Railworks America

Hello- I am having some difficulties when I try to couple to a cut of ore cars. I am trying to couple J Cornells GP38-2 to a cut of Golden Age ore cars. As I approach them, the cars start to jump around and twist. When I do couple to them, even with just a slight 'bump' the cars take off with my engine down the tracks- usually resulting in a derailment. This happens with a few different locomotives. However- if I approach it with a freight car- all seems well. Anyone have any thoughts?

Approaching cars with engine:






Approaching cars with hopper:

Does it happen with any other wagons?

The in-game Menu Options has a feature named "coupling override" (or sometinhg like that, I'm not in game pc now) which allows different couplers to attach each other. You could try see if its box is checked (I guess is unchecked by default) and then what happens...

NDORFN-I did some more testing last night. The only thing I noticed is there IS a SLIGHT 'bump' with some other cars- but no where near the extent of what is shown.

Machinist- I will try your suggestion. Not sure if that will have an effect- but can't hurt!

I've noticed for some time that some wagons react before contact is made. Also, sometimes wagons on an adjacent track react and I drive past. Obviously it's got something to do with bounding box parameters but I'm not as clued up with them as I was with MSTS. One of the model makers should be able to take a look at the .bin file of those wagons and pick out anything obvious.

I did some more testing, including trying with coupling "off" and automatic coupling "off" this time with various cars. Here are the results with the gondolas.
NOTE: Contact WAS NOT made with the second cut of cars. I only approached them at about 3mph. When I got within about 15' the rear cars rear truck suddenly sunk below grade, then came flying back up.



I did compare a couple sections of the bin files. One from the Golden Age 100Ton hoppers, and one from the ATSF Gondola Pack. From what I can see, nothing pops out as being an obvious cause. Anyone have an idea of what could be up or further places that should be investigated?

Again, because it doesn't seem to be your case, the only few suggestions I can point are (your pics don't allow me to be totally sure):
1) I already saw this happening when the cars in the consist are not perfectly coupled each other, they are placed in Editor a bit inside/within each other (sorry, I don't know the words in English to explain it better), the couplers are overlapping a bit each other, and it sometimes is not easyly visible.
2) rarely happens, but when consist is placed over a automatic switch you may have a junction against in the middle of consist, which causes the derailment as soons as you couple to any end of consist.

The last but one suggestion is try BritKits couplers (at least they work perfectly and very nice in very long consists), but I guess it replaces only default buck-eye couplers.

The last one, of course, is report the problem to the add-on creators... BTW you started talking about the GP38-2, and your last pic has another loco, which indicates the problem is not with engines...

Machinist wrote:The last one, of course, is report the problem to the add-on creators... BTW you started talking about the GP38-2, and your last pic has another loco, which indicates the problem is not with engines...

The problem initially started when I was using the GP38-2, but I decided to test various setups to try and track down the cause. Is there a way to change the title of the thread?
1) What other shots might be useful do you think in helping track this down?
2) I placed the cars individually and made sure to place cars only at the end. Not sure what else I can do for proper alignment. But I do know what you are talking about with "overlapping" cars. I have had that on a few occations.
3) The cars in the top picture are on straight track with no switches. I made a small test route which you see there. All switches are Manual.
4) I will be reporting this to Golden Age- but I was hoping to find the problem or track down other instances of it happening to others- rather than it being only me and just giving them a complaint/problem.

Thanks for your input Machinist!

Ah! OK... no need of other shots, you explained very well what you did.

Another weird thing I just remembered is that some few (it's rare) freight cars have front and rear reacting differently... I remember a failing scenario in Hatchet Hill Quarry in which the problem was the ballasts: not all of them were facing the same direction so we couldn't couple successfully to the consist (despite of no derailment). After I changed the direction of all cars to face the same direction the scenario worked (someone posted this tip elsewhere).

To change the title of thread just edit the "subject". The posted messages won't be effected, but the further will hold the new name

Thanks for the information Machinist. All of the gons are facing the same way, but I will try to flip them and see if that makes any difference. I also tried loaded and unloaded versions in the testing about with the same results.

What's the name of the ore cars? I'll download them and have a play but I can't find them anywhere on his website...

The ore cars are from Golden Age- the ones that come as an extra with the purchase of a few of his packs. The set includes BN, GN, and MILW, plus one more i think. I think I got mine with either the BN Bulkhead or the BN 100T hopper set.