Just A Little Train

Well here we are in a short month. The shortest month to be exact. So why not another story from my days of running 1:1 gauge trains? How about a story of a short train, kinda following the short month theme. Cool? OK.

I got called to work on our favourite job ... can you guess???? You're right - the Toledo Hauler. The only train run in the world that passes through one corner of the Bermuda Triangle. It was a typical Oregon winter's day, raining but with a huge wind storm thrown in for good measure. If you've heard rumours that it rains a lot in Oregon, you're right. We have moss that grows higher than grass and trees everywhere else in the world! With that comes the problem of too much rain and a smattering of wind, and you have trees falling like drunks at an Oktoberfest celebration.

The train was a little train, actually very little for this run. We had four units pulling 12 loaded boxcars. Kinda overpowered, and the locomotives weighed more than the boxcars combined. But they were needed, as the return run from Toledo was around 60 cars, and that power would earn its keep on the return trip. The job started at 12 noon as was usual at the time, and we left on time, as I hated dying on the law, and this run was an 11 hour stint if everything goes well. Now I loved running trains, but four engines with 12 loaded cars is a royal pain in the ass. It requires four times the attention and control modulation than a 60-car train does. Here's why. A long train will stretch out and hang over several small dips and doodles in the right-of-way, and you never really feel it or have to compensate for it, as the train on a whole is what you run. So it takes bigger depressions to cause the train to change speed. A little clunker like we had does nothing but speed up and slow down over every little dip in the line. And it does it quickly, so you're constantly fiddling with the throttle and brakes. Tiring to say the least.

Now I was one who encouraged my Conductors to drive the train, since all our Conductors had student cards. I liked the break from driving at times to just sit and enjoy the scenery or just relax from the long days on the hero throne. Also, I had the benefit of training under some of the finest Class 1 hoggers around, and I enjoyed sharing that knowledge with fledgling hoggers. So as soon as I had enough of playing musical control handles, which took about 10 miles, I handed the train over to my intrepid conductor. I figured it would help him learn how to modulate a train that doesn't want to be modulated.

The Railroad encouraged hoggers to let their Conductors drive, and I believed that to be the training ground for future wielders of the heavy iron. But as soon as we got into the Coast range for our ascent up the "hill", it became clear that I would not get a break on this run. Twenty miles into the run and wham, we nailed our first downed tree lying across the tracks. It wasn't a big one, but big enough to take the joy of of running trains for my Conductor. Once we had the offending woodage pulled off the front of the train, I took over.

Running this line in a windstorm is no fun. There are remnants of trees that the wind has taken down all along the line. Some so big that all they did was cut a section out big enough for trains to clear through. We are talking trees 10 to 14 feet thick. There is even one tree that fell across the line but was way up on one side of a cut through the hillside. The top landed on the other side of the cut, making a crude natural bridge above the tracks - kinda like what you'd see in an Indiana Jones movie.

But I digress as usual. We finally made it to the top at Summit, but it took 2 hours longer than normal due to stopping to push trees out of the way with the locomotive. Since I had a short train, the dynamic brakes had no problem holding this meagre offering of railroading prowess at speed on the steep descent. Soon after bunching the train up, we brushed aside another smaller tree. I felt no need to stop as it rolled nicely off our plow, and the train just kinda scraped along its branches. On down the hill at 12mph we went, meandering our way through tight curves, including the two 'horseshoe' curves on the western slope of the hill.

The dispatcher had been in periodic contact with us as, he too, knew this line could be treacherous, and the wrong size tree down could spell disaster for train and crew alike. I had been relaying our progress and concerns as I came off the hill and pulled the engines out of dynamo mode. I added power, when suddenly the train went into emergency. I balled off the locomotive brakes as is standard procedure, but this time the power kept rolling and rolling. I soon realised that the train break had to be close to the power, so I applied the engine brakes and let the train gently roll to a stop.

