Freelance USA mountain railroad

[handlaidtrack]

Not much time to spend on it today, so just slightly more than one board textured. Still, every little bit helps.

27) View of Helper Junction from the NW, with the daily local passenger just pulling out.

 

[Kon1786]

This is awesome!!!

 

[handlaidtrack]

28) Here we catch helper locomotives returning to the bottom of the hill to await the next heavy train requiring their services. A 2-10-2 leads a pair of 2-8-8-2's.

29) A second view of the helper locomotives as they reach the bottom of the grade.

30) Next, we ride the roof of a northbound passenger train as it heads out of the station.

31) Gathering speed as it passes a southbound freight waiting in the number-2 siding.

32) Heading into the hills, the loop lies just ahead.

33) Rounding the backside of the loop.

34) Winding its way ever higher into the mountains.

 

[handlaidtrack]

This evening's movie turned out to be excruciatingly bad, so I returned to the computer to texture another square mile. Here's what the area just north of Helper Junction looks like.
The grade here is only 0.7%.

35) Looking east at the cutting and trestle just before the wye.

36) A southbound freight winds its way along the riverbank.

37) The afternoon mail races southward over the trestle. This train starts out double-headed to save the need to stop for a helper.

38) A northbound freight drifts downgrade.

39) Another southbound freight passes through the short tunnel.

Hope you like them.

 

[leeferr]

Haven't been on the fourm much lately, so I've missed this thread until now. I think that it's looking awesome and can't wait to see more. Keep up the outstanding work.

Mike

 

[handlaidtrack]

Today, I managed to texture the north end of the valley, connecting with stage 1. I also made a video, which I will upload to you-tube just in case anyone wants to take a look.

40) A view looking west from above the long tunnel. Compare with picture 2.

41) Looking south down the valley. Compare with picture 3.

 

[handlaidtrack]

Here is the video I promised you yesterday. It took over three hours to upload, so I just went to bed and left it running.
http://youtu.be/qh-p5VuAaXI

 

[handlaidtrack]

No advancement on the mountain section recently, but has anyone noticed a change in the lead photo?

 

[handlaidtrack]

I'm surprised that no-one has commented on the previous post. Here I am, wondering whether no-one noticed anything different about the first picture, or no-one cares. Oh well, never mind.

I spent a few minutes rail-fanning the route a couple of days ago. Here are some new pictures.

42) First a picture of the fast mail crossing the curved bridge near the current end of track.

43) Then we catch a through freight exiting the upper loop tunnel and crossing the high trestle over the river.

44) Then it's back to the curved bridge to shoot the same train again.

45) Here is a short local freight climbing the low line.

46) As it's moving pretty slowly, we have time to move back for a wider view.

Enjoy.

 

[817TAYLOR]

these screen shots are lovely
-Taylor
sent from school

 

[handlaidtrack]

I've been playing around with an ore train this afternoon, and the results are not quite what I had expected.
My 50-car mixed freights have no trouble on the grade with one 2-10-2 and one 2-8-8-2 helper. I know that iron ore is a lot heavier than general merchandise, and I also wanted more cars, so I figured on using two 2-8-8-2 helpers and was experimenting to see how many cars the three locomotives would lift together.
Well, my first attempt was way off. The 80-car train stalled before it even got completely on the grade (see photo 47).
Three attempts later, I was down to 40 cars and three locomotives, and it didn't get much further. More interestingly, the train started sliding back down again as soon as it came to rest.
Then I got silly and added four 2-8-8-2 helpers! This time, it got a few miles up the grade, but still stalled eventually.

40 cars is a short train and 1.75% is well within the realms of a prototypical mountain grade.
I tried splitting the train, but the 2-10-2 could not even start 4 ore cars on the 1.75% grade. That seems ludicrous to me.
I'm wondering if the specifications of the locomotives and/or loaded ore cars are off. Does anyone know how I can check these?
I've often thought that there is something wrong with the locomotives I'm using because they just don't accelerate, even without load.

47) A heavy ore train stalls on the grade

48) Half as many cars with five big locomotives, and it's still struggling. When this picture was taken, it was down to 9 mph, and it stalled completely just past the bridge.

 

[sawyer811]

Great shots handlaidtrack, even with the stalling freight train taken into account.

I've had the same problem to varying degrees with Ben Neal's steamers. There's a route I've been working on on and off that has a short grade out of a river valley from a rock quarry/gravel crusher. For the most part, it's about a 1.4 percent grade (if my memory is correct, I haven't looked at it in a while) but there's one section where the grade stiffens to more or less 2 percent. With 30 loaded gravel hoppers (give or take five or so), and a 2-8-8-2 on the front, It ground to a halt before it even got the bad part of the grade in cab mode, and literally only had 20psi in the boiler. And i know a 2-8-8-2 should be able to do that without breaking a sweat. In the end, it took that plus three SD-9 pushers--and a lot of wheel grinding and slipping--to make it to the summit. I'm thinking it might be worth a look at the phsyics in the config file to see if you could fix the stalling part.

