Simulating Gravity Switching

geno1005

Member
I'm attempting to build a new route based on a prototype that uses 'gravity' switching to get on the correct side of their cars at their interchange with another railroad. I've seen this referred to by several different names (which often ignites a debate on what to call it!), but this is simply having the cars uphill from the locomotive...tucking the locomotive in a siding, and having the member of the crew working the ground release the hand brakes, roll the cars past the locomotive, and then recouple the locomotive on the other side.

This activity is actually VERY common with both the Class One's and shortlines in my area.

I've experimented with a couple of things, but either the grade had to be 'amusement-park' steep to get the cars rolling with no locomotive attached...and/or they were next to impossible to get stopped when and where I needed to.

I'm hopeful that someone has solved this challenge in the history of Trainz and can suggest a solution that I haven't thought of. I can add a 'classic' locomotive run-around to the route of course, but that changes the look and feel of an important activity of the prototype more than I had hoped to.

Thanks in advance!
 
I have heard of this before too, This has been outlawed on a lot of railroads though. It is very dangerous to have "runaway" rolling stock, and if the switchman is slow, the runway car could slam into the loco instead of the cut of cars, or the run around loop. My suggestion is to add a siding, come in on the one side, push the car in, decouple, run around to the other side of the siding, and hook up on the other side of the car. This is the more common practice on railroads today, to keep everything more safe.
 
Thanks for the suggestion...I think that's going to work...except...when I tried it the first time, I 'Control Right Click'd' on one car in the consist and it started rolling as I wanted! 8:)

I went back into surveyor...adjusted a couple of the grades to make it work better, and now when I 'Control-Right-Click' on the cars...just like I think I did before...the option to release the handbrake is no where to be seen. I have tried hitting the 'A' keyboard command...nothing.

What on earth did I do differently the second time than the first...same route. I saw a reference to DCC mode vs Realistic Mode and I have tried toggling between the two and that doesn't seem to impact it either. Arrrrrgggg!

Sometimes this game makes me CrAzY! 8:(

Thanks for the help everyone!
 
Most all the older style gravity yards are gone or converted to hump type yards. But depends on the era you're modeling. The hump yards have cars shoved over the hump and then roll down by gravity. The correct speed is set by mechanical rail retarders and then cars are switched into the correct ladder track for classification.

You can search for "hump" on the DLS or in CM to find hump yard routes and see how others have treated this kind of classification yard.

Bob Pearson
 
I'm suspect this solution is going to earn a one 'groan' or two...but after spending more time that I cared to invest working on getting enough elevation and 'hit or miss' cars that could manually activate handbrakes, I settled for a solution that works, to my satisfaction at least....

You will recall that this is an interchange setup...so the cars get 'rolled past' the locomotive...after which they are on the right side of the locomotive to return to the industries that they serve. I discovered an 'invisible locomotive' on the download station...which I tack onto the leading end of the cars being rolled out of the siding. Once the cars are in the clear, I simply stop the cars using the invisible loco, uncouple the imaginary locomotive, couple the visible locomotive and move happily on my way. At some point I either delete the invisible locomotive -- OR -- set it back in motion and let it 'derail' itself at the end of the track. (If an invisible locomotive derails in the forest....hmmmm?) Either way, it gets the locomotive off the simulation.

I know that's a 'compromise', but...to me at least...much less so than building in a run around that doesn't exist in the prototype. There's really not THAT much difference in an imaginary locomotive doing what a tiny little railroad employee would do...riding the cars and then stopping them by engaging the hand brake. It 'models' the operation perfectly...one just has to remember to attach the invisible locomotive when placing the cars on the interchange track.

Thanks for the input...this forum is always incredible helpful when I get stuck!
 
It looks like you have a good work-around for this problem. I haven't visited the issues of free rolling cars lately, but it has been a bit of a peeve of mine about the game. It has sometimes frustrated me to run into circumstances that, while normally being easily attended to by an actual person, in Trainz become monumental pains of head scratching and maddening experimentation. I have found that sometimes while the game engine can handle certain things it does rely on the content creators to correctly put together things, a fact complicated by the ever changing nature of the game as well as by the inventiveness of the creators and the need of the game developers to retain some measure of closed source material in the game.
However, let us not forget that most railcars have three different braking systems, the hand brake, the service brake and the emergency brake (yes, I know the service and emergency brake systems are entirely intertwined). This does mean that for the game to be realistic as possible it would have to be able to account for all three ways of braking a car and the removal of those systems brake applications. This probably a complicated system to actually program fully into the game and was most likely eliminated as a priority sometime in the past; on the other hand, the current system seems to work for most situations. There are points that it may not work, but those seem to be limited.
 
This is an interesting workaround. I'm glad you got that working.

Back in the early 1980s, I saw this being done in Lowell MA at Meadowcroft Street yard. The switchman was setting switches and the yard switcher was bumping cars into the various tracks. The yard is at a slight incline as the tracks cross over Gorham street below and the switcher would give the various cars a slight bump to get them to roll into place. This made for an interesting afternoon as I sat there enjoying a nice a cold drink while watching the operation.
 
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