any way. If you set up the lead DPU, brake time is significantly reduced, on the order of about 20 minutes, total. Steps: 1. Set up lead cab like normal, but do NOT turn the "banking comm" on. Reverser in, fuel pump and control switch to on (leave gen field off), reverser to forwards, cut in brakes, release auto and apply the independent. I also like to put the loco in N3, not sure if the game simulates higher engine speed = faster compressor recharge but its more fun this way 2. Swap to the rear DPU, if you have two, just do it on the lead one. Since Ctrl+=/Ctrl+- doesn't always work, I just swap to the 3 cam on the rear unit and position it outside the window, which allows using all controls (except on the SD40). 3. Repeat step 1 for this cab, setting it up like it was lead. Independent isn't necessary here, however 4. Return to the front lead cab, and wait until both the rear indicator AND the brake pipe reach 90 psi, this should be about 10 minutes, depending on freight car type and length. Note that 89 != 90, and both may hold on 89 for quite some time. Sometimes the rear will reach 90 first, and you may be ok to proceed after that, depending on what you're comfortable starting the rear PSI at. 5. After about 10 minutes or so and both indicators read 90, return to the rear cab. 6. Cut the brakes out and move the brake handle to "handle off", and release the independent if you applied it. Doing this will cause the equalizing reservoir to dump on the DPU unit, the brake pipe will also fall and will take a minute or so to settle, but you should find it's at 80psi or greater, previously something that took about an hour to do. You can wait longer before step 5 if you want to get it even closer to 90. 7. Return the DPU cab to it's trailing state (undoing everything from step 1) 8. Return to the lead cab, hit the "banking comm" button to connect the DPUs 9. If you're going downhill at the start, it might be worth waiting a few extra minutes to get the rear as close to 90 as possible. Otherwise, cut the power (if you applied it in step 1) gen field to on, and you're good to go. So, DTG, now that 100-car trains are a thing in the game, I think it's time you get DPU setup and management implemented to improve the game play experience. Even if its just simple stuff for now and not the DPU fencing and other high tech stuff, it clearly makes a big difference in the train to have DPUs participating like they should.
I would love to see an option to accelerate initial brake charging, or some other way to avoid the initial brake charge time. I appreciate the realism, but I appreciate it more when I’m actually operating the train rather than having to start every run by sitting there for 10 minutes or so.
I personally like a bit of waiting. I mean when I'm about do to a 2 hour drive then that 10 minutes is nothing anyway. And having this bit of wait helps with the immersion for me, much better than jumping in, quicky setting up the train in 30 sec and rushing off, like on most other routes. That being said, I usually get going when the rear reaches 76 PSI and not wait until it's fully charged to 90. If the rear units helping with the charging and revving the engines actually made the process quicker, then I might even wait for actualy 90, as I suppose that's safer and more prototypical?
Subjectively, I have found that if once you set up the lead loco with banker on, but the reverser in neutral, increase throttle to run 3 will speed up the changing. If you use the '3' cam and look into the lead DPU its throttle is also at notch 3 and it is reved. I guess I will have to time this to see if it actually helps. I tend to let the rear charge to around 75 before throttling back, reverser in forward, releasing the independent on the lead and apply power again to get moving.
We all want an accurate experience, now we have it. (At least its taking a good direction) Complain to the lack of realism, simulation deepness and features of tsw2, then complain about the long braking release time. For me its like complaining in a flightsim, that the taxing to the runway takes too long on a big airport. I appreciate every aspect dtg goes in direction of realism when its about train behavior, coupling and brake physics. This is clearly the path everybody asked for. They didnt develop tsw with simugraph just for the nice graphics. If somebody doesnt like that, there is derail valley, an arcade based rail sim with economy aspect.
To each their own, but even in Run 8 we don’t have to wait for the braking system to charge if we don’t want to. The great thing about options is that one doesn’t have to use them if they don’t want to. I’ll also pull in a flightsim reference: the cruise portion of a longer flight can be boring with not much to do, but we have time acceleration as an option to help pass that time more quickly. Furthermore, if someone wants to skip the taxi phase of a flight they can opt to start on the runway. I almost never do, but the option is there for someone who just wants to get underway.
OK, I have run a test to see if reving the prime movers in the locos helped, used the same consist for both tests, 4 locos, 3 in front and one DPU, 102 cars and 1.2 miles long. It took 20 minutes to charge to 75 psi with and without power on. Though 20 minutes charge time is not that off reality for a train this size.
