TSW4 I'm half way through a scenario stopped at a red light. It's raining. Slope is up 0.6% with a full compliment of coaches. It doesn't matter what I try, X sander, gentle regulator. I cannot get it to move forward. It just starts to creep backwards with wheel spin. Any ideas or suggestions..
I don’t have the Flying Scotsman but based on the performance of other TSW steam locos it shouldn’t have any problems on a 0.6% gradient. What cut-off % are you using? Have you tried reducing it?
As with most steam locos, the optimal process is the following: apply brakes, set reverser to 75% and apply only 10% regulator (or the highest value that still prevents wheel sleep and train sliding backwards). Then release brakes and apply some sand until you start moving. Small amount of brakes may still be needed to prevent train sliding backwards in high gradients and low adhesion conditions (welcome to steam era!) Reverser should be moved to 50% range short after starting moving. You can also try to start from a 50% reverser setting directly if the towed mass is not too high. Train will take a while to start moving and it will do it at very low speed. Once you are moving, and not before that, regulator has to be increased at really very small steps during the whole process as wheel sleep can still happen at high speeds and reverser has to be reduced in accordance to speed. Most likely you need to stay below 20% regulator even until you passed the gradient and you gain speed afterwards due to degraded adhesion factor caused by rain, so you should only reduce reverser to gain speed in that case. Cheers
Keep the cylinder c0cks open as this will reduce the tractive effort a little. This immediate manic slipping on cracking open the regulator is another aspect of where the steam physics on the TSW kettles are way off.
