Locomotive Designers & Route Designers take note

gallop3 · Posted: Tue May 13, 2003 8:43 pm

hi all,
for those who don't know msts has a bug in routes with sections longer than somewhere between 5-8 kilometres between points it seems to vary.
As KUJU didn't want to know about the problem trying to pass the buck onto Microsoft who didn't even have the guts to answer countless numbers of emails.
In the coupler section of your eng or wag file you need to add a /s after the /n/m in the damping section of coupler in both sets of figures.
In other words your damping line should read

Damping { 1e6N/m/s 1e6N/m/s }

Don't forget the spaces or you will surely get a syntax error and your sim will crash.

Without this /s switch your train will uncouple right at the apex of the next
set of points you encounter.

The problem lies in the coding of the sim.
When we were continually failing to complete activities due to this bug
we discovered that the shorter the section the smoother the train ran.
I think KUJU thought we were all going to be driving horizontal lifts {sparks} in suburban areas. Why they even released the sim with this
bug with the long sections on Marias Pass is pretty close to daylight robbery.

Now for the second problem.
Even with this switch set you will notice at points your vehicles will start
concertinering at the points.
One answer is to put a set of points in the section involved to break it up into little sections, not really reallistic especially when you striving to reproduce the real thing.
Lets face it a simulator is supposed to be a virtual reproduction of this
real form, whether it be trains, planes,car racing, or whatever.

Russell Beer and myself got together and spent a whole weekend trying to work out this problem. In the end i contacted Okrasa Ghia of X-TRACKS
fame.
In X-TRACKS ver 3.5 you will find the result.
Altpt1mst a 1 metre piece of straight track which has a point node to reset the nodes in the code.
In simple terms it looks like a 1 metre straight piece of track with point nodes that are invisible.
In other words the code sees a set of points but to the eye it is invisible
which eliminates the problem altogether.
They come in left and right even though there is no actual diverge .
So you will need 2 opposing points with a 10 metre at least section
between.
This has been tested on 30 mile sections between visible points, without
as much as shudder .
Even with long 100 plus vehicles the train sails through the points as smooth as a baby's bum.
Hope this is self explanitory , it should be to anyone who has attempted
to run a train across routes like Marias Pass, Conrail Indy, Blue Ridge,
and more importantly the new Blue Mountains PENRITH-LITHGOW byMike
Simpson and the eagerly awaited SUNSHINE-BALLARAT by Russell Beer.

gallop3

CaptainBazza · Posted: Wed Oct 06, 2004 9:37 pm

Well found, fix much appreciated. Of all the epithets that can be applied to this sim, "boring" ain't one of them. Laughing

Captain Bazza
Deep South
The Land of the Long White Cloud

gremlin1812 · Beginner Joined: Aug 09, 2008 Last Visited: Oct 22, 2008

Hi, only new at this but encountered the problem a couple of times so far.
Does this mean we do this to all the .eng and .wag files of all our rolling stock?
Probably a stupid question but just want to make sure before I rush in.

PhilChorusch · Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 9:23 am

I honestly haven't encounter this problem before but I will just fix up everything just in case Very Happy