Steam Engine Help

[somedude]

Greetings,
I have a few questions regarding steam engines in OR.
First off, what is the difference between the two boiler water levels given? Water level gauges seem to follow the second one but the first one seems to be used for the actual water level.
Secondly, why does the water level increase by itself when first starting out? I have manual fireman control and I am not injecting in any water yet the water goes from 95% to over 100%, also is it possible to reduce the starting water level?

Third question, it seems to me that steam engines are too powerful, is there a way to fix this? I have a couple that are showing 100% power output at 5% regulator and they are easily passing 100mph. I have tried adjusting the eng file to realistic values (the original values were higher than the ones google found) but that didn't seem to have any impact.

One last question (for now lol) my smoke/steam display as squares instead of nice puffy smoke/steam. What could be causing this? I have updated drivers and such... Could it be an effect or something is needed from MSTS? (I don't currently have MSTS installed... can't find the disks lol)

Sorry for so many questions. Thanks in advance for any help.
Rob.

[longiron]

It seems Open Rails may now calculate steam physics differently than MSTS. This page can help you set up the correct parameters in OR: http://www.coalstonewcastle.com.au/physics/steam-set/

These shouldn't have a detrimental effect on MSTS as OR specific data is ignored by MSTS

[baldwin]

There is no may about it. Open Rails has a completely new set of steam code, and does indeed do things differently to MSTS. All data used should be as accurate as possible to get good results. The "too powerful" steam engines are of interest as I have not yet found one of those.

For the steam/smoke display have a look in the trainsim library for replacement files. smkvr5.zip is one that comes to mind.

[somedude]

Thanks for the replies.
The Main loco in question is the SP&S 700 a 4-8-4 Northern. After having another go, it appears as though the power out increases with speed... At low speed the power out matches the throttle but as I get moving faster the power out increases to the point where on this run I had the throttle set at 5% yet was getting full power out... If I pull the throttle to 100% I get going really fast (got up to 120mph before the game crashed due to going too fast around a corner). Attached is a picture showing the situation Open Rails 2015-09-14 03-56-14.jpg

[bwbrgb]

If you read the sample engine files at "Coals to Newcastle" and use accurate replacements for your specific locomotive I think you will find that the steamer involved will not only operate smoother but have more power than it had before with MSTS . I usually get my "Specs" at "Steam Locomotive dot com" They have a very good selection of engines and usually have many different versions for a model , depending on which RR used it . If you are using the loco for ORTS only, then you can get rid of much of the old MSTS .eng file because the info is not used in ORTS . Things such as the Variable line at the bottom of the engine file .
Remember ! If all else fails - - read the instructions .

[R. Steele]

I'll just chime in here, still learning steam, but Open Rails users and the development team have taken great pains with the steam section of the code. Everything, from the smoke down has been looked at and refined, still work going on, but from all accounts from the very experienced steam folks...OR is much more realistic than MSTS in every respect.

The first long run I did on the PRR East - a coal train, steam engine power, was a blast in OR, even the sound was just perfect.

[somedude]

Thanks for the help everyone.
So after much research into the parameters - half of the required entries for OR were missing and the other half that was there were all too high causing OR to over-estimate the missing entries. Now that everything is entered it is behaving much better!

Also Baldwin you were quite right - the demo route had no smoke effect for steam. Adding in the effect file fixed it.

I am still not sure what the difference between the two water levels is, nor why the water level increases by itself with no injectors. Anyone have any ideas for those?

[baldwin]

There should only be one water level. Run it in auto fireman mode and you should only see one level. Manual should be working the same.

[somedude]

Yes in Auto mode there is only 1 level but when I go into manual fireman mode (I prefer to do it myself ) I see 2 levels. For example in the picture I attached before (it appears really small when I open it, is it that way for everyone??) the first one says boiler water level 36% (safe range) the second, boiler water level 77% (absolute). It appears as if the boiler water gauges in the cab view use the absolute number while the simulation uses the safe range number?

[baldwin]

I prefer auto mode, there is enough to do without worrying about boiler water levels and grate fuel levels. Been a long time since I looked at manual firing, and that was only to check that things were working as they should. The safe range figure should not be moving. If I recall right that is there as a reminder not to go below as you are getting close to blowing the plugs at that point. The main one to look at is the absolute figure as that indicates the water level you are at.

