S Bahn routes have lots of short hops between stations needing a really responsive brake and throttle. The br143 seems totally the opposite of that as it’s quite slow to get off the blocks and has brakes that take ages to apply and release. does it really do s-Bahn services in real life, because it must be quite a tricky vehicle to get right for those lines. And then secondly- I’m obviously struggling with it in Dresden- anyone got any pro driving tips for the 143?
It does, yeah. The trick is to deal with the slow responses of the tap changer. If a stop is less than 2km away, I set the speed selector to 80 and use the conditional run program to get the taps down to 0 as soon as possible. If the stop is even nearer - say 1.5km - I never set the speed selector to more than 60, same procedure using conditional run. Since the brakes are quite responsive, you can often hit stations at 60km/h and still stop in an acceptable manner (including releasing the brakes before you stop). Really, there are only two tricks to the 143 from my perspective: Think ahead to account for the slow response of the tap changer. Familiarise yourself with the 3 programs it has (conditional run/traction only/brake only). They come in handy sometimes, especially conditional run.
That’s brilliant. This will be a first time for me to use the programs, what exactly do they do for the drive experience?
Basically, they are there to aid in getting the loco to do what you want it to do. While the speed selector looks brilliant on paper, it did result in complicating some procedures that are more accessible with a regular throttle. Here we go: Traction only This one should be rather self-explanatory. The 143 will only accelerate to the desired speed, but won‘t apply any brakes when overspeeding (i. e. when driving downhill). The main use for this is that you‘ll usually want to brake manually (just like with AFB) and this program will stop the loco from trying to get ahead of you. Generally useful when there are long stretches between stations or you‘re driving freight. Brake only Again, rather self-explanatory. If you happen to want the loco to take care of braking or just want to have a protection against overspeeding (while letting it role on the flat for example), this program will not dial up any taps to accelerate and will instead lead to the 143 only using brakes should you start overspeeding. Less useful to my mind, but occasionally of use. Conditional run This is the big one for S-Bahn services - which it was actually designed for as far as I know. Basically, the 143 will accelerate to the target speed as usual, but when reaching it, it won‘t keep traction on to hold the speed. Instead, it will wind down to 0 and neither accelerate nor brake from that point on, which will lead to the loco being ready to brake anytime you want (after reaching target speed). You can get the same result by putting the speed selector to off near target speed, but this program does everything for you so that you can concentrate on the route and braking. A little note on using the programs. Activating one will automatically overwrite the previous one (if one was active). Also, changing the speed selector will delete any active programs - set it to your target speed first and then activate the desired program. If you just want to know about the programs, you can stop reading here. I‘ll just drop some additional info if you really want to get down to how you‘d drive a real 143. Two other systems I haven touched upon are the auxiliary control and brake bridging. To get the simple one out of the way first: Brake bridging Since the driver‘s brake valve automatically operates the electric brake as well, it gets problematic if you need to brake while the 143 is not on tap 0. In that case, you‘d flick on the brake bridging before applying the brakes which leads to the driver‘s brake valve only applying air brakes. Just a tiny bit of realism if you want it. Auxiliary control This can be used to manually change tap - bypassing the speed selector (which needs to be in the on position though!). In real life, you‘d use this to start a train. Dial up to ~tap 3 (something around 20kN of force per traction motor) until you‘ve rolled a meter or two - then select the desired speed with the speed selector. (Edit: I misremembered the manual - it makes no mention of this. You should start a train with a low setting on the force selector and the speed selector in the vicinity of line speed.) You can also use the auxiliary control for small speed adjustments when the speed selector might be a bit overkill. (Edit: Can’t remember my source for that.) That‘s most of what I know about handling the 143. Honestly, she‘s quite the astounding piece of engineering for the time. Hope you could get something useful out of this wall of text
I’m so bowled over by how much there really is to learn about driving it. Thanks so much, hopefully that should see me keeping time a little better. I had figured to set speed selector to off before braking, so I guess I was already faking the conditional run. the 143 (& 155) fascinate me because of their different driving experience. Will be putting this into practice right away.
I know it could be an old post, but could you let me know when to enable the conditional run? From my test, Conditional run only works if it is pushed when the currect speed >= target speed. So if you set the target speed lower and then push the conditional run, it works. But If it is switched on while the train is still accelerating, when it reaches target speed and drops down a little bit, the traction still kicks in and keeps the current speed to the target.
I’m not entirely sure. From what I understand, the way it’s supposed to work is that you set a target speed via the speed selector, then activate conditional run, don’t touch anything and watch the magic work. TSW seems to be somewhat unrealiable and I’m unsure if it’s something I’m missing or one of the usual TSW hiccups.
