Rail Yard Structures

[WPandP]

I am having some success at creating a class of structures called "Yards", which help rail cargo move across longer distances, and can break a railroad up into operating districts. Each Yard serves a certain class of cargo(es), and works by having a small amount of demand for those loads. This is enough to make the value rise for that cargo, but not so much that it exceeds the value at a true consuming industry.

Thus, it serves as a link in a chain. Instead of routing a train from A to Z, where A is the raw material producer and Z is the consuming industry, one can build a Yard at B (and at C and at D, etc.) and route one train from A to B, then another train from B to C, and so on. Place a yard at the foothills, and you can use slower but surer heavy freight engines to haul the cargo over the ruling grades, then a faster but lighter road engine can pick them up in the Yard and haul them across the flatland.

My intention is to create the following:
Stock Yard - for Livestock
Hopper Yard - for Bauxite, Coal, Iron
Icing Platform - for Alcohol, Cheese, Meat, Milk, Produce
Grain Elevator - for Corn, Grain, Rice, Sugar
Marshalling Yard - for Logs, Lumber, Pulpwood, Oil, Diesel
Classification Yard - for most other loads

I have posted regarding this in other threads, but I wanted to create a dedicated thread, so I apologize if this sounds redundant. Watch this space for updates, as I release new buildings. And please let me know what you think!

[Hawk]

This idea sounds really good.
Looking forward to updates.
As a matter of fact. I'm going to sticky this thread for a while.

[WPandP]

Here's the first one I want to bless and say that it is DONE!

The Stock Yard

You know all those regulations about how far a cow can be transported by rail? You don't? Well you should. See, while all the good cattle grazing is way over there, the meat packing plants are way up here. In RRT3, your only choice is to run a train all the way from there to here, but that doesn't give them dogies a chance to rest up along the way! Build a Stock Yard for $65k along the way, and you can split the trip up into segments.



This one only works for Livestock, but it also does demand some Corn, since they gotta be fed. Download it and give it a try!

http://wpandp.com/RRT3/StockYard.zip


Known issues:
The game treats this as if it were a Restaurant - the nearby station will show that a Restaurant has been built.

I haven't figured out a way to make this snap to trackside, though I would prefer it to do so. Just build it within a station's capture radius.

[WPandP]

This idea sounds really good.
Looking forward to updates.
As a matter of fact. I'm going to sticky this thread for a while.

Great!


If you feel like adding this stuff to your download section, please do. I'm not done with the Hopper Yard yet, even though I uploaded that earlier this week, so don't add that yet. I may have it ready soon, though.

[Hawk]

You say it acts like a restaurant. Does it affect the passenger standing?

[WPandP]

Actually, I don't know! I've only tested it by placing it out in the middle of nowhere, so I haven't seen any effect on passengers. If anybody has any feedback on this issue, I'd appreciate it.

Another thing I was thinking about last night is that these are effectively ways to create artificial demand, meaning that if you've got cargo sitting around, and you want to haul it, you don't need to build an expensive industry, you can just build one of these Yards. This might be a game-breaker, honestly. I do know that if you don't haul the loads further on, but let them accumulate in the Yard, then the cargo value will be greatly suppressed.

[Hawk]

I guess we'll see.

BTW! I got the Stock Yard added to the Xtras page. It's under 'Buildings & Other Structures', right under the 'Wagons' section.

[wsherrick]

I think this is a great idea and I've got both the Hopper Yard and the Stock Yard. I am busy working on a scenario and have not had time to observe their behavior yet. I will report anything I notice. I am looking forward to more of these. Thanks WP&P for some excellent effort.

[WPandP]

Yard Number Two is ready:

The Hopper Yard



This is a marshalling yard for bauxite, coal, and iron. I've already released this once, but I went back and tweaked the fractional demands a bit, and I've added a 2D interface graphic so you don't see the "generic placeholder" box when building it. If you've already grabbed this one from my earlier offering, please do go ahead and replace it with this one, you'll like this better.

http://wpandp.com/RRT3/HopperYard2.zip

[WPandP]

Yard Number Three:

The Icing Platform



The Icing Platform will keep all your refrigerated loads nice and cold for the journey! Meat, Cheese, Produce, Alcohol, and Milk all prefer to move towards Icing Platforms, at least until they reach their final destination.

