Anyone want double-header Shays and Fairlies?

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Gumboots
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Anyone want double-header Shays and Fairlies? Unread post

I was just thinking about this today, since it should be very quick and easy to do. The default Shay isn't a bad unit for short hops, even on the flat, since it has good acceleration and hauling ability, combined with reasonable passenger appeal, and is really cheap to buy. A double header Shay might be handy at times too. Top speed would still be rubbish, but uphill hauling ability would be very good for the price.

Much the same applies to the Fairlie, except that reliability and passenger appeal aren't quite as good.

These should require hardly any work. Since they have no tender by default, it's just a matter of editing the .lco to give them a tender slot, adding calls for the tender files, then copying the loco files as tender files, along with some tweaking of stats. Length points shouldn't require changing, so behaviour around corners should be as good as any other loco, without a whole lot of screwing around with hex coding.

Anyone interested in using these?

------------------------------------------------------------------------

This unit is finished now. Zip attached to this post: viewtopic.php?f=67&t=3871&p=40431#p40431

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Last edited by Gumboots on Tue Oct 27, 2015 11:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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thietavu
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Re: Anyone want double-header Shays and Fairlies? Unread post

Unusual but interesting idea... Double-QJs were also very common in China, so... But almost any double-header is interesting!
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Re: Anyone want double-header Shays and Fairlies? Unread post

The other double header steamers are going to be a real PITA to code. From playing around with the H10 double, I think the only way to get it behaving properly is to manually edit every Y axis coordinate in every file, which is not a quick job and is going to be really tedious. The problem is that the way RT3 handles geometry around corners, as well as front and back length points, seems to require the 0 point on the Y axis to be about halfway along the unit. Tenders and locos are set up like this, but when adding a tender unit as a "loco truck" to make double headers the 0 point would have to be moved back by half the length of the tender. That means manually editing every Y coordinate. :roll:

Then there's the fact that until this is done, there's no way of knowing if it will be possible to get the behaviour around corners looking reasonable. I think it can be done by using careful tweaking of attachment points, but I can't be certain at this stage. It would have to be done by a lot of trial and error.

So, any other double-headed steamer is going to be a whole lot of very boring work, while Shays and Fairlies are a no-brainer and would take very little work, with guaranteed results. I do use the single versions when they are available. They can be good for branch lines, or short distance lines where no train will get up much speed anyway, or low priority freight that will be constantly stopping and starting due to sharing a line with higher priority trains, or just up steep grades where those can't be avoided. Both units can be very profitable in the right role. I'm not sure how much use doubles would get though, since they'd really only be an advantage up steep grades.
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Re: Anyone want double-header Shays and Fairlies? Unread post

They would look cool, but I don't see myself using them much. The scale of the average RT3 is a bit wrong for these little engines in the first place. At the average scale, most maps are smoothed enough to allow grades with an average max of around 6%. Above 6% is where I see these engines becoming useful. On a map that represents only a small area, I can see their potential, and I did use a couple of Shays on a unique start for Age of Steam III Green Diamond, as the scale of the eastern mountains made them sensible. Though, there aren't many maps based on a smaller area like that. Anyway, that's my opinion. Don't want to be a naysayer, maybe some people will use them more just for fun anyway.
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thietavu
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Re: Anyone want double-header Shays and Fairlies? Unread post

RulerofRails wrote:They would look cool, but I don't see myself using them much. The scale of the average RT3 is a bit wrong for these little engines in the first place. At the average scale, most maps are smoothed enough to allow grades with an average max of around 6%. Above 6% is where I see these engines becoming useful. On a map that represents only a small area, I can see their potential, and I did use a couple of Shays on a unique start for Age of Steam III Green Diamond, as the scale of the eastern mountains made them sensible. Though, there aren't many maps based on a smaller area like that. Anyway, that's my opinion. Don't want to be a naysayer, maybe some people will use them more just for fun anyway.
There are some places in "Great China" (for TrainMaster only) where these might well prove useful...
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Re: Anyone want double-header Shays and Fairlies? Unread post

Hey here's a bit of a sidetrack. I got curious if any Shays ever had been used double-headed. Turns out the answer is "yes". See halfway down this page - http://www.littleriverrailroad.org/shay.htm - where it says "Last of the new Shays, purchased in 1916."

That led to me checking out the rest of the site. The page on logging trains - http://www.littleriverrailroad.org/logtrains.htm - mentions:
"The West Prong is a smaller drainage, and being closer to the mill, the slower Shay locomotives sufficed. But by 1908 tracks had been laid up the East Prong gorge to Elkmont, some 18 miles from the mill.

