Cargo weight revamping

[Gumboots]

The tanker is good, if anyone ever finds a use for a tanker in that era. You've gone and shrunk the intermediate rings on the barrels though, so those extra verts and faces are just making the barrels rougher. They would actually be smoother with just the two central rings and the ends. Or just boost the intermediate diameter a bit so it approximates a convex curve.

The others don't have any difference between A and B eras, so I was loading them all up and thinking "Hey they're all the same". But yeah I get the idea.

[Just Crazy Jim]

The tanker is good, if anyone ever finds a use for a tanker in that era. You've gone and shrunk the intermediate rings on the barrels though, so those extra verts and faces are just making the barrels rougher. They would actually be smoother with just the two central rings and the ends. Or just boost the intermediate diameter a bit so it approximates a convex curve.

The others don't have any difference between A and B eras, so I was loading them all up and thinking "Hey they're all the same". But yeah I get the idea.

TBH, I am not used to a system that puts the shading on the verts instead of the faces. In most render engines I've worked with, less verts = rougher, rather than the reverse. But here after, I will follow your advice and regard it as law.

I meant to stretch the B era units fractionally or do away with the tailboards on the A units. I couldn't decide, so rather than stall with indecision, I sent the lot. In early stages, in addition to the side cargo door, box cars often had a mid-line passage door to allow conductors/railroad police ease-of-entrance. This was later dropped in favor of a rooftop trapdoor for inspection as the mid-line passage door also allowed ease-of-entrance by everyone else. In Europe, the mid-line doors were dropped at a later date than in the USA, I am guessing it's probably owing to the different distances between stations, more frequent occurrence of tunnels and low-clearance bridges passing over the tracks. In all, for most of Europe, the distance between stations is smaller on average than it is in the USA. Now, much more so than it was formerly.

I reckon the Brewery makes beer and the Distillery makes whiskey, which are both likely to be in barrels at some stage. Then there's coruscate's Vinyard, which make wine (alcohol) which most definitely should be in barrels. Then there's the fact that about everything was shipped in barrels padded with excelsior/wood wool. My great grandmother had a set of china shipped from Britain to Rhodesia that way back in the late 1890s. And my grandfather told me that bottles of whiskey and wine were shipped inside barrels of wood wool. However, none of that relates to the tanker.

[Gumboots]

TBH, I am not used to a system that puts the shading on the verts instead of the faces. In most render engines I've worked with, less verts = rougher, rather than the reverse. But here after, I will follow your advice and regard it as law.

The barrels have 6 loops on them: 2 at the ends, 2 in the middle, and 2 intermediate loops. It's the intermediates that are the problem. Their diameter is too small, so they're sucking the barrels into a concave curve in profile. That's what I meant by "making things rougher". If they were removed the shape would be better, because it'd get rid of the concave and result in a slightly more barrellish shape. Or you could keep the same number of verts, but increase the diameter on the intermediate loops so they followed a barrel shape better. Which would be the smoothest solution.

By the way, we do have an alternative (beta) version of the export script which does use face normals, but in RT3 this gives flat shading instead of the curved approximation that Gouraud shading naturally gives.

I reckon the Brewery makes beer and the Distillery makes whiskey, which are both likely to be in barrels at some stage. Then there's coruscate's Vinyard, which make wine (alcohol) which most definitely should be in barrels. Then there's the fact that about everything was shipped in barrels padded with excelsior/wood wool. My great grandmother had a set of china shipped from Britain to Rhodesia that way back in the late 1890s. And my grandfather told me that bottles of whiskey and wine were shipped inside barrels of wood wool. However, none of that relates to the tanker.

Yup. I expect all that stuff would be shipped in barrels inside boxcars.

Anyway I have all the files together for the new express cars. Will just have to brave the Bong of Doom tonight and check they all work. Hopefully should have a pack ready tomorrow.

[Gumboots]

Woohoo! I loaded all the express cars, checked them in every era, and no Bong of Doom anywhere!

This must be a world record.

Everything appears to be fine. Pix attached. I did have a screenshot showing the consist in 1845, when you have the B era mail cars in conjunction with the A era pax and dining, but forgot to save it. It looks a little odd, but not too bad, and will do just for a test pack.

Attached pix show the 1895 and 1945 mixtures aren't quite as good as they should be for a final pack, but again good enough for testing IMO.

Give them a flogging. If there are any actual bugs*, let me know.

For comparison with the default express cars:

1830______A era 2.0 tons______Default A 3.0 tons
1850______B era 2.6 tons______Default B 7.0 tons
1875______C era 3.6 tons______" " " " " "
1900______D era 5.1 tons______Default C 13.0 tons
1925______E era 7.8 tons______" " " " " "
1950______F era 11.2 tons_____Default D 27.0 tons
1975______G era 15.4 tons_____" " " " " "
2000______H era 20.0 tons_____" " " " " "

Now, on to freight cars...

