Overview
The second part of the manual related to general suggestions, that may help driving the Steam locomotives in any game. The manual is still WIP, so I’ll be grateful if somebody will help with advices related to the material
Preface
This part of the manual represents my vision of steam locomotives in train simulation: how do I see them and what I did in order to understand them. I spent a lot of hours to find a manual that will satisfy my needs, but all I understood, that I can’t understand how to drive trains correctly if I avoid to make any mistakes and operational errors. Just because studying something (at least we are not speaking about a real life things), is to reproduce the errors and correct actions a lot of times and then they disappear as bad habit and will be replaced with a good one. This simple idea gived me a path what I have to write down in this manual – just my personal experience and nothing more.
What means the fear in the manual’s title?
The main problem for the newcomers when they start the steam trains – they try to apply their knowledge and experience from real life, other games or even driving the diesel or electric locomotives to the steam locomotives and they nearly always fail. If the fails will repeat too often without the reward (like such: passed the scenario without any penalties, for instance), this player may refuse to do anything to advance and find the solution.
The correct path is give the solution that may be incorrect in some means, but tend the person doing less errors, than usual, and get a psychological reward, when they should get a clue what is happening. When this first barrier is defeated (not the person itself), the further advance may happen.
How the steam train driving experience can’t be started?
Usually a lot of people suggest start driving trains considering newcomers are already familiar with steam locomotives at least in real life, so they suggest the real-life steam locomotive driving.
There is a bunch of locomotives, that have exceptionally hard mode of driving and also routes (or specific scenarios), that are too hard for newcomers to run.
For instance, my experience in the TS started on the scenic Riviera lines in ’50s route. Unfortunately, the grades on this route are big and running a steam trains, either uphill or downhill is hard even for experienced train sim users. But, happily, later it suggested me the right way how to finish some problematic scenarios.
Trying to understand what I am doing wrong, I tried to play on other steam route (Bath-Templecombe) and found me a solution (or even three of them), that helped me to drive steam locomotives.
Stop. Look. Listen
The idea of this suggestion is quite simple. When you fail to drive the locomotive as a real driver, just stop thinking and try to look how it moves and listen the sounds. The ability to ride the steam locomotives from the drivers seat comes very, very late and after a long time and series of attempts.
If you can notice changes in steam machines sound when driving correctly and sounds when you made a mistakes you’ll succeed. Also watch the behavior of locomotive as moving object – when you accelerate, the buffers become dilated, when you stop, they become compressed.
Try not to solve the non-solvable problem, divide it to few solvable parts
Usually, when driving the steam train, the first and main problem is trying to solve the problem like: to get a 1000 points score. But what about to get a 100 or 250 points instead? Near every career scenario wants you to achieve little goals step-by-step. Usually all of them are solvable alone, but taking all them together is often a challenge.
Also make use of a simple trick from psychology: try to look at your style of driving like a style of driving of another person. Then you’ll see the errors instead of your feeling about the problem.
Use a driving polygon and a sandbox
The main goal when you start is just to understand the underlying nature of the steam traction. The best way to understand it is to use some route as a driving polygon or… a sandbox. What does it mean and what the difference between driving polygon, sandbox and the Academy.
The academy is all about game UI, and not about the driving itself. There are a few scenarios in “Driving school” and “Career” section dedicated to driving only. They usually have a “Simple mode” and “Expert mode” in the title.
The right way is to select a route or two (or even more), where you can start driving freeroam scenarios in a sandbox mode. When I started, the very first map or route, among all of the routes I already had, was North Somerset route where I tried just to enjoy steam locomotives driving instead of reaching the goals. According to my screenshot collection and used to drive a Fowler 4F with 2 or three passenger cars behind.
What the difference between the polygon and the sandbox? The main goal of the sandbox driving is just to enjoy steam driving instead of doing hard job. The polygon is actually “motive power calculations” university discipline analogue, that has a main objective to calculate how much power (locomotives) is needed to carry exact consist weight.
You’ll say: wait, but some people are using a Settle-Carisle route (Woodhead route, Riviera line, Horseshoe curve, Donner Pass and others) to understand how to drive steam trains. The main difference between them and a polygon, that this is a challenge steam driving discipline. The main goal there – is to drive the train already having not enough motive power or near it, just because the authors of the scenarios used this route as a polygon to calculate exact weight of the consist that still can be playable.
So actually a polygon is a special driving facility where you have an etalon (let’s say it is some train with exact the same size that is used in usual driving on this route in real life or proven to be playable in some career scenarios), that give you a clue the mode of driving. What happens next? You write down the max speed of the locomotive at the certain section of the route. For diesel-electric locomotives in full throttle it is usually a fixed value (in case of electric locos it is not true). Now we start to play a game to shrink the weight of the consist that we can get the same speed at the same part of the route. I used the NS coal district route to test different types of traction (I know only 1 person in the whole forum who said he used this route for the same purpose as I) and calculate a motive power suitable to haul certain amount of cars. Why this route you may ask. Just because, on certain grades, the steam locomotives going with optimal weight must achieve exactly the same speed as the diesel ones. Nothing special, just physics: P = F * v.
So when you hear a phrase “I succeed to drive train of X cars on X grade” it’s exactly the same I’m speaking about.
Don’t Repeat Yourself
One of the problems in steam locomotive driving, among others, is repeatability. When you drive some trains you may get some incorrect habits that are plausible in some situations but strongly not acceptable in others (e.g drive freight trains like passenger ones and vice versa). But wait, what about the polygon? Is it related to real driving. Short answer: yes and no. Yes – you achieve average driving skill that is applicable to different routes. No – the average skill won’t help you to run the Pannier uphill at the Riviera lines route. When you figure out the problem and can’t solve it usual way, try to generate different strategy to solve it. Even driving different parts of the same route, different strategies may applied. And even playing different iterations of the same scenario. The most beautiful part in driving steam locomotives that you can apply a lot of strategies. For instance: I overrun the timetable – I start to drive as newcomer; I underrun the timetable – I try to use more steam than needed; I already have a lot of steam in boiler and have to maintain constant speed – what about to set bigger cutoff and throttle setting than needed? I fail to reach the line speed – what happens if I do not to reach the line speed? And so all.
Analyze that
Try to input word “cutoff” in the Train Simulator forums and you would be wondered how many people have the same problems. I’ve gathered nearly 30 A4 pages of suggestions! But, being honest, the problem is that the written text (or the educational/walkthrough videos) isn’t that easy to understand clearly in some cases.
So when you read the suggestions or watch the video walkthrough in order to get extra information, analyze or imagine what is happening. For example, let’s watch the video from the most complicated steam scenarios in the Train Simulator – GWR Class 5700 to Goodrington. What can it say us? Well, in short, the author arrives in time. But, simply googling some technical information, we can wonder, how many information we can get from single video.
Starting with in-game values, like firemass and water level we can get timings of all events happening and figure out how the grade may affect our traction effort, output power and even more (hover over the screenshots to see what these strange lines mean)…
Is it all or What’s is next?
In the next part I’ll cover only the driving (braking) and nothing more. If you’re not unsatisfied, put the five stars, if you not that satisfied you can feel free to give as much stars as you want (or any) and say all you think about the author – it’s still WIP 🙂