For this longer run, the Little River used number 148, a 2-4-4-2 articulated locomotive, instead of Shays."
So that implies Shays were so slow in real life that even a 36 mile return run was considered too far for practicality. There's more info on the Baldwin 2-4-4-2 here - http://www.irsociety.co.uk/Archives/15/Stateside_3.htm - and some nice pix of a model one here - Baldwin 2-4-4-2 Mallet - CUSTOM - Southern #8527

That Baldwin looks like a cute little Mallet. Might be fun to have one of those sometime, if anyone can be bothered making it.

As far as double-headed Fairlies go, I couldn't find any online references for those. The one in RT3 is a "double Fairlie" anyway, in that it has a boiler at each end, unlike the early "single Fairlie".
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Re: Anyone want double-header Shays and Fairlies? Unread post

Interesting pics and info. Thanks. If 36 miles was too far, then that will put its range in a closely bunched demand gradient given the scale of most maps. In TM, though, were industries must be force-fed it is more common to have short hops. Still, short-distance makes loading take an unnaturally large proportion of the trains life, and that's not so good if the cost of maintenance doubles.
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Gumboots
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Re: Anyone want double-header Shays and Fairlies? Unread post

Well in RT3 speed and such is often adjusted to fit the game rather than being strictly to real life. The default RT3 Shay has a top speed of 22 mph, which would make a 36 mile return run quite easy. I think the real Shays must have been much slower than this.
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Re: Anyone want double-header Shays and Fairlies? Unread post

Hey the blurb under this vid says the top speed of that Shay is only 12 mph on level ground, with 4 to 7 mph being common up grades.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTHNVO1zJcs
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Re: Anyone want double-header Shays and Fairlies? Unread post

I've made a start on putting the double Shay together. Should be able to get it running tonight. I'm leaving passenger appeal, top speed and reliability the same, doubling purchase price and pulling power and free weight, and also increasing acceleration by one notch (seems to make sense if there's two of them hauling).

The only other necessary change is to maintenance cost. I'm not sure if I should just double that (ie: $30,000/year) or have it a bit less than that (like $20,000 or $25,000 or whatever). With the poor fuel economy, and with the maintenance cost being such a high proportion of purchase price, the game's Shays may be cheap to purchase but are not particularly cheap to run. $30,000 annual maintenance, when new, seems a bit much for a loco which only costs $80,000 to buy. If I bought a car or anything else brand new for $80k, I sure wouldn't expect to have to spend $30k for the first year's maintenance.

Maintenance costs this high also mean that replacing the locos when they are 5 years old becomes the most economical strategy. With the Shays having good reliability they will keep running well for 20 years but, due to the way maintenance costs escalate with age, keeping them longer than 5 years will cost you more money. The only advantage of the good reliability in practice is that for the 5 years they are worth keeping they shouldn't break down at all, even with maximum loads and no caboose.

The other thing I may do is change the start and stop dates. Since cargo car weights double in 1900, it may make sense to introduce the double-header Shay in 1900 too. End date could also be extended a bit.

I had a thought about a possible scenario to specifically make use of these things. Given the way Shays were generally used in practice, one option would be to make a map that deliberately had very steep grades in the logging (and possibly mining) areas, with normal or flat grades in the rest of the map. This would mean that Shays become the logical choice for the logging/mining operations even if other locos are available. You'd just naturally want to use Shays in the hills and Pacifics or whatever on the flatter country.

There could be a logs/pulpwood haulage quota to make sure the Shays really were used. If this was done on a revenue to/from territories basis, and if the territories up in the hills only contained logging camps, then a revenue quota would automatically make you haul logs and pulpwood down to the mills and would disallow bait-and-switch and also disallow hauling at a loss. This may not be required though, since if you're restricted to a starting territory that only has timber for business opportunities you'd have to haul logs anyway.

If doing a logging scenario, the usual way of doing it was to throw down very cheap and rough track to the new cutting area, making use of the rails that had been salvaged from the old cutting area. They didn't just lay tracks and leave them. They pulled them up when an area was cut out and re-used the track where they needed it next. This could be simulated by event coding. Have the logging operations in set territory, and reduce track laying costs in that territory. Also have events that randomly create and destroy groups of logging camps at intervals, to simulate areas being logged out and new areas being opened up.

You could also have events to check for track units, to promote re-laying of track. For example, you could have a maximum number of track units allowed in logging territory, so that you had to demolish your existing track to get any allowance to build track to the new logging area. When you demolish your old track, you get half its cost back in cash. This would simulate the re-use of old materials. Obviously these options are not the only possible way of handling things, but it could be an interesting exercise in event coding and provide something different in the way of gameplay.

Provisional idea is to set things up so you start with your little wild hogs and moonshine logging railway up in the hills, and have to gradually extend your operations by taking over AI companies that have access to the Big Smoke. AI companies could themselves be restricted to set territories so that you have to get them all to meet the game goals, and can't pull tricks in their territories before you merge them.

