News:

Simutrans.com Portal
Our Simutrans site. You can find everything about Simutrans from here.

Game balance -- steam vs electric running costs

Started by muser, December 10, 2011, 06:32:28 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

muser

I generally play pak128.Britain, but I think this information would apply to any pak set, and may be useful to someone pursuing game balance.

Here is a table summarizing the running costs between steam and electric here in the US in the early part of the last century. I expect it would generally apply to any region at that time. It is taken from an article in the General Electric Review volume 25 of February, 1922:

http://hoist.hrtc.net/~arabento/pub/steam_vs_electric_costs.jpg

The entire original article titled: "Abstract of "Appendix C" of Superpower Report on the Electrification of Railroads" can be seen here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=lPHNAAAAMAAJ&dq=general%20electric%20review201922&pg=PA88#v=onepage&q&f=false


Basically, it describes a reduction in running costs from about 0.50 per mile for steam to about 0.10 per mile for electric. Of course that doesn't include the huge investment in constructing the electric infrastructure, but if I'm reading the article correctly the railroads could expect to see an annual reduction in overall operating costs equivalent to 14% of the cost of the upgrade to electric.

The original report from 1921, of which the above article is just an abstract, is titled:

"A SUPERPOWER SYSTEM FOR THE REGION BETWEEN BOSTON AND WASHINGTON"

and can be seen and downloaded from here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=7EUPAAAAYAAJ&lpg=PA11&ots=BgUosPJcCc&dq=super%20power%20report&pg=PR2#v=onepage&q&f=false

Although the article doesn't speak to it, I believe I read somewhere, years ago, that the initial purchase cost of the electric loco was about 30% to 50% more expensive than its equivalent steam counterpart. I'll see if I can find a reference to that and post it here.

UPDATE: Sep 21, 2012
Here is an explicit reference to price of new steam loco vs price of new electric loco, based on estimates of locomotive builders and railroad companies, in 1921 in the USA:

http://hoist.hrtc.net/~arabento/pub/Steam_vs_electric_price_USA_1919.pdf

The text describes the value of a new steam locomotive in 1919 to be 18 cents per pound of total weight, and the value of a new electric at 40 to 45 cents per pound total weight for freight or passenger service respectively. Hopefully this little bit of info will be helpful to some of you involved in development and balancing of Simutrans.

jamespetts

Thank you - that is most helpful. I hope that you don't mind - I have copied your post to the thread here on the Pak128.Britain-Ex board, where I am working to collate information like this.
Download Simutrans-Extended.

Want to help with development? See here for things to do for coding, and here for information on how to make graphics/objects.

Follow Simutrans-Extended on Facebook.

Zeno

Thank you, that info will be useful when balancing railroads also for pak128 standard

prissi

QuoteAlthough the article doesn't speak to it, I believe I read somewhere, years ago, that the initial purchase cost of the electric loco was about 30% to 50% more expensive than its equivalent steam counterpart. I'll see if I can find a reference to that and post it here.

Nearly all electric locos were much more powerful than their steam "counterparts", since most of the onboard stuff could be devoted to generate power and not to boil steam, while cylinders and such are only part of the frame.

But somehow pak128 miss all early electrics ...

muser

Here is an explicit reference to price of new steam loco vs price of new electric loco, based on estimates of locomotive builders and railroad companies, in 1921 in the USA:

http://hoist.hrtc.net/~arabento/pub/Steam_vs_electric_price_USA_1919.pdf

The text describes the value of a new steam locomotive in 1919 to be 18 cents per pound of total weight, and the value of a new electric at 40 to 45 cents per pound total weight for freight or passenger service respectively. Hopefully this little bit of info will be helpful to some of you involved in development and balancing of Simutrans.

I've updated my original post with this information.