This is something thats frustrated me from the start playing Sand Patch Grade back in the day when I got TSW2. Many services can not be completed if you have any snow on the ground, you slow down and start wheel slipping and grind to a halt with no way to complete the service. You can apply enough power to hold your position but when you give it just a little more power it starts slipping again. Sanding never seems to help, does sanding ever help? I'm wondering if it even functions. I've encountered services like this on several routes now and it just seems like really bad game design to present the player with a challenge without giving them the means to overcome it. Its like if a flight sim gave you a mission to fly from airport A to airport B but then overloaded your plane to the point where it cannot get airborne from airport A so you end up careening into the trees off the end of the runway every time. You often encounter these situations well into a service so you end up feeling like you wasted a bunch of time on something you could never complete anyways. It would be great if the game automatically added additional locomotives to the consist if the weather conditions require it or if we had the ability to summon a helper locomotive via the dispatcher function. As is its very furstrating attempting services on mountainous routes not knowing if its even completable or not. DW
I see lots of examples of people here (and once in real life) of applying sand when the train is stationary. Althoigh, I wonder if it is correct. As I understand it, sand goes between the wheels to improve adhesion, but since the sander can't exactly fit between the wheels and rails, it applies the sand in front of the wheels so that they run over the sand. I believe this is why steam trains have a forward and rearward sander. As such, my intuition thinks that sand should be ineffective for a standing start.
SPG is one of my most played routes and I totally know what you're talking about. The issue is more prevalent on that route than any other. An explanation I heard was that when the route was made (TSW1 era), the physics/weather/adhesion/etc were modelled a bit differently. Later with TSW2 and beyond they made it more realistic in the core game which was overall an improvement but made those old consists impossible on SPG in adverse weather. One thing I recommend to everyone on SPG for any kind of all weather service is DO NOT HAVE ANY SD40 IN YOUR CONSIST. Yes, you can only actually choose your lead unit, but if you have SD40s as your trailing units just keep restarting the service, you will get a new random power lashup each time and eventually you will get one with all AC44s/Dash 8s which will be a much better experience. Freight routes made after SPG, if anything, have too much power in their consists so you don't really have the same issue.
Well, the pipe is aimed "down the crack" with high pressure, it will get in there. Of course, you could, with screw couplers, release the brakes of the locomotive and roll back a tiny tiny bit.
Yeah Pveezy, I think I've done that before myself. Restarted a couple of times to ensure my consist had all AC4400s and it made the difference between stalling very close to the peak and not. Think that only works for some services though. I also think I've heard the same thing about SPG being pre-TSW2 and thus does not work as well with the new physics, but there are services on Sherman Hill and a few on Horseshoe Curve that have this issue and they were released for TSW2. Some freight services on TSW3's Kassel-Wurzburg can get stuck if you get stopped by a red light on some grades necessitating you purposely leaving late to ensure all traffic ahead of you is far enough ahead that you get all greens which is not the most realistic workaround. I made my original post after battling futiley to get a small freight train up the mountian with snow on the ground on Tharandter Rampe. So it seems even some routes made for the newer physics have uncompletable winter services. As to sanding, I don't think I've ever found a situation in this game where I could not move forward without it but I could with it. If I am wheel slipping and I hit the sand I can't recall ever seeing any noticable change in the train's performance. I wonder if there is some service or scenario that demonstrably demonstrates the effect of sanding. Or maybe I am just not understanding where and when sand is meant to be used, should\can it be used when climbing a long steep grade? DW
