On several occasions now I've been making my ascent and noticed that even though I'm not particularly demanding a high amount of amps, the ampre meter will drop to zero, the engine revs will increase and I will start to drastically lose speed! Sometimes resulting in my train getting stuck on a grade. Mainly in the older locomotives like the f7, gp or fd. Is it a bug or just really sensitive overload protection?
Like Anthony Pecoraro said, it’s the loco seitching from series to parallel for higher speeds. The transition usually happens between 24-27mph. That means that if you know that you need the tractive effort to get up a grade, you’d probably stick below 24 mph to avoid triggering the transition.
Oh I see. This makes sense. So in most cases where you would be pulling a long train the driver is forced to maintain a low speed or risk stalling on the grade. Unless you can reach the grade at a higher speed. Thanks.
In Cajon Pass for example, with route knowledge from playing it so much, or by looking at the gradient profile in the pause menu, if I know a steep uphill grade is coming, I’ll make sure I don’t accelerate up to the transition speed (37 mph in the Santa Fe F7) as I know exceeding it will cause the transition up and then another transition down when I slow because of the grade. It’s that downward transition (occurs at a lower speed than up transition) that loses all your speed. In both cases you end up settling to the same speed eventually but it happens later if you haven’t been through the two transitions, and you avoid slowing so much you stall.
Yes I've noticed this on cjp although most of the services I've run, the weather has shifted to rain and I've found it hard to achieve 20mph due to wheelslip. Thanks.