*Meh. Spotted a bug. Only minor though. Somehow I ended up with the beta version of the Blender export script still in my Blender add-ons folder. Maybe I was doing some flat-shaded models at the time or something. Anyway, this means the express cars, and the caboose that I posted earlier, were exported as flat-shaded. Nobody has noticed with the caboose, not surprisingly, and it's not really a big deal for express cars either. It will probably only be noticeable under some lighting conditions on the roof of the later era express cars, so I won't worry about it for the moment.

However, I will change my copy of the script to the smooth-shaded version for future exporting.

EDIT: The old RC1 zip has been removed. A new RC2 zip, with bug fixes applied, will be available shortly.

[Just Crazy Jim]

The mod looks fantastic, although one tiny bug: Troops are Mail Wagons in 1830 in an "any express" consist in sandbox mode. I know Troops aren't supposed to be available until 1848, but sandbox mode is weird like that.

Switching the availability date to 1800 fixed the display in the Interface and on the rails. In general game-play, though, the cars won't manifest until 1848 even if they have a start date set to 1800 in the CAR file.

[Gumboots]

Ok thanks. Fixed it on my copies.

Won't bother reloading the zip at the moment, since it's not worth another 17 meg upload just for a one byte fix for sandbox.

[Gumboots]

Ok, reefers. For some reason I ended up on reefers. Dunno why.

Anyway, AFAICT the default models bear no resemblance to any real life sizes of reefers. Since I had to make new intermediate eras, which meant messing around with models whether I like it or not, I decided I might as well make them into a roster that reflects real life reefers even if I don't go bonkers on skinning now. That way the mesh, which is the easy bit, will at least be set up for better results later.

Box cars were up to 25 feet in the mid 1850's, and reefers (at least in the US) had pretty much standardised at 36 feet by the 1870's. So I took a guesstimate and made a 16 foot reefer for the pre-1850 A era, and a 31 foot reefer for the 1850-1874 B era. If anyone has better information on sizes in the early days, let me know. At this stage I can make changes quite easily.

The A era is just the default B boxcar, slightly tweaked and with the default A reefer skin on it. The B era is the default B reefer, tweaked again, and B reefer skin. The C is taken from plans for a 36 foot car of the late 1800's/early 1900's. The D is a 40 footer in timber. E is also 40 feet, but with a steel body (this era is roughly when steel ones came in). F is a 50 footer, still with ice bunkers. G is a 57 foot mechanical. H is a 64 foot Trinity hi-cube.

Trinity have also built a class of 73 footers for BNSF. This could be used instead as the only real difference is increased body length, but AFAICT the 64' version is more common. The only one that requires any real modelling and skinning work is the Trinity. The rest can get by with minor tweaks to default skins for now.

Now that I've made my mind up on these I'll start getting them sorted.

[Just Crazy Jim]

Your figures are pretty much in accord with what I know. There are two types of reefer though to consider: "Ventilated" for cold weather and "Ice-packed" for not so cold weather. The ventilated sort came in two forms: One had openings near the roof-line at either end to allow cold air to circulate through the interior while in motion, the other had a sort of clerestory serving the same purpose (see image).

tiffany.jpg (29.65 KiB) Viewed 4241 times

As a consequence, these early reefer units were taller than any other rolling stock in a consist. One has to wonder how much steam and smoke from the locomotive ended up passing through these early units. That probably added to some of the rather strange efforts at smoke dispersal one sees in early locomotives.

By about 1880, the height gave way to a fan system that used a variety of linkages to the bogies to drive a fan at either end, resulting in later reefers being longer than any other wagon in a consist. Sometimes circulating cold air from outside, sometimes interior air over blocks of ice.

reeferdiagram.jpg (17.91 KiB) Viewed 4241 times

Alternately, there might be "wind-catching" traps on the roof of the unit that were opened or closed depending on outside air temperature. Edit: I was just informed that the traps were closed before entering a tunnel and opened again after exiting the tunnel. Some poor fellow had to run along the roof of the moving express train to open and close these traps. I shudder to imagine having that job.

reeferinside.jpg (13.14 KiB) Viewed 4241 times

In either event, reefers were considered express and equipt with whatever passed for high-speed bogies at that time.

About 1950, ventilated reefers gave way to mechanical refrigeration and the size difference and express distinction was more or less lost.

[Gumboots]

I'm not going to do the clerestory type. There are frankly so many types of freight car around the world over the past couple of centuries that you could go mad just cataloguing them, let alone trying to model them, so I'm just picking 8 representative examples that more or less fit the timeframe for that era. This will do for now.