Just as an idea. !*th_up*!
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Wolverine@MSU
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Re: Anyone want double-header Shays and Fairlies? Unread post

Sounds like a neat idea. The only thing that doesn't make sense though is that if the Logging Camps are "up in the hills" and the Lumber Mills are "down below", it doesn't make sense to use Shays to take stuff downhill. A good, fast loco would do the trick, and you could just send it back uphill empty. Yes it might be a bit slower than a Shay on the uphill climb, and wouldn't be able to haul much cargo, but going down an 8 - 12% grade with 6 cars of logs would be a breeze for most late 19th century locos. One thing that might make it work would be to have another row of hills, or mountains, between the camps and the mills, to force at least one uphill haul.
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Re: Anyone want double-header Shays and Fairlies? Unread post

Yeah I was thinking of that already. Put a huge ridge between the mills and the logs, and set tunnel pricing to astronomical for that territory. If the only way of getting logs out is straight up a 15% grade, people will use Shays. :mrgreen:
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Re: Anyone want double-header Shays and Fairlies? Unread post

So I had a go at running this thing live last night, but I've screwed something up somewhere. RT3 just makes the stupid "doing" noise it does when you have a coding error, then locks up, but doesn't give me any error message to work with. :roll: Obviously I'm going to have to go through things again and track the bug down. There are a limited number of things that can be wrong with it, so I shall prevail eventually.

Anyway, I was thinking that since loco prices (like everything else) tend to increase over time due to inflation, I might make the double Shay $100k to buy instead of just doubling the original's cost (ie: 2 x $40k = $80k). If I do that and knock the maintenance down to $25k initially, that would give a bit more useful economic life and still keep purchase cost reasonable.

I checked up, and Shays were in production until 1945. Original one has an end date of 1930 and a start date of 1882, so I was thinking I might give the double an end date of 1945. Not sure about start date yet. Figures you could always buy two of them as soon as they were in production, so same start date as the default single Shay makes sense on that basis. OTOH given the short economic life of the default Shay you'll be wanting to replace them fairly fast, so holding off on the start date until 1900 might be better. I'm open to opinions on this (and other details).
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Re: Anyone want double-header Shays and Fairlies? Unread post

::!**! Got the !&@%@$ thing working! (0!!0)

Hey_it_works.jpg
Hey_it_works.jpg (119.52 KiB) Viewed 11313 times

Ok, it's a double-header Shay. Does what it says on the tin.

I have to say it is an awesome little hauler. It'll leave a station with a consist of eight 1930's freight cars, and still accelerate straight up a 9% grade. Top speed is still low, but it definitely hauls stuff up hills. Speed up a 6% grade with a full load of freight cars is about 50% higher than the single Shay, and even better up steeper grades. It also gets up to speed quickly after stopping. This little beast may actually end up being useful. If I get inspired, I might even skin it up a bit.

Stats are provisional and can be tweaked (if necessary) after more testing. At the moment it has:

Start Date: 1897. End Date: 1945. Cost: $100k. Maintenance: $25k.

Top Speed: 23 mph. Free weight: 100. Pulling power: 60.

Reliability: Good. Acceleration: Above Average. Fuel Economy: Poor. Passenger Appeal: Acceptable.

Zip attached to this post: viewtopic.php?f=67&t=3871&p=40431#p40431
Last edited by Gumboots on Tue Oct 27, 2015 11:02 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Anyone want double-header Shays and Fairlies? Unread post

Hey I had an idea. I was idly looking at things and it occurred to me that it wouldn't be that big a deal to kitbash a 3 truck Shay out of existing bits and pieces. These were the bigger ones that were up to 90 tons (the default Shay is a 20 ton 2 truck). In general, the 3 truck Shays had the coal bunker as part of the locomotive, much like the default 2 truck Shay, but had a tender that carried the water tank (and also had a powered truck and an extended driveshaft, of course).
Shay_3_truck.jpg
Shay_3_truck.jpg (32.42 KiB) Viewed 11290 times
So, as an alternative slow grunter, instead of using the double header 2 truck Shays you could mutate a suitable model slightly, with a tender included, and have one of the larger 3 truck units. If anyone wanted to. !*th_up*!

Then there's another idea for slow grunters, that being a Heisler. These were in many ways a better unit than the Shays, faster but with comparable hauling power, as well as better reliability and better fuel economy and lower maintenance costs. I've been looking over all the available info on them and they really were a very well designed and built unit. Very simple to build and maintain. They looked a little bit funny, but worked just fine. If you think the cylinder arrangement looks odd just think of it as a big V twin, like a 16,000 cubic inch steam powered Harley Davidson. :mrgreen:
Heisler_2_truck.jpg
Heisler_2_truck.jpg (248.13 KiB) Viewed 11290 times
Anyway making one of these, in either 2 truck or 3 truck form, wouldn't be all that hard either. More work than the Shays, but not too bad. It'd be mostly a matter of getting a suitable base model and then swinging the cylinders from horizontal to 45 degrees up, then turning them around so they were across the locomotive instead of along it.

