How to simulate different rail weights?

[Gumboots]

Just thinking about this in relation to Garratts, but it's relevant to other locomotives too.

Ok, so a fairly common situation in many countries was to have main lines laid with heavier stuff (80 lb and up) and branch lines and/or rural lines laid with lighter stuff (50 or 60 lb). This, and dodgey old bridges, was the reason the AD60's were ordered for New South Wales. It was also relevant in South Australia for the creation and use of the Class 620 Pacifics. Then there's the South African Class GL, which was limited to 80 lb lines only. There was even the case of the old GCR tracks in England, where they kept using old 2-4-0's up to BR days simply because they were the only thing light enough to run on some of the older track, and fast enough to deal with mainline traffic.

I know there have been scenarios that offer you a choice of "track weight", with speed/maintenance/whatever adjustments depending on your choice. That's fine as far as it goes. The obvious extension of this is to use it to set the locomotive roster too, so that if you choose light rail you can only buy locomotives that would run on light rail. That would be easy to code for, assuming a suitable roster was available.

What I'm wondering now, and haven't been able to think of a solution for yet, is would it be possible to simulate the situation of a railway which has part of its track laid light, and part laid heavy, with use of locomotives set on the basis of track weight? I can see how loco availability and track weight could be set by territory, but offhand I can't think of any way of limiting loco usage by territory, for one company operating across several territories.

Anyone got any ideas on this?

[RulerofRails]

I can see how loco availability and track weight could be set by territory, . . .

How were you going to set loco availability by territory? I don't know how to do that. Only by company.

Unfortunately, controlling the availability of locos in RT3 took a step back from RTII. I believe Lama used a system on one map where there were no new engines purchasable, but, upon connecting to a new town you got a pre-built station which had some locos parked in front which were in "storage" until you connected there. This is probably the most in-depth effort to control numbers of locos that I have seen. Unfortunately, it's not perfect. Replacement is impossible, so you would have to put events to stabilize maintenance costs over time and wreck the game's normal curve (was a long time since I looked at his map to see exactly what he did).

The solutions that I would suggest are workarounds, but, hey, maybe they're good enough? First, the light-gauge types seem to have good pulling power due to more traction available at lower intended speeds, while express and faster freights seem to have much poorer pulling performance. With some extra adjustments of these levels vs. speed, an event could be written so that the light-gauge territories allow the light-gauge engines at normal performance without having too significant an advantage on the main lines, while the normal engines are slow in the light-gauge territories. Secondly, seeing this would likely be a territory specific thing requiring events, you could always re-purpose a couple of steamers as "diesels" specially for that map (as long as you don't want any real diesels on that map). It's easy to drop only steam/diesel/electric speeds/pulling power by territory.

[Gumboots]

How were you going to set loco availability by territory? I don't know how to do that. Only by company.

Yeah, you're right. Actually it would require a combination of the two. So restrict the company to a set territory, then set loco roster for company.

If simulating light gauge, really you'd want to ban heavy gauge locos from that area. It wasn't speed that limited them. It was axle loading. Unfortunately RT3 doesn't have any variables for axle loading.

The fake electric and fake diesel idea is a good one. I can see that working, although it's bound to confuse some people. It wouldn't be able to simulate water stops either, but that could be dealt with (ie: reduce water consumption for real steamers to match).

Edit: Having given it a bit more thought, this hijacking of diesel and electric seems like the best approach. There would be no need to touch most of the stats. All it'd require is setting speed to -100% for mainline locos on light rail territory. If they don't move at all on light rail, this is a good enough simulation of them not being able to use it.* Light rail locos would still be able to run on the heavy rail, but wouldn't have the same hauling power as heavier locos. Easy.

This also gives the option of combining light and heavy rail with shipping. Hijack the electric category for ships, as has already been tested, and hijack the diesel category for either of the light or heavy rail territories, with steam handling the other. Alternatively, if you want to simulate a railway that has moved to diesel on main lines but still uses steam on rural/branch lines, you could do that too. There's a fair amount of scope for doing scenario tricks that ain't been done before.

*BTW, it'd be interesting to see if the AI is smart enough to deal with this sort of thing. Offhand I'm not sure. From what I can gather, the AI tends to do a good job of choosing the best available locos. It falls down on track laying, and on the total number of locos, and on keeping them far too long, but not on actual choice of types AFAICT. If the AI is smart enough to grab the relevant per-territory stats then it could also have light rail/heavy rail restrictions, and possibly even run shipping.

[Gumboots]

Just had a thought re the fake diesels and electrics. An edited RT3.lng file would do the trick nicely.

Code: Select all

	706 "Engine Type:"

	@gumbootz: Custom engine types could be used for steamships, light vs heavy rail, etc.
	707 "Steam"
	708 "Diesel"
	709 "Electric"

	710 "Top Speed (MPH)"

	;@gumbootz: Hard-coded weights are used here!
	711 "Cars @ %1 tons each"

So you could easily, if you wanted to, change Electric to Light Rail or to Steamship or even to Nuclear-powered Rocket on a per scenario basis.

[Gumboots]

Was just thinking about this again, but not in relation to rail weight.

One of the (very minor) drawbacks with my NSW scenario is that you tend to end up running the early tank locomotives on long distance runs. That's fine in terms of loco stats and purchase price (which is why you do it) but obviously is not technically accurate. So, you could use this "fake diesel" idea to limit the tank locomotives to suburban and/or short haul routes.

For use in a scenario like this, you'd edit the language file so the visible category name was "Steam tank" (or something similar) instead of "Diesel". Then you'd simply set suburban and/or short haul territories that allowed normal "diesel" (ie: steam tank) performance, with the "diesels" nobbled to 1 mph top speed (or near zero puling power) outside of those territories. Result would be useful tanks in the right areas, but you'd be forced to use tender locos on longer runs.

If you needed a third category there would even be the option of using a custom loco type (which is possible) and using that as the standard loco type for the scenario. This would then allow you to use the default steam and diesel categories to limit certain classes to certain areas.

If you are playing in the relevant time frame you could extend this to include the default electric category as well, although obviously that would require you to lay electric track for them to be usable.

[Gumboots]

Anther option: to keep the loco roster simple, just use "light rail" or "narrow gauge" territories that allow the usual locos but reduce pulling power and/or top speed in those territories. Since all trains in RT3 will have to use the same consists anyway, keeping the loco roster simple too is probably the most sensible solution. It's certainly the easiest (setting up the territories should be simple enough).

You'd just need a dialogue warning about "light rail/narrow gauge" territories, so people knew what they were up against.