Erm, sorry for the hijack...I didn't mean to make that all about me (even though I somehow usually do) but I will say this; if five of those monsters can't move 40 cars, I'd hate to see them try to move 190 (which is about usual for a DM&IR mesabi range ore train).

 

[handlaidtrack]

Thanks sawyer811 , I was beginning to wonder if I had just estimated badly. I'm glad to hear that someone else agrees with me that those locomotives should have had no trouble with that load.

I did some more experiments last night and this morning, and I'm beginning to think that the problem is with the hopper cars...

My route has a short 0.4% grade about a mile out of the freight yard. The track is level for a short distance at the South Wyefield widget factory then there's a half mile of 0.5% grade, then it's level for about 2 miles, then 0.7% for 2 miles. The track is level through Helper Junction and sidings before the 1.8% starts.

I placed a USRA light 2-10-2 with 70 empty hoppers in the yard and set it going. It stalled on the 0.5% grade.
Then I used the same locomotive with a 70-car mixed freight, starting from exactly the same spot. It made it all the way to Helper Junction without assistance, cresting the 0.7% grade at 15mph. Just for fun, I added a second light 2-10-2 on the fly (no 2-8-8-2's available at the time) and took a run at the big hill (reaching 34mph at the bottom). Between them, they managed the 1.8% without too much trouble. Yes, the speed was dropping off, but they were still doing 18mph when they reached the current end of track.
This second test with the mixed freight was about what I had expected regarding the ability of the USRA 2-10-2's.

I would have thought that most 40-foot freight cars would weigh about the same empty, within a few tons of each other anyway. I certainly don't believe that an empty hopper could be so much heavier than a box or stock car, as to cause that much difference in the results of the two tests.
I'm wondering if the full loaded weight is being used for the empty hopper, effectively adding in the weight of the load twice.

 

[cascaderailroad]

I see @ 50 cars, and 5 locos ... funny thing about steam loco's ... you have to get in each of the cabs one by one ... sand and throttle to max, with each loco brake off.

 

[handlaidtrack]

... funny thing about steam loco's ... you have to get in each of the cabs one by one ... sand and throttle to max, with each loco brake off.

I'm driving in DCC mode, so that doesn't apply. They all work together. Otherwise the extra locomotives wouldn't have added any additional push and the train would still have stalled at the first tunnel as before.

 

[sawyer811]

Hmm...I may have an idea.

If you control+right click on both the mixed and the ore train (I'm assuming both are empty) how much weight does it say the engine is pulling? you could also go farther and just yank the lead car off each train with the engine (IE uncouple and move a short distance away) and then check the weight behind it. You're absolutely right; a standard hopper shouldn't have that much of a weight difference from a standard high car (boxcar, stock car, etc.)

 

[handlaidtrack]

Thanks for that suggestion. I didn't know I could do that.
I came up with come interesting numbers:
AAR 40-foot box car: 20 tons (average weight of cars in the mixed freight was only 18.3 tons)
TRS_coal_hopper: 31 tons (this is the empty car I used in yesterday's test)
Empty DH ore car: 10 tons
Loaded DH ore car: 103.5 tons (93.5 tons of ore)

This proves the theory about the two test results.
Now I have to find out why the 2-8-8-2 is so weak.
The weight of the ore seems about right, but there's a huge difference in empty car weight. I must try to find out what these cars should weigh.

Here's another interesting abnormality:
I noticed that the two trains used in the test also had different tenders.
Coal tender: 69 tons
Oil tender: 36 tons
Both tenders are close to the same overall size. I suspect the oil tender is underweight, but I'll have to check.

Update:
I've found some photos and engineering drawings with weights included...
Quad hopper: 24 tons
2-bay hopper: 19-20 tons
These may or may not be typical, but they do at least seem reasonable.

 

[handlaidtrack]

My 9-year-old stepson doesn't care for hacking config files, so I ran some more trains earlier. Here are some screenshots.

49) A northbound local switches at Helper Junction

50) The train gets underway, heading for Wyefield. I think this is among my favorite results so far.

51) As the train slowly accelerates, we have time to scramble to the top of the cutting for another shot.

 

[handlaidtrack]

I've not made any progress on the route development for a while now, but I did manage to get the ore drag up the hill.

52) One 2-10-2 and two 2-8-8-2's cross the high trestle with 80 loaded ore cars.

53) Holding steady at 28mph. Last time, five locomotives stalled here with only half the load!

It's not a perfect fix, and doesn't work for all the other locomotives, only these.

 

[handlaidtrack]

54) Due to a damaged bridge on the Pensy, all traffic is being diverted this way today. With no overhead wires available to juice the GG-1's, everything has to be hauled by steam. Here we see a pair of light 4-8-2's getting the Broadway Limited around the obstruction.

55) Here's another shot taken a couple of miles later.
When I posed this picture, I did so with last weeks screenshot contest in mind, but missed the cut-off by a few minutes (meaning I mis-read the rules and thought it was Sunday at noon, not Saturday at 7.00). Then the forum was shut down for a few days. Then I was away from the computer... etc.