Some thoughts while doubling Seligman Hill.

I received the A&O a few days ago, in prompt fashion; since then time has gone by quickly. And now I am doubling "the hill" in the Haulin' West Activity, having completed the student trips and some exploring up the hollars. This is the first "fantasy" route I have purchased, generally preferring the prototype, but you have pulled the "what if" off perfectly.

Overall, a great job, Andre and Gaetan. You are masters and I envy you. Having visited in the area, I know what it "feels" like, and you have captured that "feel" in an artistic and subtle fashion. Now that I finally understand why the A&M power is all over the place on the A&O, it has that unique A&M feel, and it seems like I am back visiting an old friend. And I recently had to tear down my N scale Missouri Midland, and the A&O has its feel, too, strangely enough. (The MM was also a "what if" line, rebuilt from imaginary ex-MP and ex-SLSF branches east and west from Gretna (north of Branson) and Thayer .)

I also had another surprise, revisiting Junction, where I attended the wedding of a railfan and his bride in the middle of the wye; we came out by steam train, of course, and the reception was on the ES&NA dinner train.

Question: If someone has just an out-of-the-box MSTS program, would anything more be needed to run the A&O (except the program itself, of course)?

I handle the dynamic brakes (or lack thereof) this way: re-painted A&M units have them, others and T6's don't. If you have one of each in a consist, I suppose you could limit yourself to 4 notches of dynamic (50%), but so far I haven't needed them.

Are We There Yet Dept.: Since the F4 monitor is pretty useless I use it to determine rough distance to the next station (the monitor displays about 3 miles of track ahead). Press G to throw a switch ahead, and then see if and where the arrow appears. Caution: Press G again to restore it or terrible things will happen. Use F8 to verify if necessaary. And I am being converted to the 5 View virtual cab. The whole cab view thing is awesome, Gaetan.

Now for what I don't like: TOO MANY DERAILMENTS. It is way too sensitive, there must be a line of code somewhere that says "If speed is greater that 0.5 mph over speed limit, then derail the train and frustrate the user." 3DTS's routes suffer from this and it spoils their overwise good routes, yet OTOH Cascade Crossing is very tolerant of overspeed. When I raised this objection on the train-sim board some time ago, all the anal-retentives came out of their holes (I'm not saying which "holes") and basically said "that's what you deserve if you speed". There must be a way to fix this. It ain't prototypical.

2) Where in the world are we? We need a printable system map (unless I missed it). I had to sketch one out before I started. (I have the station track diagrams printed.) Or a timetable, or at least a virtual timetable that tells one where the speed restrictions are, especially since they aren't shown in F4. And a track profile that shows the grades would be very useful. Some mention is made in the manual, but it is sketchy at best. Real engineers are given these documents, why not us?

3) Brake pressure restores too quickly. Granted, these are short trains, but it seems very fast to me.

4) Some more activity detail (easy/hard, duration, etc.) would be useful.

All around quality, however. As a railroad simulator developer in the DOS days, I can be very critical of shoddy work. But now I've got to go and pick the chicken feathers out of my mouth, thanks to you!

fwbryan

Hi fwbryan...

Printable maps are under the documents folder in the route folder...

Derailments - hmm - did notice one where I was doing 32MPH around a gentle curve in a 30MPH... Of course I had no saves... OOps...

I also noticed one thing I haven't seen before... While switching the quary activity - swapping the loads for the emptys... I grabbed both loaded cuts - put some handbrakes on and started easing forward to the passing siding... All of a sudden - every car in the train - like 15 cars - all uncoupled from each other as I was rolling forward at about 7MPH... You could hear the uncoupling noise work its way sequentially down the entire ttrain... Darn'dest thing I ever did see... Real hard to get them all hooked together again too... Anybody have any ideas on this ??? Should I call Homeland Security ???

Regards,
Scott

Scott:

Yeah, I also had one derailment right around the speed limit.
Only one so far. Figured it was loaded cars on light rails, so I gotta pay more attention to my speed.

That 's certainly an interesting uncoupling "event" though.
Can ya make it happen again?????

Hi FW:

Good thoughts, I'll try to offer some input on some of them...

"Question: If someone has just an out-of-the-box MSTS program, would anything more be needed to run the A&O (except the program itself, of course)?"

It would install/operate fine on an out-of-the-box MSTS installation. This is THE major reason I've stuck with default track for so long.

"Since the F4 monitor is pretty useless I use it to determine rough distance to the next station... Press G to throw a switch ahead..."

I wouldn't suggest that for any activity with AI traffic. Doing that can close the path of an oncoming AI and it will stop in its tracks, thus compromising the activity. If you do this, you may have to restart the activity to make things work as designed.

"Now for what I don't like: TOO MANY DERAILMENTS."

I'm at a loss to explain why that is happening. I haven't been having any trouble. Frankly, the derailment and broken coupler features are poorly modeled in MSTS. IMHO, you won't sacrifice the reality I aimed for by turning off Derailments. My activities are built around switching and railroading... if you fudge a bit (accidently) on the speed limit, you shouldn't be punished so severely with an unrealistic derail. Turn them off and go railroading.

"2) Where in the world are we?"

As Scott indicated, there are maps in the folders. Eureka Springs is missing, but I have one that was kindly supplied by Don Hughs that I will upload to this site as soon as I finished this post. Your idea of indicating speed limits on the maps is a good one. Perhaps I can implement that in the future.