This was based on the Oil Refinery's 3DP file, so it can't be placed up close to the tracks. Just pretend that there is a little spur out to it.

http://wpandp.com/RRT3/IcePlatform.zip

[Hawk]

Got the latest two structures added to the Xtras page.

[Wooly]

WPandP,

Can you tell me if your new yard structures (Hopper, Stockyards, Icing) and Cereal building work with Milo's v1.06, or just the official last version, v1.05. Thanks

[WPandP]

They should work on both 1.05 and 1.06; I'm running 1.06 on my computer and they work fine, at least.

However, with the drop-shipping feature in 1.06, they really aren't as useful as they should be. Maybe it just depends on how you prefer to play; if you like to specify custom consists and work out all the drop-shipment points, then go with 1.06 and use its drop-shipping. If, instead, you prefer to just leave trains on auto-consist, then the Yards will help to get specific loads moving in a certain direction.

I'm waiting for any User Feedback before I do the other few Yards; in the meanwhile, I'm finishing up my Royal Hudson reskin (with a lot of coaching from Bombardiere).

[wsherrick]

The yard structures work great, even in 1.06. Shipping cows from Dallas to Chicago is much easier in Blue Streak. You can relay the cows with 4 trains, thus the trains can make money on back hauls rather than, lose money hauling the cows the umpteen thousand miles to Chicago. The coal and iron yards work well in the same manner.

[Wooly]

Well, I installed the files, but I couldn't find them in the game. Where do you go to build them? I assumed they were listed with all the other structures in the station building submenu. I built a hotel, restaurant, tavern, and post office, just in case they were put in there place, but that didn't work either. I will check all my files again later to make sure I installed them correctly. I will give you some feedback over the next 2-3 days as my workload finally dies down tomorrow afternoon. I will also let you know about the Cereal Building you built.

Also, I liked the cars you reskinned, Coal, Iron, Lumber, etc, so I downloaded them and installed the files, but it crashed the game for me in Vista with v1.05 installed. I can load the game fine, but when a map is selected and starts to load, it crashes. Any ideas there?

[WPandP]

As for the cars with Vista/1.05, I don't really know what might be going on, but as far as I know you might be the first person I've heard of who has been running 1.05 on Vista. The Yard structures are supposed to show up in the list right amongst the restaurant, hotel, etc.; I'm wondering whether there might be something about Vista that disagrees with mod content in general.

Do you have any other mods installed and working? In particular, do you have any extra engines (as these use the same ".CAR" file type to load all their resources)?

[Wooly]

Alright WP&P, I found out a few new twists.

First to answer your question, no I don't have any other mods installed. I just have your yard mods and a few of your car mods, iron, coal, reefer.

Second, I found out that your added structures are available to me in the editor, but not in a game. In any scenario, I can open the map and manually place a yard mod, and even the cereal building. Once the game starts the structures are not available to build from the menu, but they are still on the map, and they work, well, sort of. They do process loads. I am not sure about how well the yards attract their specific cargoes though. I will have to make a better map for testing tonight. I think I had cross demand fouling up my test. If they were working, their attraction was about that of a house, since they had similar loads of cargo at each.

I can not think of a reason the game should allow them to be built, but not allow them to be shown and chosen from a scenario. I think I will add them to a brand new map, and see if a new scenario, made after mod installation, affects that.

[WPandP]

I know that new industry-type buildings must be made available within the editor, in order to show up in a given scenario. This would be the case with the Cereal Company.

The Yards, though, were developed as "station services" like the Post Office, so that they would always be available, in any scenario.

As far as how much they attract loads, you're right, they are built to have very weak demand, like a house. If a demanding industry is near enough, its "demand footprint" will override the Yard, and you won't see much effect. They really are meant for long-distance hauls. They're also very sensitive to oversupply, so you can't just stockpile a bunch of cargo in your yards. An empty yard is an efficient yard!

[coruscate]

Thank you for the hard work, these are all excellent mods and have fleshed out my map quite nicely.

[WPandP]

I've gotten back around to finishing out the set of yard structures. Next up is the Grain Elevator. The available 3DP files for the body left me with few options, so I went for the most noticeable feature - the multiple silos. This building acts like the others, as a partial-demand for Grain, Rice, Corn, and Sugar. Place it in the center of a big agrarian area, and it will collect loads towards it, making pickup of these loads far easier.

Click the link to download a ZIP file, and follow the instructions inside to install it.