Retainer Question

[Snowman]

Watching the video posted along with this thread I was hoping to duplicate/simulate the video as closely as possible. First, I cant find any Silverside hoppers that seem to dominate the Belmont coal train in those days. Thats another issue. My main issue is setting the retainers as mentioned in the video on the head 20 cars to the high pressure position. It seems and I could be wrong that openrails only has options for %25 %50 and %100 or every four cars, every other car and all cars in your consist.

I was hoping to get around this by adding the line mentioned in the OpenRails manual that would allow retainers on that particular car and then you can turn off "retainer valves on all cars" option. Then I could have the first 20 cars having retainers and the rest wouldnt because the wagon file wouldnt have code for this. Problem is, I cant find the code for the wag file anywhere in the manual or by search. This is mentioned on page 102 of the most recent manual and quotes

(This requires that the retainer capability of the cars be enabled; either by a menu option, or through an appropriate keyword in the car’s .wag file.)

My question is what is the approiate keyword to use in the wag file. Thanks.

[markus1996]

There is an option in the ORTS options menu, tab "General", called "Retainer valve on all cars". That will bypass the need to alter the WAG file and give you retainers on ALL cars.

As for the way with editing the WAG files, I´ll go and look it up. Will report back when I found it.

Cheers, Markus

[Komachi]

What exactly is a retainer and what's it do?

[eric]

This is the Bible of Braking:

http://www.railway-technical.com/brake2.shtml

Retainer valves are completely manually operated, i.e. the train must be stopped (usually at the top of a long grade), the brakes released, and a crewman must walk back along the train. He turns the retainer valve on each car to the restricting position. Usually only a percentage of the cars are "retainered", just enough cars to keep the train from running away down the hill when the brakes are released and recharging during the run down the mountain. When the crewman is back aboard the train may proceed down the mountain. The air brakes work normally until they are released. Then the cars with the retainers closed will hold their brakes applied, slowing train acceleration while the reservoirs recharge for the next brake application. The train must stop at the bottom of the grade and a crewman again walk back and return the retainers to their open (direct release) position.

[markus1996]

Follow up to my previous post: If you want to define reateiners specific to cars (IE, editing the WAG file), there are two tokens to be added to the BrakeEquipmentType () line in the WAG file: Either Retainer_4_position or Retainer_3_position, which I think are self-explanatory.

The end result could look like this: BrakeEquipmentType( "Handbrake, Triple_valve, Auxilary_reservoir, Emergency_brake_reservoir, Retainer_4_position" )

Cheers, Markus

[crstagg]

Follow up to my previous post: If you want to define reateiners specific to cars (IE, editing the WAG file), there are two tokens to be added to the BrakeEquipmentType () line in the WAG file: Either Retainer_4_position or Retainer_3_position, which I think are self-explanatory.

The end result could look like this: BrakeEquipmentType( "Handbrake, Triple_valve, Auxilary_reservoir, Emergency_brake_reservoir, Retainer_4_position" )

Cheers, Markus

Markus,
If I might add that those two tokens are not "new" with OR. They have are defined in the ENG/WAG document that came on the initial MSTS CDs in the Tech Documents folder.

[markus1996]

Thanks Charles.

Yes, they were already available in MSTS, but above this info was asked for, so I posted it.

Cheers, Markus

[Snowman]

The end result could look like this: BrakeEquipmentType( "Handbrake, Triple_valve, Auxilary_reservoir, Emergency_brake_reservoir, Retainer_4_position" )

Thanks that worked great.