How Fast, How Many?

[JoeExplorer]

I'm replaying the campaign again. In the early days of rail; what was considered a good speed? I have my Jon Bull and am pulling two cars. But I was wondering if I should add more cars to it.

For instance: Is running a Jon bull with 2 cars at 30 mph good or is it normal to run a JonBull say with 4 cars at 15mph. The figures aren't correct just trying to make an example.

At what point don't you put more cars on a train? Hope all this made sense.

[Gwizz]

The quicker you deliver cargo the higher you profit and the longer your route, (as the crow flies) the higher the profit.
Price differences with what you haul and the rot time has an affect.
Low value cargo with long rot times, I tend to haul bigger loads.
High value cargo needs to move faster, so I lighten the loads.
Also the curves and grades slow down a train and it takes longer for a heavy train to get back up to speed.
Two short trains will often pay better then 1 long train.
The quicker you pick up cargo the better it pays as well.

[Gwizz]

I might add:

When you are using drop shipping of cargo, the cargo rot time is much slower, where is has been dropped.
This slows the loss of cargo value until the cargo is again picked up by another train to continue its' journey.

[thegrindre]

I'd like to ask about this also.
You say two smaller trains will generally deliver faster then one long train. I'm not sure that's true because two trains on one track that are going in the opposite directions will come to a crawl as one stops completely when passing.
Now, this is really slow travel.

[Wolverine@MSU]

Yes that is a problem, especially early in a scenario when you need to make money fast. One trick I use is to watch the two trains as they approach each other, and when they get close, pause the game and lay a short piece of double track between them (where I expect them to meet) to allow them to pass each other unhindered. If I'm really a stickler, I'll watch them on the return trips and, if they have departed their respective stations at about the same time and will meet in about the same place, will add a little more double track as needed to let them pass a second time.

[Blackhawk]

Nice strategy Wolverine, I used to do something similar to that as well. Eventually with more trains being added to the lines, I'd do that in more places and if it was a busy rail line, I'd ultimately end up having made the entire line double track.

I'd generally prefer longer trains over shorter and faster trains. Occasionally if there is a reason for a short train I'll do it, but I prefer to make the train haul a decent sized load. Early locomotives would be one of the cases where I'd only pull a limited number of cars (3-4). Unless I had a lot to ship and couldn't afford another locomotive at the time, then maybe I'd load it up.


While 2 smaller trains may deliver faster than 1 longer train, 10 smaller trains may not end up delivering faster than 5 longer trains with all the track congestion, and then the increased number of trains may mean an increased chance of breakdowns which block the track and slow progress as well as increased maintenance, fuel costs, and upgrade/replacement costs. Consequently, towards the mid to late 1800s once the locomotives have improved, I usually start to increase the amount of loads onto my trains.

[Gwizz]

Re: How Fast, How Many?

Post by thegrindre » Fri Aug 27, 2010 4:38 am
I'd like to ask about this also.
You say two smaller trains will generally deliver faster then one long train. I'm not sure that's true because two trains on one track that are going in the opposite directions will come to a crawl as one stops completely when passing.
Now, this is really slow travel.

On early (RRT2) RRs the small locomotives were very slow. The gain in value for faster delivery was quite high.
I don't remember who tested this now; (Possibly Steve Larson)( I believe Hawk has some of the threads from steves old site)
But, with a long route and a short train, even trains that stopped on single track to allow another train to pass did well money wise.
Of course the train that didn't stop did even better.
On short runs on single track it depended more upon a trains acceleration. I don't remember any early locos that had a fast start up.

While double track helps to increase the speed, It is not as cost effective as having more short trains, but, it is useful for the future.
I have to admit I did this often as I enjoy the game play more than the winning.
When a game is paused to double track between two trains, all the trains on the map are stopped. If trains are slow starting and there are many trains running, many trains will be stopped and affected when you pause. Then when re started they all again have to accellerate before coming up to full speed. I'm not sure if double tracking while the game is running slows all the trains or not. Never tried doing that.

[Blackhawk]

All the trains are stopped if you pause the game to double the track? I thought the train only stops and has to re-accelerate if you double the track that the train is actually on. Although it has been a few months since I've played RT2 so maybe my memory is failing me.

[Hawk]

( I believe Hawk has some of the threads from steves old site)

If you mean Steve Lorenz, the old Heineken and Pacific site, here's the link to the sections of his site I saved, with his permission.

http://hawkdawg.com/rrt/rrt3/hp/hp.htm

The navigation bar on the left does work.

[Wolverine@MSU]

When a game is paused to double track between two trains, all the trains on the map are stopped. If trains are slow starting and there are many trains running, many trains will be stopped and affected when you pause. Then when re started they all again have to accellerate before coming up to full speed. I'm not sure if double tracking while the game is running slows all the trains or not. Never tried doing that.

Blackhawk is correct. The trains don't stop unless you double track over them. As soon as you unpause, all trains will resume running at the speed they were at before the pause, except those that have to switch to the new track line from double-tracking.

[Gwizz]

I'm running on old memory here.

When I paused a game to stop the trains, I upgraded to double track between the two trains and not over them: Then, restarting the game caused the trains to again run, but at a slower speed until they accelerated back to normal. This is not so noticeable if the loco has quick acceleration. But, for small slow locomotives it eats up time.

When I double track under a train and restart, there is a delay before that train even starts moving which is very noticeable.

There are two parts of the code working here. Acceleration that is different for each locomotive and delay that is the same for each locomotive, where the train chooses which direction and from which track the train will leave a station. Without the delay two trains in the same cell starting at the same station could crash the game. Changing the track cell to double track creates another test for the locomotive. The test also checks every locomotive in turn looking for any conflict for the cell change.

Like I said I'm running on old memory and I could be wrong. I'm getting ready to test a new RT2 map that uses small locos. I'll test this at that time.