I informed the Dispatcher that we had a UDE (undesired emergency) application and were going to investigate. We walked to the back of the locomotives, only to find one car coupled to the train. The rest was not in sight anywhere. Strange to say the least. The dispatcher asked us if we found the train, and we answered "no" over the conductor's portable radio. We walked around the corner to find a lonely boxcar sitting on the rails but nothing else for as far as we could see, which is not very far with all the curves on the line. By this time we were a ways from the power, and trees were creaking and groaning all around us. We informed the dispatcher that we were going to break regulations and use the power to back up and try to find the rest of the train. He agreed that safety issues prevailed in this situation and OK'ed us to move the engines.

We backed the train up around the curve and coupled to the lonely car we found. We then proceeded back around the curve to find 2 more cars sitting by themselves. Hmmm, this was getting interesting. My conductor laced up the weenies and back we went on our quest to find the rest of the train. The next curve revealed two more cars, separated by about 50 feet, on the rails and no damage to be found. Again we coupled, made up the air hoses and continued back. By the time we were done, the tally was 8 separations in a total of 12 cars. All on the rails and OK, just that they were no longer coupled to my locomotives or each other in this case.

The dispatcher wanted to know how we were able to break 8 knuckles and was very surprised when we informed him that the knuckles were all fine. It was like someone had pulled all the pins on the train while I had them bunched up. Wait a minute ... not someone ... something!!! I then remembered the tree that we had brushed aside at the top of the hill. I also noted when walking the train with the Conductor after we put it back together, that all the separations took place wherever a newer 50ft Hi-Cube boxcar was located. The incriminating evidence was that all these cars had cut levers with a curve at the end of the handle. That tree must have caught the cut lever with one of the branches as it scraped along the side of the train pulling the pins as it went. The gentle run down the west slope of the mountain - all three miles - must have been smooth enough to not jiggle the pins back down into their casings. Once I tried to stretch the train apart, all the joints with the pins pulled separated.

Needless to say, we didn't make it back before dying on the hours of service law, but we did have a great story for future depot bull sessions.

A Happy NERR New Year

Well, the New Year is upon us with so many new things in the works for the avid MSTS'er to play with. There's the upcoming RW-based VR, possible new Trainsims coming to market, new routes in the works, upgrades to locomotives including big improvements to the steam engines (selfless plug)!, not to mention daily uploads to the TS.com market -I can't see anyone growing tired of running trains for a long time. I run on the average of 4 hours a day working on various MSTS-related projects and just playing with trains, and I haven't even touched the stuff at TS.com, other than the highly-detailed offerings pertaining to Southern Pacific or Canadian content, most of which I have yet to install and cruise with. So hopefully Kip's dreaded burnout is eons away for me. But there are things I do to keep the dreaded flame away.

First off, I run trains a lot. While it may not show in my time slip column, it will become apparent in my upcoming offerings to the NERR/P&A brethren. I hit MSTS from a multifaceted approach. I read up on RW railroad-related items on the internet. I bury time in the Activity Editor, answer questions in the forums and run more trains. If I'm working on a specific steam engine's physics, I'll run it over and over again, easily logging a hundred miles just playing with specific sections of the parameters. I run it and then run another engine with the same power figures to see if it coincides with a known quantity. Then go back and run the steamer again. I'll test with various train consists to see how changes affect the changes I made and then go run again. In the AE I'll easily rack up 8 to 10 hours testing a 30 minute w/o in its developmental stage ... and then run some more.

The main thing I do is try to finish the projects I work on. While some are a continuing long term work in progress, I achieve a completion point before proceeding on. I diversify. By that I mean that I work for a time on a project, then I take a break and work on another project that uses different thinking and covers a different area of MSTS. I also look into areas I've not worked in yet. This last year it was that dreaded, infernal, insanity producing Activity Editor. I've been spending a ton of hours writing and testing w/o scenarios in the hopes of presenting more challenging w/os for the NERR brethren, as well as for the P&A folks.

