Hi all, recently I was enjoying some switching with the BR 08 and noticed the brake mode change switch on the back panel. When I tried it out it seemed to me that it was fully operational, but actually I noticed a problem using this feature: Every 08 is set in "air" brake mode by standard, which works fine. In this mode the "vacuum" system is turned off, which can be seen on the vacuum brake gauge: Both needles, the reservoir and the train pipe needle, point to 0 PSI. When you are turning the brake mode switch to "vacuum" now, the vacuum brake system begins to operate and the vacuum gauge shows 21 PSI for both needles as the train brake is being released. The loco works fine with this setting, too, and the vacuum brake does what it is supposed to. The problem I've noticed occurs when you switch back to air brake mode now. Switching back to air brake mode causes the vacuum train line pressure to drop slowly until it reaches 0 PSI again after some time. At the same time, the reservoir pressure remains at its 21 PSI. This vacuum brake setting causes the brakes to apply completely, even if the brake lever is set to "release". So the brakes are always applied now, no matter to which position the brake lever is set, what means that there is no way to release the brakes anymore in air brake mode. So in fact the problem is that the reservoir pressure doesn't drop to 0 PSI again while the train line pressure is doing exactly this, and I couldn't find any way to get the reservoir pressure dropping again. The only solution that I've found is to stay in vacuum brake mode (train line pressure climbs up again when switching back to "vacuum") and not to use air brake mode anymore after the brake mode switch was set to vacuum once. So, my questions are: Is the behaviour described above real, that means do locos with both air and vacuum brake system show this "problem" in reality too, or is this just a bug? If the 08 in TSW behaves correctly, what would be the procedure used when it is necessary to switch back from vacuum to air brake mode? So what do I have to do to get my loco fully operational again after I switched brake mode from vacuum to air? Many thanks in advance!
If you want to switch back you need to release the Vaccum. There´s a lever for it. Take a look into this Document to see its location: https://1drv.ms/b/s!AkJP7guxpoBwoJpK_Cp1dhBqH2QXmw?e=eXn5d3 Its on the 3rd page
Thank you very much for this document. Very helpful and informative! I didn't know that such additional info documents exist. Is there an official website where they can be found and are they written by DTG or by enthusiastic players? I just took a look into the usual manual and it seems that these additional info is not a part of it, which is also the reason why I didn't find these helpful pages when I was looking for a solution of my problem.
This one was created by the creator of the 08 from Meshtools i believe. it got shared on Discord at some point. I´m not aware if there exist more of those kind of documents made by the community.
