Can somebody help me solve a conundrum. I watched a TSW2 video of the Clock Face Colliery to Speke Junction. Before setting off the driver was going along the platform clicking on certain wagons to release the vacuum brakes. Can you please explain what this was all about, and the result of this action to the physics of the train. Thank you in advance. Terry.
There was an issue with the formations so the wagons with brakes were not next to the loco. Therefore you couldn't release the wagon's brakes from the loco and the workaround was to walk the length of the train releasing the brakes one wagon at a time, by hand. I am not sure if this is fixed now.
Basically if you have both fitted and unfitted freight, there's an issue where if you release the brakes from the loco, it does not release the brakes if the freight cars so you have to do it manually. More important in adverse weather. They're looking into this and it's a long term thing like the true manual firing and other issues coming in a future update.
In easy and quick words --> You use the vacuum for releasing the brakes, not for applying them. So if you have a "fitted" consist between "unfitted" wagons, it means you cant get a vacuum from the locomotive to the braked consist. Thats why you have to manually release them. If you wont, your train is not gonna move.
