I was able to find a more workable solution than driving at 0.6mph for 80 minutes. I backed the train down all the way to the edge of the play limits which is right where the two south facing signals sit near the yard limit. The gradient is slightly less there and allowed me to get a "running" start. I say in quotes because I topped out at about 7.3mph on the way up and the speed fell off from there. I was able to get to notch 5 on the way up where the AMP's sat around 800 and the speed was around 6.3mph... I wouldn't call this an ideal solution, however it beats crawling along at 0.6mph for 80mins. Hope this helps anyone who encountered this same problem as I did.
I haven't tried the scenario mentioned in the OP yet, but just have to ask what may be a stupid question: what about sanding?
Sanding is absolutely mandatory here. But, if You want go under 3 hours with this scenario, choose this method:
I feel your pain, 23 miles to go and its taken 17 minutes so far at 0.6mph and I'm not clear of the siding. Made a coffee and came back
So if you go through the thread, there is another method which is better. You need to slide down a little bit where the grade is a bit less steep. Then you start from there and build up speed. With this method, you will hit around 10 mph by the time you get to the start area and its much smoother from there.
that makes no sense, the one time in order to get the train moving I had to set it to 3. this was regular weather, no wetness or rain or wind, summer season, some manifest train IDK which one.
Placebo effect. It actually doesn't matter whether it's in 1, 2, 3 or 4, since the SD40 was a a fully auto-transition engine. The only purpose of that lever is to control transitioning in any manual-transition engines in the MU (and there are none of those in TSW). Again, the SD40 had no manual transition mode;; playing with the lever does nothing.
I agree with what has already been written. You need to set up the train absolutely correct, in particular wait for appropriate brake pipe pressure to build up. Then it takes quite long until you have mastered the gradient (and you need to be very disciplined with notch 3 and the famous 0.6mph). But I still recommend this scenario. Once the train is running at line speed, the route is very atmospheric at night with the snow and the illuminated road and loading facilities. Stunning!
I am having a little success* by rolling back as far as possible down the grade to where it is a little flatter. *I have got up to 2.7 mph by time I was back where I started from in notch 4. A fun update! I touched the controls, spun out, and am now doing 0.9.