right ok losing power in the scotsman cutting back the reverser doesn't work still losing power seriously DTG this is stupid why is this a thing the train cant get any speed on hills its a joke i've done everything right down to opening the cylinder and cuting back the gears and giving it more on the regulator and still losing speed on hills this is a joke please fix (xbox one s )
Steam simulation is still in a very rudimentary development stage on TSW, don't expect a change soon.
Calm down bruv Granted that steam physics isn't up to the mark but we can still make it work ! Let's go one step at a time. The reverser (or cutoff) is responsible for controlling the amount of steam being let into the cylinders per cycle. When you're starting the train from a standstill, you'll need to have the most torque delivered to your driving wheels ( the big ones ). To achieve that, put the reverser in forwards to 75%. Once you're under motion, pull the cutoff back towards 25% 'gradually'. It's just like the manual transmission of an automobile, the only thing being that it's continuous rather than a discrete ( notched ) one. Another easy way to go ahead with this is - 75 to start 50 to accelerate 25 to coast / keep going (not optimal but good for a general run) If you're talking about opening the cylinder cocks, they've got nothing to do with the 'running' of the loco. They're there to prevent damage to the piston-heads because of condensation in the cylinder (which isn't actually modeled in the game). So you can safely ignore it in the learning phase if it's bothering you. Regulator - It controls the amount of steam 'from the boiler to the cylinders'. Before opening the regulator take note of how much steam pressure you have in the boiler. LMS 3Cs ( the ones on Jubilee & 8F ) operate at the maximum pressure of 250 psi. The moment you open the regulator, that pressure will come down for a while as that steam is being consumed. It all folds down to your steam management on how quickly you'll be able to restore it back. Once you've reached a comfortable 25-30 mph and you're getting ready for a race, always make sure you have enough boiler pressure to do so. It's absolutely okay if it falls down to 180-200 psi during the starting phase. But opening the regulator wide open at this moment will decimate the remaining pressure. In such case - Close the regulator completely. Wait for the pressure to build up ( it's the big gauge on the top; on the fireman's side ) Now the interesting part. Look for the cylinder pressure ( gauge on the driver's side in Scotsman, use the HUD or your experience for others ). Note that when you open the regulator, the needle will start to pulse. The pulse should 'average-out' around 50% of the max. value on the scale. Don't open the regulator any further unless you're sure what you're doing. This is a very rough overview. Your max. possible speed & the rate of acceleration will also depend on a variety of factors like gradient & tonnage. Let me know which hill you're climbing and what tonnage you're pulling and I'd like to see the best performance I can get there. Cheers
There are several problems with steam engines and they don´t mean physics are wrongly implemented in game (they aren´t perfect nor a disaster either). The problems are caused by the nature of steam engines themselves: 1. Steam efficiency was very limited and in addition to that you needed to pull the tender too, which means several extra tons. Steam engines were therefore heavy, to start with. You will lose power if steam pressure entering the cylinders is too low, which can happen if you use a too low regulator setting or on the other hand you keep regulator maxed out but you don´t feed boiler with water or coal as required. You can also lose steam, and therefore power, if or you leave steam ejection open all the time. Using automatic fireman will always keep boiler in its optimal condition for operation. I would suggest to start with that until you master driving itself. Handling all aspects, including boiler management, driving and signalling can be simply too much to start because that requires a lot of monitoring for only one person. 2. You need to set reverser correctly as it acts as a gear box. High setting will produce max tractive effort but low speed. Low setting will produce high speed but low tractive effort. You need to perform the reverser transitions correctly to maintain the optimal speed/effort balance up to the point where locomotive won´t accelerate or pull any further due to its own design limitations, train mass or track profile. Regulator is like an accelerator to some extent but it just provides steam to cylinders. However cylinders max capacity is fixed, so they have a performance limit and more steam won´t solve it because bolier can provide steam at a max pressure as well. So there´s a point where steam can´t be compressed any further and can´t occupy more room on the cylinders because they are full. That´s the locomotive performance limit. 3. You only need to increase regulator if steam pressure starts to drop. More steam won´t always result in more traction or speed (due to the max capacity of the cylinders and boiler). Indeed at high steam pressure you don´t need too high regulator setting for instance and too high pressure will result in boiler exploding unless you release steam, which is a waste of coal and water as that steam is not used. The key for traction and speed in steam engines is the correct reverser setting. That´s the relevant and main control. In a modern engine you can generate more electricity and tractive efforts by increasing power lever and you don´t need to care about gears nor anything else. The only performance limitation there is the max amount of Amps engine can provide. Both are totally different traction systems so forget what you know about modern trains. 4. Tractive efforts of the locomotives currently available in game were in the range of 30.000 lbs only (approx 130 KN), which is around 1/3 of the tractive efforts a diesel Class 66 can provide for instance (90.000 lbs or 400 KN). Don´t expect them to climb and run as modern diesels or electrics as soon as they pull some relevant load. Don´t expect them to provide infinite power because that won´t happen either. You would need to jump to a Big Boy (135.000 lbs or 600 KN) to have something equivalent or even above standard engines specs nowadays. 5. Many of the routes have 1% gradients. That can be a challenge even for modern trains nowadays, depending on their load and speed when entering the gradient. There´s an entry point limit for gradients. If you enter at too low speed you won´t be able to go faster than 30 mph in most cases, no matter which reverser setting you use or even manage to climb at all. It will take a lot of time to gain 1 extra mph, even on the optimal gear setting at max power (max steam pressure). The key is to accelerate as much as you can before you start climbing to start from the most favorable situation. Move reverser to 50% short after you start moving and keep it around 20-30% afterwards to gain speed. You may need to climb at 30-35% in many cases under heavy load scenarios and medium speeds or even go back to 40-45% in case of low speeds. Leave the 20-25% setting for climbing at high speeds only or for accelerating on flat gradients and the mid-gear for coasting. Cheers
I can’t take TSW steam simulation in TSW seriously until the loco actually consumes coal and water. Did a run from Peterborough to Doncaster and the tender water level remained full. (Flying Scotsman). FS physics are even more laughable than the original SoS and PFR collection. You can rag it along at 70 MPH for mile after mile at 100% regulator and 30% cutoff and boiler pressure never drops below 200psi. It’s essentially an arcade mode at best with no coal or water consumption influencing the boiler performance. It’s basically a diesel loco with the appearance of a steam loco and Triang Hornby Seuthe Steam exhaust effect generator.
