coaches bobble and snag on switches

[stevefranks]

I just purchased the Belanger NYC passenger set. Wonderful set. Should have bought it years ago!!

I find, however, that the coaches will bobble & jerk, and want to snag while traveling over the sharp curves of switches. This causes visually "nervous" looking cars and tends to slow down the train.

I've been out of MSTS for a spell and seem to remember a one-line fix for this. Can't find anything in my personal archive as a fix.

Can anyone help?

Steve

[stevefranks]

Greetings,

I poked around in my personal msts archive of cds and after some time, I think I found my answer:

CouplingHasRigidConnection ()

I entered the line into all the wags and they seem to on best behavior now.

That is the trouble with MSTS. All the goodies one learns quickly fades from memory when gone for a spell.

Steve

[GaryG]

Hello Steve

Welcome back to the MSTS world.

Gaetan asked my to see if I could assist but it looks like you found the answer, well done.

Binding and bouncing (rubber-banding) are a common problem with longer cars and setting the RigidConnection parameter is the way to solve it without causing too many side effects. The only shortcoming is couplers with slack action become coupled without slack. With pasenger cars there usually isn't any slack between cars so no loss.

Now you should research MSTSbin if you're not aware of it yet...

GaryG

[bandorr2000]

Which is the correct way to add the statement CouplingHasRigidConnection () ? I have found wagon files with it appearing once after the coupler type, and others with it appearing after each coupler type definition. Also, there is always a 1 in the bracket, ie

CouplingHasRigidConnection ( 1 ) . The PRR cars here need this, and I would like to do them accurately.

Thank you.

[GaryG]

Hi

In pre-MSTSbin days, I found that just having "CouplingHasRigidConnection" followed by "( )" or "( 0 )" or "( 1 )" all seemed to have the same effect, stopping binding and bouncing.

This was also in the days where there was just one Coupling section used.

Now with much Coupling research done by many and mSTSbin, we are using separate Coupling sections for front and rear couplers which has allowed front coupling to work as well as allowing fairly realistic slack action between cars. With thes new couplers, the "CouplingHasRigidConnection" parameter is being used for one of the two Coupling sections, usually the second one which is for the front coupler. If you use it for both couplers, the slack action will be gone but binding and bouncing will also disappear.

The binding and bouncing usually is just a problem on cars and locos over 50 feet or so in length .

The normal insertion location is just above the Velocity parameter.

Rushing this response as I have to leave...

GaryG

[bandorr2000]

Excellant answer and explanation! Thank you.

[stevefranks]

Greetings,

In answer to the previous question of exactly where this line is to be inserted, here a an excerpt from a .wag file, though the same placement is applicable to .eng files as well. Thanks also for the clairification of its 0,1 parameter when employed and its apparantly negligible effect.

Coupling (
Type ( Automatic )
Spring (
Stiffness ( 1e6N/m 5e6N/m )
Damping ( 1.1e6N/m 1.8e6N/m )
Break ( 2e7N 2e7N )
r0 ( 10cm 15cm )
)
CouplingHasRigidConnection ()
Velocity ( 0.1m/s )
)
Buffers (
Spring (
Stiffness ( 1e6N/m 5e6N/m )
Damping ( 3e6N/m/s 3e6N/m/s )
r0 ( 0m 1e9 )
)
Centre ( 0.5 )
Radius ( 1 )
Angle ( 0.5deg )
)
Adheasion ( 0.2 0.4 2 0 )