I also really enjoy fixing stuff that nobody else seems to have been able to do. Case in point is the NERR Big Boy steam engine. The NALW engines, as presented by NALW, had huge flaws in them that rendered this beautiful engine a dead horse with a nice tail. No matter what you did with it, it would run out of steam, was non-operable without Otto and gutless as a VW bug on Pike's Peak. It just bugged me to the point that I had to just dive in and start playing with the numbers and parameters. After a few good months of working on and off with this beast, I was able to get an awesome looking steamer to run as good as it looked, and made it simple to run as well. This success has trickled down into a complete rebuild of the entire NERR steam fleet that is over half completed as of this writing.

I love running trains the most. By diversifying in the areas I work on in MSTS land, I get to run a lot. Hours per day to be honest, and still interested in running more. I find a challenge, and it creates interest in running and playing with trains on my computer. Even time Googling the internet for information needed to complete my AE projects as well as information needed for adding realistic physics only adds to the fun.

So if you're headed towards deleting your trainsimming pastime from your computer, reconsider and go dig into something you haven't done yet and go for it. Boss Bob has just started an in-depth tutorial on the inner workings of the Activity Editor. If you're looking for fresh ground to venture on, you're in luck. Bob's approach to this project is perfect for those of you that haven't used the AE. But even if you're proficient, there's stuff to be learn. I'm following our esteemed leader thru this wasteland, as some consider it, of a program, and I too am learning. Perhaps one could convince Kip or another established route developer to put a tutorial together for that beast as well. It could lead to great new routes for the MSTS community. If you broaden your horizons beyond the basic running of w/os, you too, will find renewed interest in a hurry and perhaps will contribute to the MSTS community with a break thru or a work order that the brethren haven't seen yet.

One thing I guarantee: you will be running trains and racking up a nice amount of mileage in the process. So take a fresh look at your MSTS installation. Do something, just don't quit.

What would you like to see in a new TrainSim????

That is the million dollar question being asked as developers tickle us with screenshots and short videos of some of the upcoming products due for release in the near future. There's even been discussion in the NERR forums of disappointment in a particular offerings pre-release commercials. So to cap off 2005, I thought I would share what I would like to see and why.

First off, MSTS will be a hard pair of shoes to fill. Even though this program is old, it is still the top dog of the trainsimming world. There is an almost inexhaustible supply of goods out there for Microsoft's old junkyard dog of a program and a large worldwide following of dedicated Railfans running trains with realistic control consoles and big screen LCD Displays on computers that NASA's space shuttle wishes it had in its bowels. And anal people like me who even cool their computers processor chipsets with liquid cooling systems and overclock those same CPUs into the 4 gigabyte territory ...... just to run MSTS. The offerings in the freeware as well as the payware realm make the original engines and routes included with the original sim look like cartoon stuff, not to mention the physics upgrades accomplished over the years.

My personal opinion on the new sim question is this. Whoever creates a sim that allows the MSTS products offered over the last four years to be added to, or integrated into, the new sim engine, will win the bucks. This will give their new product an immediate worldwide customer base as well as that inexhaustible product support that can only help sell the new game. MSTS has the graphics, the realistic operation, and the ability to grow and continue growing.

The only thing it needs, really, is a new gaming engine. Basically the guts are worn out, but the plastic surgeons have done a great job keeping the body looking young and great. The route developers and rolling stock creators are limited in their ability to bring us higher quality products, in appearance, because the present gaming engine can not support finer-detailed offerings. MSTS only uses a fraction of most high computers' computing abilities due to old coding and narrow-minded thinking that computers won't progress!

But they were wrong. Herein lies the winner's golden nugget: build a gaming engine that can run the MSTS products out there, BUT with the ability to expand and grow in power and computing parameters to match new computer offerings in computing speed and memory utilisation abilities.

Also, a game that simplifies, or at least contains, working tools to create activities, rolling stock, engines, routes and scenery items as well as adjustablility in physics parameters and, God Help Us, a working front knuckle. If you're a member of one of the teams working on the new sims being considered for public consumption, these are only my opinions, but they are the opinions of someone who has run the real thing. And from what I've gleaned over the past year from discussions on the 'net of what simmers want. This is my interpretation. Now you can take GE's approach and build a stone, like they did with their desktop-only locomotives, or you can be smart like EMD, and build a beast of a game, which is what the hoggers want.