Small-Scale Live Steam Locomotives

Valve Gear Design Simulator Software


Charles Dockstader has written a program for MS-DOS which will take the geometry of your valve gear design and show the physical arrangement of the motion, animate the events, draw an indicator card, etc.  This is the ideal way to shake out your valve gear design.  The program is easy to use and the results are outstanding.

The simulator is available on Dockstader's web site: http://www.tcsn.net/charlied/.

The simulator requires three files at present:

  1. The main program file.  VALGRQ1.EXE (972,629 bytes).  Contains the main program and valve gear geometry files.  Self-extracting archive (download to the directory where you want to load the program and run valgrpq1.)
  2. The supplemental file.  VALGRQ1A.EXE (919,507 bytes).  Update which includes the Woolf, Western River Steamboat and Young valve gears and Zeuner valve diagram.  Self-extracting archive (download to the directory where you want to load the program and run valgrq1a.)
  3. The program's instructions, available here online (there is a text version in the installation package).
There is also a new version, which runs under MS Windows instead of DOS.  The first motion types in this program are Walschaerts and Stephenson's gears, with more to be added as time goes on.  The file is split into seven download files, which are available on Dockstader's web site.  You will need the instructions from the DOS version, since they are not included in the original program.

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Compiled and © copyright 1998-2001 by: Vance R. Bass. Valve gear software © copyright 1998-2001 by Charles Dockstader, and placed in the public domain by him. Please use any and all information contained herein for your hobby enjoyment. If you're going to make money from it, talk to me first.

Last updated: 23 October 2001.