Not sure how they managed that. I only had dampers at 25%, firebox door "open" of course and it was impossible to run out. I would imagine if you opened both dampers to 100% you could run all day at full regulator and 50% cutoff with the safeties blowing constantly.
Not really. It´s just a valve to let steam enter the cylinders. However if you have very low steam pressure you won´t always get more power and acceleration. Regulator efficiency will start to drop as steam pressure drops. Indeed you could face a situation where locomotive comes to a stop even if you set 100% regulator. That can happen for instance after a long slope at max regulator without feeding the boiler, resulting in the worse case in having to stop in the middle of the slope until boiler builds high pressure steam again and resulting in the need to start from standstill on the slope afterwards, which could be even impossible to achieve. You can test that situation in game with a full manual management of the boiler. Don´t put coal on it for a while and you will see yourself how regulator efficiency starts to degrade and you need to increase it more and more to maintain the required traction, even if speed and gradient are unchanged. That´s why it shouldn´t be understood as an accelerator or throttle handle like the one in modern trains because it´s not always generating more power or acceleration. It´s doing it only when the required conditions are met, in particular that you have enough steam pressure. That´s why you can still get high tractive power with a combination of low regulator and high steam pressure. Cheers
Yes, I agree with all this, but if you need to build steam you shut the regulator, you don't open it.
Sure. I didn´t say that you have to open regulator to build pressure, only that you need to open regulator if steam pressure starts to drop, basically because you will lose tractive effort as I explained. Indeed closing regulator is what you would need to do in the case of that slope test without feeding the boiler. You will lose some speed but boiler will have additional time to build new steam, reducing the probability of a stop in the middle of the slope and giving you extra time to feed the boiler again if you missed to do it for instance. Cheers
Exactly. That´s why you normally don´t push regulator like a crazy horse as you would do on a diesel as that won´t let boiler time to generate new steam. Ideally you should always have room for an extra push if required and you shouldn´t run with too low regulator setting either to avoid wasting ejected steam, coal and water that you may need later on. You can do a normal run with 50-65% regulator using reverser only to manage train, going as low as 25% during coasting or downhill to allow new steam generation and as high as 75% during severe climbs to keep boiler pressure constant. With that there´s still room for moving to full power if required, enough steam reserve to allow any eventual boiler feeding if you moved to full power and you can still run fast and climb as well. The boiler pressure is what you should really monitor, not the train speed. Speed will be naturally increased over the time but you need to know when and where you can accelerate, because it may not be possible everywhere. You can be just wasting steam on a climb with the hope that speed may be increased and that may not happen because locomotive is already at its max tractive limit. While you are a bit above boiler´s 75% max limit everything will be ok. You can even let pressure drop to 50% boiler´s max limit on a maintained heavy demand of steam and below that point you should consider reducing regulator to let boiler recover a bit of pressure and then feed it with more water and coal, unless you are completely sure you will manage to pass the summit without problems. In that case you can let it drop even more. Basically you need to target efficiency not speed. Accelerate when you have high pressure available and sacrify some speed or use coasting and downhills to recover it. Cheers
Unfortunately it seems DTG aren't interested in fixing the physics since they haven't mentioned that a fix is on the way, it seems like Steam is just a low priority for them they didn't even bother animating the fireman on the Scotsman.
Derail valley managed it to figure out with out needing to charger their customer base hundreds of dollars to do so. If You want the most realistic steam simulation in a video game derail valley is your game. Imagine if a flight sim released ww2 ear planes that behaved nothing like the real thing. That sim would be laughed out of the market. oh like DTG was laughed out of the flight sim market. I bought TSW2 and spirt of steam thinking that they would improve it over time. a second dlc and 2 game versions later it still broken. They also have all the experiences from TSC to draw from but yet this just dont bother. So it not like they are new at it. Stop giving this company money.