These are potentially a more useful unit in the game, since you could up the top speed to around 30 mph and the running costs could be cheaper, although you'd balance that to some degree with a higher purchase price. Again, could be done as either 2 or 3 truck units.

I'm even a bit tempted to build one that Heisler patented but never actually built. This was a 3 truck unit but with a V4 instead of the basic V twin. He just doubled up the cylinders each side and added another crankpin. Very simple and logical, with everything still easily accessible for maintenance. His plan was to use compounding on it, since the exhaust port for the high pressure cylinder could just go straight into the inlet port for the low pressure cylinder. No complex piping required, and no loss of heat or flow, and no problems with loading gauge, and still simpler than a Shay. That would be a nice unit because it'd have twice the grunt of the V twin but use hardly any more fuel. (0!!0)
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Re: Anyone want double-header Shays and Fairlies? Unread post

Ok, I've given this some more testing and revamped the stats slightly. I'm happy with it now.

The final version is available from 1892 onwards, just to give the default single version a clear 10 years of use before people start bringing in double-headers.

Price is still $100,000 since it figures that you'd have a bit of inflation in cost per unit over that 10 years, but initial maintenance cost has been dropped to $20k so you can get some useful life out of the thing before it gets too expensive to run.

Fuel economy is still Poor, Reliability is Good, Passenger Appeal is Acceptable, just like the default single Shay. Acceleration is up one level to Above Average. Overall locomotive weight is 40 tons for the pair. Free weight is 120. Pulling power is 60.

Zip attached. Can be archived whenever Hawk feels like doing it. (0!!0)

Edit by Hawk: File removed.
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Re: Anyone want double-header Shays and Fairlies? Unread post

This is now available in the archives.

http://hawkdawg.com/rrt/rrt3/Xtras/NewE ... m#Gumboots
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Re: Anyone want double-header Shays and Fairlies? Unread post

When you were making these, how did you go about making the Shay take a tender? And how did you make the Profile?

I'm asking because I am at loggerheads with the game trying to make a double 2-D-2 electric.
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Re: Anyone want double-header Shays and Fairlies? Unread post

First bit was easy. I just got all the files for a normal Shay, and changed the names from the default Shay_L_**** to Shay_Double_L_**** and then duplicated those, and changed the duplicates to Shay_Double_T_****. Did the same renaming on the .lco file, and the renaming/duplicate/rename duplicate on the .car files (coz need a .car for the tender, but don't need a second .lco).

So that sorts out all your basic files for EngineTypes and the PK4. The rest is .lco and .car edits.

You have to edit the .lco to let you have a tender, which is done by changing byte #50 (in decimal offsets) from the default Shay's FF to something else. It doesn't seem to matter what else you use. AFAICT FF means no tender, and anything else means add a tender. I suspect the code behind it is along the lines of "IF FF THEN NO ELSE YES". Check out a few default locos to get an idea. I used 1E, and can't remember why. It works.

You also have to edit the contents of the .car and .lco files to reflect the new names you used. Plus changing stats and all that, of course.

Regarding the profile: I just took a normal Shay profile image, clipped from CarSideView_1.dds (and including a clip of the alpha channel) and stuck two of those together end to end. Then it just needs an edit to Profile.imb to account for the extra length of the image.
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Re: Anyone want double-header Shays and Fairlies? Unread post

Thanks for the explanation. I was able to hammer out the profile IMB file after reading your post. {,0,}

Still not getting the tender to appear on the tracks in game. Not to shoot a hole in your theory about byte #50, but the F3 Diesel has FF at that position and has a tender. Your info is rock solid for all the steam LCOs I scoped, but I don't know if the byte-rule is as simple as "if FF then No..."

Looking at the steam LCOs, the Big Boy has 09 at that position, the Duke has 12, and the Adler has 02. All of which correspond to the Car ID at bytes #8-11 in the CAR files for the tenders of each. The F3 Tender has 16 at that position and the value 16 appears nowhere in the F3 LCO.

So, whe have what appears to be a rule:
Adler Loco ID 01 , Adler Tender ID 02; Alder LCO byte #50=02;
Big Boy Loco ID 08, Big Boy Tender ID 09, Big Boy LCO byte #50=09;
Duke Loco ID 11, Duke Tender ID 12, Duke LCO byte #50=12;

Then the rule breaks:
F3 Loco ID 16, F3 Tender ID 16, F3 LCO byte #50=FF;
Shay Double Loco ID 70, Shay Double Tender ID 71, Shay Double LCO byte #50=1E...

It is most confusing.... !hairpull!
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-- François de La Rochefoucauld. Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales. 1665.
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