The earliest "reefers" were basically just bog standard boxcars with some lumps of ice thrown in with the cargo, so I figure I'll model them like that.

[Just Crazy Jim]

I'm not going to do the clerestory type. There are frankly so many types of freight car around the world over the past couple of centuries that you could go mad just cataloguing them, let alone trying to model them, so I'm just picking 8 representative examples that more or less fit the timeframe for that era. This will do for now.

The earliest "reefers" were basically just bog standard boxcars with some lumps of ice thrown in with the cargo, so I figure I'll model them like that.

Very true that. Some rolling stock was strikingly different on each company's rails until American Car and Foundry Company more or less cornered the market on that sort of thing and perforce standardised everything. And who can blame you for not making more work for yourself?

[Gumboots]

I've been putting some thought into where we ultimately want to end up with boxcars too. The default D boxcar is a 50 footer, probably because it was the most common size when the game was made, even though there were 60 or 62 foot cars around too.

I think most of us want longer trains, just because they're more fun. The biggest boxcars are the 86 footers, which are actually 86' 6" internal length and have a body length just shy of 88' externally. There were first introduced in the mid-1960's, which ties in well with one of the boxcar era change dates (end 1964/start 1965). Although not the most common even in the US and Canada (and non-existent in the rest of the world) these cars are still in use by several companies.

Here's a look at how they compare with the C double bauxite hoppers, and with one unit of the H10 Double. Wheelbase is a bit shorter, but overall length is about the same as the H10 Double. They should have acceptable in-game behaviour (which means they'll look a bit funny sometimes, like everything in RT3).

If these are introduced to the game in 1965 for the G era, that mean no bigger boxcars in 1990 for the H era. They'll already be as big as they can get, so the H era will need another way of distinguishing it. The obvious trick here is graffiti. It was almost non-existent before the 1980's, but common by 1990, so G era and H era can use the same model but different skins: basic livery for G and with graffiti for H. This will work.

Since there would be no extra modelling work required (only a bit of renaming and skinning) it would be easy to extend this to have different coloured skins for different cargoes. For example, the three in the shot above could be clothing, furniture and paper. This probably won't be done for the testing stage but will be an easy upgrade later.

That led to another thought. The original use of the 86 footers was for high volume/low density cargo, and that's how they are still used. Although I think keeping all boxcars the same weight, and same change dates, is best for all-round playability that doesn't necessarily mean all boxcar cargoes have to use the same model. It would be quite simple to have a generic 50 or 60 footer for the denser cargoes (ammunition, goods, rubber, etc) and an 86 footer for less dense cargoes that take up more volume for the same overall weight (clothing, furniture, etc).

This would give more variety in the looks of consists, and possibly easier cargo recognition, without being much more work to code and without complicating gameplay. It would also be a natural feed-in to the intermodal era. The shorter boxcars could be replaced by double-stacked well cars post-1990, and still run in conjunction with 86 footers for the less dense cargoes.

[Just Crazy Jim]

I can't speak for anyone else, but around here, I see more cargo containers on flatcars and wellcars than I see boxcars. Though, what I see more than anything is open hoppers full of coal and tankers with hazard labels prominently displayed. I was trainspotting over the weekend (there was report of a live steam excursion to be running) and a cursory look at what was in the yard at Huntington WV and Charleston WV, the spattering of boxcars were a hodgepodge of sizes, all steel, but not much uniformity in size. Also, the tankers were of various sizes, my friend who is a driver for Norfolk-Southern says that's because all liquids are not the same weight per cubic foot. Which makes some sense, as I recall mercury is a liquid and it's way more heavy than water.

Anyway, back on point, what I did note about the newer-looking boxcars is a switch to what appeared to be white or off-white fiberglass roofing on some of them. Whether that was to reduce weight or some other reason, I cannot guess. No few of them had double-doors, which I guess is to allow a fork-lift or some other manner of loading/unloading machinery easier access to the interior. But it was neither fiberglass roofing nor double doors was a consistent truth. The only consistent truth was coal hoppers, full or empty, some of which looked like they may have been in service since Eisenhower was president. No few of them looked like they had been in more than one derailment, which isn't surprising considering the state of the tracks in this part of the world.

Back to my driver friend, he assures me that there are long stretches of rail hereabouts that can not handle 80-ft cars, so what I saw may be down to "region" more than "era".

[Gumboots]

Yes it'll vary depending on area. The 86 footers are "hi-cube", like the newest Trinity reefers and like a lot of US boxcars built over the last few decades. if you have lower clearances on your local lines they won't be able to run. Although any line which can handle double-stack well cars would be able to handle the others.

