Trans-Siberian Railroad

[thietavu]

After the gigantic "Great China" map I'm toying with an idea of another huge map: Siberia. If I manage to get the RRT3 map creator and editor working (some problems there) under W10-64, well... who knows? The idea might be to connect Irkutsk at Lake Baikal with Magadan in... well, check it out! :) If this happens, you'd have to recreate at least three iconic Siberian railroads: the original Trans-Siberian Railroad, the BAM (Baikal-Amur railroad) and the Tynda-Yakutsk-railroad - with its already announced extention to Magadan through some of the harshest lands and climates on this planet...

Lots of resources but few large cities and mostly just endless forests, swamps, etc etc. And old concentration camps. Small villages. Very, very strange places and problems!

The lack of Russian engines is a sad fact here, but we can't help that.

For anyone interested: please Google things like "road of bones" - because that's the route the planned railroad to Magadan (and later to the Bering strait -> Canada) will follow. It's not a pretty story, but perhaps most interesting there is when it comes to roads and railroads...

[Gumboots]

So is this going to be another 400 train monster?

[obertran]

[thietavu]

So is this going to be another 400 train monster?

This would, I believe, be very different from Great China in several aspects. First: in GC there are 170 cities to be connected with rails. So, one can expect quite many trains are needed to make that happen in a meaningful way. In East Siberia there are very few large cities. Irkutsk might be the largest. Yakutsk is about size of Helsinki (= less than a million people), Vladivostok and Magadan also something bigger than a town but not quite cities, etc. Most of the other places there are very, very small (usually old mining villages or towns) and often far away from each other. So, the economy there works entirely differently and in real world, for example, the BAM railroad made heavy losses for decades because it was pretty much useless... BUT there are minerals, wood, you name it - and lots of it! And very little agriculture or businesses outside the larger towns.

So, 400 trains? I very much doubt that. :D Maybe less than 100. But maybe we'll find out.

[RulerofRails]

One of the remaining frontiers to the present day. An interesting map idea.

I believe TM is a better structure for a map with few cities because the agri communities and mining/logging enterprises fill in many areas of the commodities price map even far from cities.


What do you do about small fractional cargo demands, basically anything less than 0.5? I find that such an industry will almost never attract that cargo "naturally". Even when I deliver the cargo by rail, taking care not to haul it away again, sometimes the cargo will drift away on it's own. A good example is the Auto Plant and the Glass cargo. And Isotopes and the Missile Plant. Some of the Paper demands for example at the Sugar Refinery.

[thietavu]

One of the remaining frontiers to the present day. An interesting map idea.

I believe TM is a better structure for a map with few cities because the agri communities and mining/logging enterprises fill in many areas of the commodities price map even far from cities.

What do you do about small fractional cargo demands, basically anything less than 0.5? I find that such an industry will almost never attract that cargo "naturally". Even when I deliver the cargo by rail, taking care not to haul it away again, sometimes the cargo will drift away on it's own. A good example is the Auto Plant and the Glass cargo. And Isotopes and the Missile Plant. Some of the Paper demands for example at the Sugar Refinery.

I abandoned all the normal "rules" of RRT3 with my Great China. The real China is filled with farms, mines, many things. So, the challenge there isn't about "how to get 10 carloads of coal to a certain town or harbor by year XXXX". Games work like that. I didn't want to make a "game" map - but a simulation map. In some areas there is TOO much of everything to haul. ;) That changes the focus quite a lot, especially when you have a VERY long time to do what you do, with problems that creates. And it seems to work. :)

In Siberia some things will be very different - but not all of them. For example, there won't be that much of passenger traffic, I'd guess. Most stations will be at natural resource sites like mines etc. With few inhabitants and mostly no or little industry. But demand somewhere far away. I shall probably use the same technique here as with GC when it comes to resources. There will be plenty of them, just like in real life. But they may be hard to reach. Already GC is a bit "interesting" when it comes to many rivers. Meaning expensive, sometimes really difficult bridge solutions. In Siberia things will be just worse. Just like in real life. Rivers everywhere among swamps and taiga forests. And some really nasty mountain ranges.

Just like with GC, I shall examine every single village, town and natural resource site thoroughly (you'll never know how much time and background research went to Great China map). Every single river will run as correctly as possible. So, if this will come true, this will be something very different from the Great China map. But also, I believe, from anything RRT3 has ever tried to do.