As for your picture, way too small to give any information. Only needs the top left section of the screen to show the figures.

To really see what the figures are you need the steam debug hud. With the F5 display active press shift and F5 until that page is visible. There you will see what is happening in detail.

As for the SPS 700 and the seemingly too powerful response to the throttle, you may have uncovered a bug as that does not happen in auto mode.

[somedude]

Stupid forum attachment was resized to a useless size.
Try this:

http://s103.photobucket.com/user/popandbob/media/Open%20Rails%202015-09-14%2003-56-14.png.html

Baldwin, that is as I assumed, the absolute should be the one to look at and the safe range should be a fixed number to say what's safe however it appears to be the opposite in game, the safe range moves and the absolute stays relatively constant (75-80%). I went below zero on the safe range one time and it melted the plugs.

Now that it is a full size picture (hopefully lol) it can be seen putting out 100% power at a throttle setting of 5%. The debug window is open so you can see what is going on.

Thanks again for the assistance.

[baldwin]

The power comes from the cylinders. The more steam that is admitted per stroke the more power will be generated. There is however a limit to the amount of steam that a cylinder can hold and work properly. The more steam used by the cylinders, the more water that has to be added to make more steam, all contributing to the state of the boiler.

At the speed shown in your screenshot, the controls are wrong. The reverser should be down around 15-20% allowing the steam to work in the cylinders and the throttle should be 50 to 75% if running light engine or with a small to medium passenger consist. Freight would be heavier and so require up to 40% reverser and 50-75% throttle.

Boiler levels. It seems that the absolute is the target, and the safe is what you should be trying to keep close to target. Your fire is also a bit on the low side and will be adversely affecting steam generation.

If you were to drive in Auto firing mode, you would see that the boiler is kept well above the danger level, and the fire is maintained at an optimum level if you are driving normally, but if you thrash the engine you put pressure on the auto system and can actually cause the firing to fail to maintain a proper level, and run the boiler out of water. I have known people to run out of steam in auto mode. That is something you could never do in MSTS.

[somedude]

Yes I get the theory of how Steam works but the problem is that no engine should output 100% power at 5% throttle. As I understand it at full forward reverser the steam should only be effective up to about 50% or so of the max speed of the engine and would then prevent further acceleration. The reason I had the reverser so high was to use up more steam... So much was being created that I had to keep the reverser up to keep the boiler pressure down (that is a fault of the parameters given not OR). At the state shown in the picture I was maintaining 262 PSI
As for my fire level and water level - this picture was taken during a test run to display the issue... I was not really keeping an eye on them.
Last night I did another test run - this time with auto fireman - to see if it was only a manual fireman issue. It was not. I was able to see the exact same results with the same control settings.

[baldwin]

Ah. You are looking at the performance indicated power levels. I do believe you have pointed out a bug in the code, because with different control settings I can make those run in the negative. That is with a pure MSTS eng file. I will have to check it against a pure OR eng file and see if I get the same behaviour. If it happens there I will flag it up as a bug.

[lindsayts]

A couple of points, the steam code for OR is being done by Peter Newel from Coals to Newcastle fame. He has done an amazing job of cleaning up and enhancing the code. The steam source code was a real pigs breakfast before Peter came on the scene. Peter hangs out as Steamer_ctn at Elvastower.

Peter has set up the code so that a particular loco will produce a reasonably accurate performance if CORRECT data is entered into the eng file. This includes such hard to get items such as Boiler Volume, for good info see the OR manual and Peter's example files from his website. Correct data ____MUST___ be entered full stop.

Steam engines actually produce there power in the firebox, the boiler being an energy storage device under the control of the driver and fireman and the cylinders and motion gear being an energy conversion device.

The steam code as is is not perfect this is mainly due to steamers themselves being __EXTREMELY__ variable machines. Often even different engines of the same class behaving differently. OR includes two parameters that allow the steam performance to be tuned, if one is in the extremely lucky position of having a particular machines real performance data.

Lindsay