"3) Brake pressure restores too quickly."

I may have overlooked some of the restoration values in the wag files. I would have prefered them to recharge a little slower too. Overall I think the response of the eng/wag files is pretty good, but again, it appears I may have missed some of the recharge values in the eng/wags.

"4) Some more activity detail (easy/hard, duration, etc.) would be useful."

That was intentional. I don't know how far along you are into the sequential activities, but you'll learn soon enough that unexpected things happen in my activities... just like when railroading. So, if I had given durations, easy/hard/etc, IMHO it would have revealed too much and you'd wonder why what was described in the activity overview as a simple 1 hour run should take two hours in the "Duration" field. Thus, you enter an activity having a gist of what you're to do... but the unexpected is allowed for by virtue of not feeding you too much information.

Thanks for taking the time to articulate your impressions. I have gleaned several good things to consider in the future.

Andre

Tell me about it. I waited FOREVER for Cooner to show up yesterday.

Kerry

Well, it seemed like forever.

I find I usually run below the speed limit on this route.I could just imagine the 110,112 or 115lb rail growning under the tonnage.If the rail is even that heavy,might be 100lb rail.Worn railheads,sunken ties and loose railjoints are all over.Derailments from broken rail are common.You wouldn't be doing 30mph on many of those curves in reality.This route was designed by a guy with real shortline experience.BTW, the Susie-Q wasn' t much different when I worked there.The L&HR sections were 132lb.Sparta Mt. had 100lb,replaced by used 136 lb. ATSF welded rail from Butler to Sparta Jct.Those two sections were brought up to 40mph for freight.We set up the crossings for 60mph.From Butler east I remember seeing 110,112 and 115lb rail.The Rahway Valley had 90lb rail.GP-18's don't like 90lb un-ballasted rail.

Gixxer:

Right you are!

During 1988, portions of the A&M's south MAIN LINE still included many, many miles of jointed 90 lb rail left over from the Frisco days. (This rail was mainly south of Fayetteville.) I have video tapes I shot in which you can hear the clickety-clack nicely. Main line speed for those sections were in the neighborhood of 30-40 MPH... can't remember which for sure. Their roadbed and rail condition was really pretty good. As of today, most, if not all, of the 90 lb rail on the main line is replaced.

During construction, I envisioned the A&O Sub looking like the old Frisco mainline of the 70s and 80s.

The tightest main line curves used on the A&O Sub are 10d curves. Those would technically be about 20-25 MPH curves on the prototype. In MSTS, they didn't model the cabview/curvature dynamic very good. Thus, the onboard view accentuates a tight curve with "lurch". You can readily see this by traversing a 10d curve at near 30 MPH and viewing it both onboard and then exterior. Onboard will look a bit artificial. Go exterior and you'll see the train gracefully navigating the arc as it would look in reality. IMHO, 30 MPH is about the limit of a 10d being visually acceptable onboard.


Andre

Andre wrote:

Two years ago the whole A&M main from Fayette Jct to Van Buren was rebuilt with new 136 CWR and new ties where needed. The old CWR was then put in the active sidings (Winslow and Chester mainly). Not sure what happened to most of the 90Ib rail that was on the line. The funny thing...well from a railfan's point of view...was the spring after A&M did all this work...they suffered three big wash outs between West Fork and Mountainburg. I know A&M has their fingers crossed that mother nature is a little kinder to them this spring. They've dumped some serous shot rock (large rip rap) around Chester and West Fork trying to keep that from happening again.

And an link about the wash outs from last spring.....
A&M 2004 Washouts

With a little editing and copying I "borrowed" the track sounds from the MLT's Bridge Line to give the A&O some clickety-clack. MLT's track textures are my favourites too and also adorn the track beds of "my" A&O. Add in Kosmos/HITW skies and it oozes even more atmosphere.

It's true the brakes do release early, which makes things a little less nail biting than say Cascade where you end up sometimes praying for air coming down the grade.

I sometimes forget to slow down to 15mph for those diverging switches, although F6 helps to know what's coming up!

Cheers,
David.

A fellow forum member mailed me asking how to integrate the Bridge Line sounds into the A&O so here's how you do it (the same principal applies to any route you may wish to use the sounds in).

First of all, the file that decides which track sounds a route uses is called ttype.dat. Rename the original A&O file so you can backtrack.
Rename...
...\Train Simulator\A&OSub\ttype.dat to ttype.old

Now copy the Bridge Line ttype.dat to the A&O route folder.
Copy...
...\Train Simulator\Delware & Hudson\ttype.dat
to the ...\Train Simulator\A&OSub folder.

Lastly copy the necessary sound files...
Copy...
...\Train Simulator\Delware & Hudson\Sound\CPTrack0ex.sms
...\Train Simulator\Delware & Hudson\Sound\CPTrack0in.sms
...\Train Simulator\Delware & Hudson\Sound\rail_fast.wav
...\Train Simulator\Delware & Hudson\Sound\rail_slow.wav
...\Train Simulator\Delware & Hudson\Sound\x_rail_fast.wav
...\Train Simulator\Delware & Hudson\Sound\x_rail_slow.wav
to the ...\Train Simulator\A&OSub\Sound folder.

And there you have it!