Anyway boxcars of whatever size are still in widespread use, so I think it makes sense to have some in the post-1990 roster. Particularly considering that double stacking didn't even start before the mid-80's. But yeah there's scope for doing COFC as well. That makes for nice long units with good visual interest.

Edit: BTW, there are still large chunks of Australian and European line where you can't run double-stacked, and you can't use it anywhere at all in the UK as far as I know. So lotsa boxcars and COFC in those areas.

[Just Crazy Jim]

I recall seeing TOFC quite often in the 1980s and early 1990s, but that seemed to give way over night to COFC. I couldn't tell you the last time I saw TOFC. A while back, I considered making a TOFC goods cargo replacement a while back, but, truth be told, an hour's research informed me that semi-trailers have undergone more length changes in the past 60 years than boxcars have.

[Gumboots]

I'd considered TOFC, but the amount of work and polys required to make it look slick was more trouble than I was interested in. I don't like the look of TOFC much, so meh. This is all a bit of a joke anyway, since no matter what cars you model for a default set they'll probably be wrong (technically) for most scenarios.

Over here we don't use the same boxcars as you lot. We're big on "louvred vans", which are similar to a boxcar but with louvred sides to give ventilation without letting rain in. All sorts of stuff got carried in those. They have a far more curved roof than US boxcars too.



But Australian freight uses a lot of COFC these days. Usually two 40' containers end to end. We're not big on the 53's over here (although they are starting to appear). Most of them are standard international shipping containers. Some double stacking, but with limited route availability.

Anyway since I'm on a US rolling stock theme to start with I'm going to stick with it for now. I've been looking up a range of cars and have picked up some more information, so the meshes for the various boxcars are more accurate. Turns out in the 1920's automobiles were shipped in 50 foot boxcars instead of the standard 40 foot. The same size was often used for furniture and other light but bulky cargoes. So I revised the autoracks to start with a 40, then go to a 50, then to a flatcar, then to the old style open-on-top-but-with-side-shields type, and finishing up with the fully enclosed type that's been in use since the 90's.

So I'm pretty happy with the basics for autoracks, boxcars and reefers now. Will get onto doing the game files for them.

[Just Crazy Jim]

Heh. The USA had a number of regional boxcar variations, including several of the louvered van sort, but they were most used in the desert southwest region on the Southern Pacific and across the "deep south" where it gets miserable hot on Seaboard/Atlantic Coast Line (etc). Although you might see them as far north as the Reading and Potomac Valley. They typically looked like any other boxcar save that they had a second door that looked more or less like a barred jail cell door set up in an either-or arrangement with the typical solid door. I've heard such doors called a "hobo screen door" and read about hobos in the 1920s and 1930s preferring such cars for crossing the Arizona/New Mexico desert for obvious reasons.

To be precise, these weren't ventilated reefers or cattle cars, although they might have seen use as such. Their primary design purpose was to prevent varnish from bubbling on furniture, lumber warping, paint pots blowing off their lids, and that sort of thing. I've seen photos of steel versions as well as wood, but I am not sure when they were in use, and I myself have never seen one. I figure they disappeared from rails about the time trucks took over the lion's share of freight transport.

[Gumboots]

Sounds similar to our ones. They were used for shipping pretty much anything that you wanted out of the weather, but didn't want to cook. Fruit, pallets of bagged cement, furniture, hitchhikers, paper, whatever. Usually not stock or milk though, AFAIK. Stock went in stock cars, and milk went in reefers. These were still the ice bunker type into the 1970's.

[Gumboots]

Hey this is funny. I was just checking out the stock cars to get a handle on those too. Turns out that although the default A, B and D cars carry cows, the C car doesn't. It carries sheep. Even better, it still sources them from the game's cattle ranch, of course. Must be some strays that wandered into the rancher's land, so he flogged them off in a hurry.

Which got me thinking, it would be easy enough to model the 85 foot "pig palace" used by Northern Pacific. Could put any critters inside it. Maybe throw in some elephants just for a laugh.

SP has a couple of "stock palaces" which were much the same, but taller as they were for cattle.
Details: http://espee.railfan.net/sp_fcss-18.html

[Gumboots]

Ok, we're having them. I couldn't resist.

Turns out that quite a few companies ran 85' double level stock cars for a period. Some for cows, others for smaller critters. I've just modelled one up based on the dimensions of the Southern Pacific "stock palace", and added in the second deck and a lot more cows. The skin is just the default PopTop stock D at the moment, but looks decent enough for now.

So these are going to be introduced in 1975 for the G era, and the same model will be kept for the H era with some small skinning changes to distinguish it. Obviously this is not realistic, because stock traffic dropped to virtually zero during the 80's, but since RT3 insists they're a viable cargo ad infinitum we might as well have something to ship them in.

[Gumboots]

Redundant post.