Is this "Normal" for steam locomotives?

Found myself in Coal Country today, doing a session I haven't done for awhile (and I dont recall how it went back then)

At the end, your running 20 loaded coal cars up a 2% grade with a K&L Decapod at the head and a pusher behind on a 15mph track.

I hit the grade at about 17mph and was doing ok until about halfway up, when everything went sideways (or rather backwards) as wheelslip started.

The situation become quickly unmanageable, as the slip would "stick" unless I slid the reverser into reverse and then forward even tho I was stopped.

And worse still, I had to manually go to BOTH locomotives to operate them.

I eventually made it by backing up to the level portion and going balls to the wall at the grade (doing about 20, with reversers full forward and throttles at 100%), but again I had to manually operate both locomotives.

Is this "as intended"? Surely the wheelslip being in effect while sitting perfectly still with the brakes set can't be. Right?

Hi Frogpipe
In this case you will need to keep an eye on your steam chest pressure, as this is what is 'driving' the loco (the steamchest is essentially the area between the regulator and the valves into the pistons, so can hold quite a large volume or steam, even more so if you have a superheated loco!).

On the prototype, you would often use the cylinder drains to release/control some of this pressure, to avoid wheelslip. Unfortunately this isn't currently modelled in Trainz, so you may need to use the reverser (alternate between forward and reverse) to release this pressure in a stall condition.

It is very much worth noting that steam locos do have 'dead center' positions, where one piston is at the end of it's travel (and cannot power), and the other is in a position that now limits how much it can power. In this case, rolling back a small amount and then trying to get going again can also help.

In regards to the wheelslip itself, Trainz counts both 'wheelslip' and 'wheelslide' as much the same (ie both are a loss of traction). What you may be seeing is Trainz indicating that the train is actually very slowly sliding, even with the brakes on, resulting in you not actually having any traction when you try to start moving.

There's also a potential that the unreleased steam chest pressure may 'maintain' a slip condition without the wheels moving, this would tbh be a 'bug', but is probably more a quirk of digitising steam physics, especially with the lack of cylinder drains.

Regards

This makes some sense.

I also found in a subsequent run that I did much better knowing what was coming, and I also used a trick.

I set the automatic fireman on for one locomotive, and off for the other. That way, ad I dashed back abd forth I knew for certain which loco was "in focus" when operating the controls.

Had a much easier time of it.