An engine spec needed for an 1870's Beyer-Peacock.

I included the locos to give you an idea how the e-spec will handle, allot of people don't know this however the anim-dist on the driver bogie can change how the loco produces power, smaller wheels increase power while larger wheels decrease power

for example in real life 18x26in cylinders with 4ft6in wheels at 112 PSI is 17,400blf while 5ft0in wheels is 14,025lbf and 6ft0in wheels is about 12,600lbf.... trainz also models this, if you open the e-spec I gave you and see the notepad (data) it has the cylinder volume calculations, all steam physics I've released from 2016 to now use this method, trainz also has a script code called "get-max-tractive-effort" and tells you the tractive effort at the low pressure safetyvalve setting, I set it to the running pressure, so 140PSI / 80% WP = 112PSI so I adjust the bore until it matches, I never change the stroke, this will cause issues if the stroke is too long or too short, too long causes excessive wheelspin and too short the loco pretty much sticks to the rails like Billegulla's spread sheet specs as he adjusts the stroke rather then letting the anim-dist do that.

Cheers.

I have come across quite a few animdist that are way off, seems some use the same value for everything as in the default value!

Should be wheel diameter x PI for anyone wanting to correct them.

Most of the 2995Valliant broad gauge especs are 2.8 which were probably fine up to TS2009 but due to physics changes / new and obsolete tags are now out of sync.

That spreadsheet........ Rocket powered 2ft gauge locos, gave up on that pretty quickly!
 
"Should be wheel diameter x PI for anyone wanting to correct them."

Please excuse me for being dumb Malc, but what is 'PI' in the calculation for animdist.

Thank you for that excellent explanation Azervich I'm certainly learning a lot from this exercise. It's been very interesting and a lot of fun running your 1860s engines and seeing how they work. I had a quick look at the e.spec data in the config files and I could see at once that your method and approach was very different to the other e.specs used by some creators. I'm certainly wary of some of the 'spreadsheet' e.specs now since they are the ones that seem to cause the most problems.
 
"Should be wheel diameter x PI for anyone wanting to correct them."

Please excuse me for being dumb Malc, but what is 'PI' in the calculation for animdist.

Thank you for that excellent explanation Azervich I'm certainly learning a lot from this exercise. It's been very interesting and a lot of fun running your 1860s engines and seeing how they work. I had a quick look at the e.spec data in the config files and I could see at once that your method and approach was very different to the other e.specs used by some creators. I'm certainly wary of some of the 'spreadsheet' e.specs now since they are the ones that seem to cause the most problems.

pi = 3.14159 actually it's an infinite number however that's close enough for most purposes.


The ratio of a circle's circumference to it's diameter is approximately equal to 3.14159
 
Now the penny drops Malc. I stared at that 'PI' and thought of every possibility except 'pi'. My third form maths teachers would be groaning in despair.
 
Google is your friend when calculating animdists. For example lets say you were making a bogie with 6 ft 7 in diameter wheels. First we need to convert to metres (Trainz uses metric units). Type "6 ft 7 in in m" into Google and it tells us that 6.58333 feet = 2.0066 metres. Now type "2.0066*pi" in and it tells us that the answer is 6.30391981869. You can then paste that into your bogie config.

pi = 3.14159 actually it's an infinite number however that's close enough for most purposes.

Technically it's irrational rather than infinite. It has finite size but an infinite number of non repeating digits after the decimal point (i.e. it cannot be represented as a fraction).
 
Yes Google is really good for finding converters to change one measurement into another. Saves lots of pencil and paper or calculator work.

A problem I am having with otherwise good engines specs is that they just won't produce steam. Or the even more annoying problem of an engine spec that allows a really good run with a train with everything working fine, but once I stop at a station for a few minutes the steam pressure falls away to almost nothing and then never recovers.
 
You need to use the blower to generate steam while stationary, the real ones are the same, the blower creates a draft in the smoke box allowing air flow through the firebox grate.

Cheers.
 
So that means if I leave an engine stationary for a while I need to press the 'N' key to activate the blower.
 
I think I'm starting to get the hang of this........

Your engines are a real delight to drive Azervich. The test track I'm using is the Minehead branch, - Turks Castle 1892 by trackplate, - running under TS2012 and converted to standard gauge. It's a fairly tough test because the Minehead branch has some very long steep gradients, but so far I haven't managed to stall an engine on a gradient (touch wood).
I had to carefully watch the water levels because with such small boilers the water levels would steadily fall while climbing the hills. The test train was 51 tons and made up from some of my 1860's wagons.

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Something bit odd though. At one of the station stops the engine I was driving got its coal and water levels returned to 100%. Is that supposed to happen, - or is it a strange Trainz glitch of some kind?
 
Ha ha, - yes of course Malc. I didn't think of that. Loading passengers, loading coal and water, - it's all the same to the game engine.
 
Here's something I didn't expect. I was trying to setup one of my tank engines with an engine spec and having no luck so I checked the engine's mass/weight in the config file and that was fine. BUT when I checked the coal and water quantities it was carrying it was carrying FOUR times the amount it was supposed to be carrying. That was approximately 60,000 pounds more weight being added onto the engine over what it should be! No wonder I was having so many problems with it.

This webpage is a great resource by the way if you're looking for Uk prototype engine specs. http://www.steamlocomotive.com/locobase.php?country=Great_Britain
 
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I've moved all my engine spec testing over to TS2019. I'd been running my tests in TS2012, but I was finding that everytime I went to adjust a control in an interactive cab the simulator would pause for a second or two which didn't exactly make trying to drive an engine easy. You can see my computer specs in my post signature, - I have 8 CPU cores for heaven's sake, - nothing should be pausing. In the end I just got fed up and packed up everything over to TS2019 where things just seem to be working better. Braking in particular works better and is more predictable whereas before with some of my engines the brakes would hardly have any effect at and I was having to start braking when the station I was approaching was just an indistinct dot in the distance.
 
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An on-going problem I'm having with setting up my engines properly is that some engines as downloaded have severely overweight quantities of coal and water as well as their weight/mass being incorrect in their config files. As an example I could not get a small tank engine to function at all on the advanced controls and was about to give up, but then I discovered it was carrying about one and a half times its own weight in water.

Confusingly it's not actually clear what measurement units are being used in Trainz when it comes to weights and measures. Kilos? pounds? gallons? litres? Is there a Wiki listing somewhere that definitely states what these units of measure are?
 
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Thank you very much Pencil. Knowing what these units of measurement are for certain is going to make things a lot easier.
 
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