Hi all, I have been (or was until very recently) enjoying TVL until I started experiencing strange things to do with the train brakes. I’m just wanting to know if this is a known bug or whether I’m doing something wrong. I was just trying to do the 6E46 Tees - Redmire with the 37s, I changed cabs at the first turn around point, went through my internal checklist of shutting down the cab: Throttle off, Reverser off, Train brake into shutdown, Master Key off. I hadn’t set the AWS so that wasn’t an issue. I set up the other cab with AWS in, reversed onto the train just fine, went to pull away and I noticed the train brakes hadn’t come fully off. I tried releasing them again and the BC gauge on the HUD went down to about 3.2/3.1 and then crept down extremely slowly. Tried to pull away again with train brakes eventually released and in Running and the BC pressure started creeping up again. It got to about 12 on the HUD and stopped. Now am I doing something wrong here? Is this me not waiting for the brakes to fully charge before pulling away? I know in the past I have made the mistake of leaving something activated in the rear cab but I was extremely careful this time. Any help would be much appreciated.
My first guess is that you have been holding the train-brake lever in "Release". Don't do that! What it actually does is overcharge the system, leading to the situation you find yourself in. Use "Running" ("Release" is for using a small overcharge to give stuck brakes a push)
Ah! Yes I have developed a habit of holding the brakes in release now that I think of it, I don’t even know why. I did suspect it might be user error, how do you recover from it or un-overcharge brakes besides not being stupid and simply not doing it?
1). Leave them in Running and wait (a goodish long time), or 2) Go to Emergency, blow the system, and start over.
Thank you Archietoothis for asking the question and Solicitr for the thorough and correct answer, I've run into this a few times and figured it was a one - off each time and spent way more time than necessary fooling around until the train moved. Kekanha, your contributions in these forums continue to amaze and amuse me.