What to do when your train is too heavy to go up an incline

[TekyTeky]

I am having an issue, that I think you said you also have with one of your heavy trains, that is it won’t climb up the incline. I decided I wanted a steam train with old passenger wagons to go to the new station at the top of the incline. But after remodelling the tender, which houses the hub and sensor, the Tain has the motor, it is now too heavy. It will go by itself, just. Is there any provision to adjust the torque somehow? Would changing the acceleration help?
All else is going well. I’ll update to the new master for the keep alive type issue.

This is the incline, then the station. As you can see I have worked a lot on the station and train track. So would like to have it work.

[Novakasa]

I'm guessing you already use the rubber rings from trixbrix? Are the wheels still slipping or is it just a torque issue?
I do think higher acceleration might help, also putting the first marker as early before the incline as possible might make the train gain more momentum earlier. It probably also works best with fully charged batteries (non-rechargeable 1.5V batteries will probably be better as well)

I'd also experiment with manually controlling the train to see if it is theoretically possible and observe what control pattern is necessary to make the incline. If the train can't make it even manually, then you probably have to modify the gradient or the weight of the train...

For me, I did make the incline as long as possible and made sure that the gradient has smooth vertical bends, so no sharp kinks between the tracks. A straight incline is easier torque-wise as well.

[Novakasa]

I am not 100% sure I follow how you set up the sensor speed in the end, but if it works that's great! Do you have a suspicion that maybe there's a bug where sometimes the train does not actually change the speed after it encounters a marker?

You also have to keep in mind that the train will "see" the marker much later when it goes backwards, since it only has the sensor in the front.

You can also just add regular markers (does not need to be a prior marker).
So you can just add a marker to a random track element and assign a speed to it in one direction.

BTW, I've now renamed prior sensors to "backwards entry markers".

[TekyTeky]

Ok, got all that..thanks.. using voltage makes more sense to me, and now I know that 30 equals 1 second.

I had never thought of adding a single marker anywhere to change speed. I guess the distance between blocks on my layout is small enough to use the block markers.
The new steam train has the sensor in the tender so it sees markers differently to the green train.

I think this isn’t possible but you may have an idea….. Because the steam train has the sensor in the tender I have placed the blue marker so the carriage, being pulled, stops at the platform. But the green train stops too early as the sensor is at the front. As there isn’t enough room for another block, how can I get it to stop further along the platform?

Yes, I had figured you had changed the name of the prior sensors 😎

[Novakasa]

30 only means 1 second when going from 20 to 50 (50 - 20 = 30)
For example, when going from 20 to 80, it takes 2 seconds (because the speed changes by 30/s, thus it takes 2 seconds to increase by 60)

[TekyTeky]

My other question may not have made sense.

Can you have 2 stop positions, one for each train in the same block?

The steam train has the sensor in the tender, the green train is in front.
So I need them to stop at different places on the one block.

Could I have a "mini" block?
As it is at the end, if I have a small block, maybe 2 tracks long past the one the steam train stops at.. it maybe ok, as it won't be used for Random mode yet while I get it all right.

Ok, I have done something great (I think so anyway).. :)

I created 2 blocks next to each other, the main block and a small one towards the end of the track (for the greeen train to stop)
It all seems to work.. the stream train stops at the first blue marker if I select that, the green train stops at the second blue marker if I select that.
Both reverse out ok too.

[Novakasa]

Interesting solution!

Though this probably has a few weaknesses:

• in random mode, each train will chose either one of the blocks to stop at. This might be less of an issue once we have the "train schedule" feature though. We could also add filters so certain trains will only stop at certain blocks in random mode.
• if a train comes in very fast and wants to stop at the mini block, the block is so small that it likely will overshoot the block quite a bit. You could fix that by setting the speeds on the markers from the larger block to "slow", so a train that will not stop at the large block will still slow down early enough.

I think a solution that would fit your issue better would be to allow for multiple markers within the same block, for different "sensor positions". This however would introduce a lot of complexity so I am unlikely to implement something like that in the foreseeable future.