Speed problem

I have a route that has a commuter rail line that works perfectly. Today I replaced an existing locomotive with this: MP36PH-3C METROLINK #896, kuid 203554:100516.

The line has speed signs of 100kph and green signals everywhere. Yet this locomotive when leaving the station will accelerate to 61kph and then no faster.

I looked at the config file but didn't see anything obvious that could cause this. Any ideas?

schweitzerdude said:

I have a route that has a commuter rail line that works perfectly. Today I replaced an existing locomotive with this: MP36PH-3C METROLINK #896, kuid 203554:100516.

The line has speed signs of 100kph and green signals everywhere. Yet this locomotive when leaving the station will accelerate to 61kph and then no faster.

I looked at the config file but didn't see anything obvious that could cause this. Any ideas?

Click to expand...

Look for the enginespec line in the config.txt and replace it with one from a loco you know can go that fast, or try this one;

Christopher824 said:

Look for the enginespec line in the config.txt and replace it with one from a loco you know can go that fast, or try this one;

Code:

enginespec                          <kuid:-25:788>

Click to expand...

Tried it, didn't make a difference. Thanks for the suggestion. But I did some experimentation, and it's weird:

Loco by itself: Accelerates normally to 100kph as expected
Loco with coach car attached: Accelerates normally to 100kph as expected. (Metrolink S3 BBL Coach, kuid 2:104609:100239:11)
Now attach cab car and the train accelerates to somewhere between 60 and 70kph and then no further. (Metrolink S3 BBL Cab, kuid 2:104609:100218:8)

So the problem occurs only when I have a cab car attached (to allow for push-pull operation).

Very strange. There are more Metrolink assets on the DLS to try so I won't spend more time on this problem. But if anyone has seen this before it would be interesting to know.

schweitzerdude said:

So the problem occurs only when I have a cab car attached (to allow for push-pull operation).

Click to expand...

Just a dumb question, could the brakes be on in the cab cars? Just had to ask.. Thinking outloud

I thought of this but I could not see a way to do this. But the AI is driving the loco, not the cab car which is just attached.

schweitzerdude said:

I thought of this but I could not see a way to do this. But the AI is driving the loco, not the cab car which is just attached.

Click to expand...

In dcc/Ai control all locos are providing power. There's just 1 train throttle that controls them all.

Check the epsec that the cab car is using and see what the maxspeed tag is for it. I'm not sure what Trainz does in cases where the locos in the consist have different speed tags - follow the minimum value?

Bob Pearson

Hi

I assume that the cab car has its own engine spec. If so compare the maxspeed figure in each of the two engine specs and see if they are different. If they are then that is the problem as the base program seems to use some sort of weird calculation which causes engines with different maxspeeds in the same train to drive at a percentage of the line speed. This is a bug which I reported months ago and I had an email back saying that they can reproduce it. I am using TRS19 Platinum SP2 so it is possible that they have fixed it in SP3 - perhaps someone with SP3 could check please.

If you want to see the effect in action and have the ECML route installed then look for a consist called "ECML - BR Class 105 DMU" and try running it on a route - it will be unable to get up to line speed. One e-spec has a maxspeed of 75 mph and the other has a maxspeed of 100 mph. Common sense suggests that the train should travel at 75 mph where the line speed is 75 mph or greater (the lowest of the two engine specs) but you will find that it will only reach a speed in the 60s. Even where the line speed is 10mph it will be unable to get up to that speed and will travel at about 8 mph.

Fortunately the temporary fix is quite easy, either make sure that both the loco and cab car use the same engine spec or edit the cab car engine spec to hold the same maxspeed as the loco.

Regards

Brian

Kennilworth said:

Hi

Fortunately the temporary fix is quite easy, either make sure that both the loco and cab car use the same engine spec or edit the cab car engine spec to hold the same maxspeed as the loco.

Regards

Brian

Click to expand...

This is it. Although I did not examine the engine specs, I knew the one for the loco was working just fine, so I took your advice and made the engine spec for the cab car to be the same as the one for the loco, and now the consist accelerates to the posted track speed.

Thank you Kennilworth, R Pearson, and others who provided suggestions.