Why? Well, we all have dreams. I have traveled from "coast to coast" in the USA. And in many places - also in China. But I have never experienced the cruel magic of Siberia. For some reason, I got attracted to the weird story of the Trans Siberian Railway years ago. Then it got weirder. The Russians realized that their almost "impossible" trans-continental railroad run too close to China. So, someone decided: "Okay, let's duplicate the Trans Siberian thing - but this time about 1000 kilometer to the North!". And that's how the BAM railroad happened... The story is actually so weird that you should google it! :)

Of course, when we talk about Russia, someone got a new idea. There's a city in the coldest area of Siberia called Yakutsk. A center of huge mining resources with just one little problem. For about 6 months of a year it can't be reached by any reasonable way. No roads. No railroads. Nothing. Just huge river Lena with its massive floods and... trouble. Riches that can't be transferred anywhere.

So, the already almost useless, hugely expensive, long BAM railroad in the middle of absolutely nowhere, had to be connected to Yakutsk something like 2000 kilometers to the North. Said and done. They actually did it. With just a small problem. The "coldest city on Earth" is on the west side of the gigantic river Lena. The railroad there, however, ended up to the other (wrong) side of this river. And since that river is VERY nasty with her floods and everything, nobody seems to know how to reach the original target, the city of Yakutsk.

But since we're in Russia here now, that was no problem. They decided to continue this particular railroad to the North. Following a road called "Road of Bones". Because the only (!) road to Yakutsk area was built by war prisoners under Stalin's command. It continued to the Kolyma area where possibly the most horrible concentration camps in human history remain. And the harshest climate on this planet. Building that road killed at least 100.000 people. Probably a lot more. They were buried under this road. Hence the name "road of bones"... :(

If you google "Kolyma", you'll see some very sad, horrible things. But life goes on. And Russia tries to develop those areas, often very rich with natural resources. The original "road of bones" isn't really usable for ordinary cars some parts of the year, especially early Autumn. But they are improving it, mile after mile, on swampy, ever-frost terrain. And now they have decided to build a railroad following that horrible route to the port town of Magadan. And later to Canada...

Siberia is, indeed, one of the last wild frontiers on Earth.

[thietavu]

It seems like RRT3 editor has some major problems with my W10 computer. I have managed to create a height map of Siberia and even to import it to the editor, but it's very, very tricky - trial and error. Plus occasional computer crashes. This won't be easy...

[RulerofRails]

This area fascinates me for sure . . . if only it wasn't so cold. I hear that lots of the cities are now ghost cities.

The reason why I asked about the fractional demands was because months ago I got stuck on progress on my own TM map over this issue. I had thought to build support buildings such as Commercial on the same cell to give a higher demand for that cargo type. But this idea required lots of work and a fixed industry mix. There is one solution that might work better. This idea is simply to add a background, demand only function to all such industries so that the total demand is large enough that no cargo will drift away naturally. Sure, more cargo will be consumed, but production will actually occur more often. At the moment my feeling is that the production chains in the later eras require a bit too much "babying" which distracts from the greatness of TM. Placing many industries on one cell is rewarded more than it should be, partly for this same reason, which in turn means that more of the map goes unused. Of course this is a bit off topic from your map, and if industry building isn't allowed, well it has no relevance whatsoever.

Are you talking about the height map tool crashing and not the in-game Editor? Did you consider using satellite imagery instead of painting? Oilcan made me a guide for when I was doing my map: viewtopic.php?p=37604#p37604. Google maps has become harder to use for sat imagery, however ACME mapper seems to be a decent alternative.

[delacroixp]

Pretty exciting stuff.

I loved the Russian map in RT3 ... look fwd to something in TM.

There was much talk of a Trans-Siberian railway from Korea and Eastern Asia to Europe (esp for double-stacked containers)
... making the trip 3-times faster than by sea (15 vs 45 days).
Railways certainly can't compete with shipping in sheer volume but it could make for a very nice niche market.

Unfortunately TM can't simulate double-stacked container transport.
Double-stacking containers is probably the main route to financial success and railroad freight resurgence ... in Europe and the rest of the world (outside of the USA) .
40t/axle railways also show great promise in attracting heavy-haul cargoes.

I guess TM has simulated the decline of railways very well
(from the heydays of the 18th century to the ease of truck and road transport).
Perhaps we could still see a rise in the financial fortunes and the increase in market share of railways in global transport.

It's all good

Pascal