The B&O GP9 seems to have very weak, or old, brakes when compared to just about every other U.S. locomotive in TSC. Is this considered accurate? I make up for its weak brakes by setting the hand brakes on one or more cars in the train, and have no trouble completing scenarios that way. But just wondering what everyone's perception of the brakes are in the GP9, and if there is anyone who has created a mod for the GP9 to improve the brakes if they are seen as lacking. Thanks!
They're not self lapping, which makes them kinda harder to control, as you have to move the handle back to the Lap position yourself as soon as the desired brake pressure is reached. Whether the braking power is realistic - hard to judge. Playing the scenarios which tell you how to operate the brakes, it seems the developer Michael Stephan (Golden Age Railroading / G-TraX) was pretty confident. It's a bit of a challenge yes. Be aware that most US autobrakes are not displayed realistically in TSC considering brake pipe charging times - some give you the Ctrl+Shift+1/2 option to set the timings to realistic modes. So the game made you get used to easy braking. Haven't played that for a while - will see how long it takes for different consists to stop using a six pound reduction (84 psi BP which should give a brake cylinder pressure of about 15 psi (2.5x). Most trains are heavy in B&O though... don't forget to use the dynamics For judging brakes, I'm using Run8 for comparison, but it doesn't have a GP9.
No idea how experienced you are KodiakJac, so excuse me if I'm saying trivial stuff. I still didn't learn the four pipes so excuse me for layman terms. The old brakes in TSC are not realistic. Brake effort builds and releases too fast, and brake effort coefficients are all over the place. Most things were designed for purpose - to be playable on specific routes, scenarios. One loco, ten wagons. Sometime around 2014 DTG started releasing locos with two new scripts. The first is a relatively simple one, used on NS Coal District and Canadian Mountain Passes (both ES44AC). You just set the target pressure down from 90 to whatever you desire, and it will gradually equalize throughout the consist. You can flipflop to some extent, if you want faster application. But it's crazy slow. The second is the one with detents, used on Sherman Hill, Soldier Summit and I guess most everywhere else since. It has a faster initial application, otherwise roughly the same. You can't really apply below minimum, you have to bleed air to do so. In both cases, you can run out of air. Casuals (including Saturday's stream) just add brakes for a couple seconds, release, reapply, etc. That doesn't work. Air pressure is used to create brake effort, and upon release, you lose the air used, it needs to recharge. Scripts usually simulate that. What you want to do is apply as little air brakes as possible, and with lapped brakes (trusting torfmeister here), you must move it back to just lapped (usually around 20%) or it will keep building pressure - and upon releasing, more air will be vented (lost). Dynamic brakes, albeit terribly underpowered, can be used to offset the last bits of brake effort. I have a strong suspicion that the realistic coefficients are around the medium setting as I've actually seen long freight trains stop quite easily on Youtube. So it shouldn't take 2 minutes to build 20 PSI. I also doubt that you need 65 PSI applied to stop loaded coal in 3 miles. If so, the German won and US railroading 100% sucks.
There are more than one B&O GP9, the original is in the WVN which is 2017 origin and the latest is in the B&O Mountain Sub (2021) which has the brakes tweaked by Smokebox. You could use the Mountain Sub units on the WVN. The WVN and Mountain Sub prototypically would have had some handbrakes applied on descents until DPU became the norm. edit : For clarity - the WVN is listed on Steam as B&O Kingwood Branch.
It's easy to use the Mountain Sub's GP9 simulation.bin as a reference and edit the Kingwood Geep accordingly to have consistent physics. But the overall braking power of MountainSub's GP9 is even weaker: RailVehicles\Diesel\EMD GP9\Simulation\gp9 simulation dyna.xml: <TrainBrakeAssembly>: Kingwood <MaxForcePercentOfVehicleWeight> 60 MountainSub <MaxForcePercentOfVehicleWeight> 38 Whereas MS's release rates are higher.... If you want easy play, you could edit the engine.bin's <TrainBrakeControl> to use "GradientSelfLapLimitedHolding" to have default Kuju behaviour (0 - Release, 0.02 - GradientSelfLapLimitedHolding, 0.5 - FullService, 1 - Emergency). The brakes are not scripted and use the core controls directly, so that's easy to modify. So for myself I'm taking the Kingwood GP9 as it is and enjoy the challenge and the feel of the weight of my train, needing to apply the brakes with foresight.
Thanks for all this info, guys! And it was the GP9 on the Kingwood Branch I was thinking about in my OP question. And based on what you're all saying, I'm going to leave the brakes alone. The GP9 is a challenge on the Kingwood Branch, that's for sure. And in general, it's the non-self lapping brakes that give me the hardest time in TSC. So, I'll just keep working at getting better with them! And thanks for the tips on brake mods, Torf! If I decide I can't get along with a loco at all, I'll have that in my hip pocket! Cheers!