Here we are: Rivets class 37 for example is making the brake selector turning automaticly when coupling vacuum or air braked trains. I dont need a phantom operating switches in a simulation. I suggested a simple & advanced mod for rolling stock, but the more i think, it would need to add a ton of options for each loco. It is a bit of a split situation, especially because of the lack of manuals. There are negative steam reviews because players werent able to move the train. *i play basicly every tsw addon exists now, because im impressed of the details and the nice accurate features. Try to drive the cl.08 by the british rail manual. You can actually do that because every single detail is functional. If tsw would become an arcade "simulator", It would not be worth spending my time into it anymore.
Yeah you have absolute right. In TSW (107 wagons) it takes 10 minutes to release the brake and one hour to fully charge the train although the train have air in reservoir tanks. Its wrong The reservoir tank in every wagon have already 64 psi in emergency or handle off. So it should take very fast to charge the train to 64 psi (only hoses pipes charges) after 64 psi to 90 it must even charge reservoir tank in every wagons so much slower increase in air pressure now. Then the brake should release 66-68 psi (3-4 minutes) and the train should be fully charged in 12 minutes. In run8 same conditions (107 wagons) (0 psi in rear and 64 psi in reservoir tank in wagons) Then the brake release after 3-4 minutes and whole train be charged in 12 minutes (90 psi in rear) If the whole train is empty (no air in reservoir tanks at all) it takes 30 minutes to fully charge the train (90 psi in rear) Found this The Conrail EC99 brake rules suggested the following charging times, for cars with empty reservoirs: 1 car - 7 minutes 50 cars - 8 to 11 minutes 100 cars - 18 to 25 minutes 150 cars - 35 to 50 minutes Even this is interesting Is Brake "handle Off" In Beginning Realistic Link But some things is the same in run8 and TSW. Brake application in last wagons. 8-10 seconds (90 to 84 psi) But release in rear wagon is faster in TSW than Run8. 25 seconds TSW and in run8 it is 50 seconds
Thank you very much, just used this method myself and it did save me a lot of time. It's a shame, I bought this route mainly for the new physics, but as I've been striving to learn more about US Freight to take advantage of the new physics and use real world techniques it kind of fell apart.
Yes they have come a long way but there is still a lot to do for dovetail before they simulate a real freight train behaves in America. 1: They must change many things in Automatic Brake delays. (see my post above) 2: They must implement DPU both in Air charging and braking when DPU are in different places in train 3: Let us control the DPU (place fences) Here Is Run8 super point 1 is probably easiest. it's in simugraph who does this. it's just a matter of getting the right settings in it. (bad things in gets bad things out)
This technique I found isn't about getting rid of realism, actually IMO it's increasing it since it makes the DPUs participate as they do in real life. IRL anyway, you'd almost never be given a train completely dumped of air, and you usually have to run a brake test before you set off. If DTGs recharge timings were true to life, recharging, brake test, and recharging would take 2-4 hours to fully complete. I too was setting off with the rear at about 75, but if you're immediately going down hill, and might need the air brake that isn't the best decision since at least half the train won't apply brakes because pressure is already below minimum set. Also managed to find at least one of the articles: http://www.bst-tsb.gc.ca/eng/rapports-reports/rail/2004/r04v0100/r04v0100.html It's a CN incident report investigation, and the test was done at a Wabtec facility (not wabco as I said in my OP, oops)
Too bad we do not have access to simugraph. Then you yourself could have tested different settings to get it right. In Open rails we can change this.
That DPU does not pump air. That info in lead loco says says this. Air brake setup Dp-remote disabled so it's good that dovetail has this text. Guess that on real locomotives that one can turn off this feature. But absolute normal is the dpu pumping air. it provides safer trains.
Just another thing to be put on the core game upgrade list: accurate DPU simulation (including brakes, fencing, and distinguishing between true DPU operation and old-fashioned banking, which at present TSW treats identically).
I just did the test using the same train that I used above for the test without these steps. With only the lead units it took 20 minutes to reach 75 psi rear and brake pipe. Using the steps noted above my train reached 89 psi in both rear and brake pipe in 5 minutes (I should note here that my lead unit throttle was in idle while the DPU was in run 3.) At about the 10-minute mark the rear hit 90 psi while the brake pipe remained at 89 after 15 minutes when I stopped the test. I would be perfectly happy to start off after the 5-minute make when both were at 89. To refresh: this is the 15,06 ethanol train leaving Cheyenne with 3 locos in front and one DPU in back, the train is 102 cars with 100 being tank cars and 2 buffer cars.
