Need help please as I can't get rid of safety valve popping sound on Steam loco K&L

[Rail4Pete]

Need help please as I can't get rid of safety valve popping sound on Steam loco K&L

Hi, some weeks ago I bought the WP 4-6-0 steam loco from K&L. The loco always have a popping steam sound (probably safety valve) which I can't get rid of. I have contacted Steve Lerro and he said he does not have this problem so he suggested me to try with another engine spec but the problem persist. The sound starts when the boiler reach 201 psi...and I can't keep the boiler Under 200 psi even if I push the throttle to max, the boiler always reach 201psi.

I have asked another user which I know he uses this loco and he does not have this problem.

Any idea what could cause this ? Is it possible to delete this sound from the folder.....I really need help to get rid of this. I'M using TS12 build 61388 and T:ane build 76401. The sound is there in both easy and cab mode.

You can hear and see what I'm explaining in this video: https://youtu.be/xe142-Jqg_E

Thank you very much for your help!
Rail4Pete

 

[Dweezle]

I have had the same problem with the K4 locos from K&L but have been ignoring it. But since I saw this post I started playing with the files. I have a half finished Pennsy I1 decapod I made, and somehow, mostly by accident, the engine spec file I made doesn't pop off the valves. So I tried it on the K4 by just increasing the max speed. No joy, the valves popped off. So I started looking at the K4 spec file. It has a Trainz build of 2.4 and looks to be a bit outdated. I looked to the Trainz wiki to see if there was newer info and found this: http://online.ts2009.com/mediaWiki/index.php/"Steam"_container. I cut and pasted the data into the config file, replacing the config file's steam container with the data on the wiki. I left out the legacy part at the end though. This stopped the valves from popping off, but unfortunately, although it sounded fine at first, the steam sound volume fades away to almost nothing after a few minutes. The same thing happened to me when I tried to ad an arn script to their L1.
The K4 uses an invisible bogey along with the 80 inch drivers. Using two drivers like this was a work-around for trs2004 as I remember. They coded only half as many chuffs per revolution (2 instead of 4) so the solution was to add another set of drivers, invisible, to add the other chuffs in. This has been fixed since 2004. K&L apparently decided that the easiest way to update the engine was to delete the direct-drive tag on the 80 in drivers and leave it on the invisible drivers. This works fine except that the anim-dist on the invisible drivers is too low. This seems to cause the engine sounds to be too fast. I changed the anim-dist on the invisible drivers to match the 80 in drivers and it sounded much better (when I could hear it)
I joined a rant about the safety valves on another thread last year, since then, to me at least, it looks like N3V have done some work on the steam container config and also have reduced the volume of the hissing a bit in T:ANE. It looks to me like things are working much better. Now if they could fix the fading steam sounds...
I am not trying to be critical of K&L. I have bought almost all their PRR engines except the G5 and the all work fine. especially the J1 and the M1a. I hope they come out with an I1 so I don't have to finish mine. ( I never will anyway) Oh, yeah, they work in T:ANE OK, with a few minor issues on the J1 tender.

 

[clam1952]

See here, scroll down to Tuning Boiler and Firebox: http://online.ts2009.com/mediaWiki/index.php/HowTo/Tune_a_Steam_Locomotive_Enginespec

 

[ZecMurphy]

If you are in CAB mode, try having a lower fire. So instead of keeping it at 100%, try keeping it around 60-70%. Also let the water level drop a bit, then put more water into the boiler further on. As with many coals, you do need to think a fair way ahead when firing a locomotive. Generally about 4-5 minutes ahead with Trainz; but potentially less or more.

If in DCC mode, then there's a few 'performance' tags that need to be set to get this right, although it won't be 100% perfect. The main ones are: 'speed' and 'cutoff'. Use these to adjust the steam usage in DCC. Trainz will 'scale' the cut-off (vs speed) based on this setting (lower speeds have more cut-off, higher speeds have less cut-off).

Note, increasing the safety valve flow will mess with the boiler physics a fair bit. Instead of getting a 'normal' blast on the safety valves (this will normally last several minutes on real locomotives!), you'll get lots of momentary blasts almost all the time, causing a sawtooth effect on the boiler pressure (rapidly increasing and decreasing). OTOH, having the flow too low means that it will be harder to get the boiler pressure down (known as accumulation; real boilers can do this and it can be quite dangerous if not known about or fixed!).

 

[philskene]

Hi Pete --

I have a couple of steam engine specs on the Download Station (one is also use by the little 0-6-0 UP switcher that comes built-in with TS12 and the Deluxe T:ANE).

Both do away with the almost continual hissing of steam from the safety valves that seem to be the bane of all other especs.

In action here (full screen @ 1080p):

Try them and tell me what you think of them.

Phil

 

[normhart]

The problem for me is that I rarely drive in cab mode. In DCC mode many if not most steam locomotives have more or less continuous safety valve pop-off and so do all AI controlled steam engines. This wouldn't be a bad thing but the sound of escaping steam is overly loud, so loud that it often drowns out every other locomotive sound. The noise is extraordinarily irritating. Even people reviewing TANE have complained about it. If I could identify the sound file I would reduce the volume by at least 50%, perhaps more.

 

[S301]

As a note guys. You can swap out the enginespec from within Surveyor. This is done by using the 'properties' tool (? icon) and then click on the locomotive. There is then an option to change the 'engine' to one of your choosing. This could be particularly useful if the loco is simply not playing nice in DCC mode compared to CAB mode.

Regards

 

[Dweezle]

Normhart, I always drive in DCC mode, I like to set up a lot of AI trains and try to keep them from hitting each other. Updating your engine spec to the new improved specs and tags should fix your problems, it did for me. In the past this was a real frustration but no longer. See the wiki.
Zec, I didn't know you could do that! (slaps forehead duh..) Could have saved some time.
By the way, the steam sounds stopped fading on the K4's for some reason. They sound good now.