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pak128.Britain balancing - the big one!

Started by The Hood, May 01, 2013, 09:07:59 AM

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prissi

Are their any records of how many people really traveled with early trains. 20 people on a three compartment two wheeler carriage seems rather a theoretical maximum (or only ok for the Liverpool-Manchester connection). I would either expect 24 or 18. Also, since the rocket was 7.5 ton, and had about 7,5 ton haulage to spare for towing. It would never draw much more than five carriages (even 20 persons are already 1.5t!). Most images show rather three or four carriages behind the rocket.

With four carriages, it would be about 80 poeple, which would considerably close the gap between freight and pax. Just make the pax cars a little heavier (use 2 tons instead one) and the occupancy for speedbonus of a fully filled train will be much reduced.

jamespetts

On this website there is a well-known contemporary engraving from the early 1830s of Liverpool & Manchester railway trains, showing haulage of freight, passenger and mail. The train is shown as having either five enclosed passenger carriages and one mail carriage, six open passenger carriages or either 7 or 11 freight wagons.

Early standard gauge passenger carriages could seat five a side in second class or four a side in first class. The third class carriages of the day would have been all standing and would have had an even higher capacity (these are not depicted in Pak128.Britain, but they appear as the rear carriages in the lowest engraving). Both first and second class carriages have three compartments: the second class compartments would have seated 10 people each, and the first class compartments 8 people each. The second class carriages would therefore have seated 30 people and the first class carriages would have seated 24 people. Brake carriages would have carried a breakman (there would probably have been two per train in this era), which would have reduced the passenger capacity by 1 or 2 for each carriage in second class (but not first class, where he would have sat on the roof).

A train of six second class carriages would therefore carry a total of 176 people (30 * 6 - 4) and of six first class carriages 144 passengers (24 * 6). Five first class carriages plus a mail carriage would be 120 passengers, plus however many bundles/bags of mail can fit in a single carriage of that era.
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prissi

If you read the text this "contemporary" engraving is from after 1875, at least the text refers to a speech held at that year. Also all these engines are after the rocket, i.e. may be considerably stronger. (The rocket was also modified after the trials, but there is certainly a reason why it was retired early).

When Euston station was opened, the sheds there could not store more than 30 cars: http://www.railalbum.co.uk/early-railways/london-birmingham-railway-1.htm (and not engine went there first too) It seems very unrealistic, that three trains would deplete the storage entirely.

I think it is a little like this: You will find much more images from space shuttles or moon rockets than for a certain innercity bus of the same period. Thus most images show the opening of the line and probably like to exaggerating a little.

In any way, the rocket was built to draw about 15 tons but weighted fully loaded already 7.5 tons. Please do the math: 7.5t is the weight of 100 peoples, without any carriages!

jamespetts

Quote from: prissi on June 20, 2013, 08:53:34 PM
In any way, the rocket was built to draw about 15 tons but weighted fully loaded already 7.5 tons. Please do the math: 7.5t is the weight of 100 peoples, without any carriages!

May I ask, what is the source for that? Might it have been referring to what the locomotive can haul at the drawbar - i.e., excluding the weight of the locomotive itself?
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prissi

#74
It was the specs sent to the rainhill trials. I have no idea what that means in practice, but I suppose it means a load of 7.5 tons including the car's weigth. For these early engines, moving twice their weight is not a completely unrealistic number. Just think of 29 PS the rocket was rated for at top pressure: Same as an early Austin Mini. 7.5 ton behind it would be also quite demanding, or? (And then it has better gears, and rubber tires, and weight itself much less than a ton!)

EDIT: Digging deeper, the rocket could pull a 17 ton train at 14 mph (of these 3 ton are the tender). It could move a train with 13 carriages, but aparently a very slow speeds. http://www.resco.co.uk/rainhill/history_iron.html Further on: "The Northumbrian drew a train of 130 passengers from Liverpool to Manchester in an hour and fifty minutes." i.e. at 28 kmh. This engine achieved 1,8 times the Rocket's speed, and hence one may assume it had also twice the power.

Thus the rocket was rather obsolete after two years. Gearing the pakset for it is probably a bad idea.

sdog

from the auctioners page: "colour lithograph circa 1894"

It seems a bit suspicious that the train length matches the width of the paper so nicely. Perhaps the artist increased the number of carriages until they fitted the format the printing company prefered for their publications?

This might be a much better source:
François Marie Guyonneau de Pambour (1836), A practical treatise on locomotive engines upon railways
http://archive.org/stream/apracticaltreat01pambgoog#page/n4/mode/2up

A table in chapter V provides maximum loads on plain track for given engine weight, boiler pressure, and cylinder diameter. (Fixed wheel diameter of 5 ft)
An engine with specs as bad as those of Rocket according to wikipedia isn't even included in the table. The lowest figure in the table is 100t, one has to assume it would have pulled considerably less. It also means that only a few years later, such low figures for weight, and cylinder diameter would have not been considered at all. One can assume that the engines similar to 'Rocket' would have exceeded them.

Pambour also states that the engines where rebuilt all of the time, being stripped down to parts, improved and re-assembled with the old name. I guess this makes data sheets based on specific early engines completely useless.

The appendix lists all costs and profits of L&MR in the first 3 years of operation.



jamespetts

Thank you - that is a very useful source. Pambour is frequently cited as authoritative by later authors.
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The Hood

Some good stuff here. I'll need to look into this further. One thing from prissi's link about the Northumbrian does stand out however: "in February, 1831, the Samson accomplished the greater feat of conveying 164 tons from Liverpool to Manchester in two hours and a half" - i.e 13 mph / 21 km/h. The Samson appears to have been an 0-4-0 goods type of 1830 - perhaps this should be added and the Rocket considered a passenger/mail only option - i.e. lighter and faster trains? Again 130 passengers seems about right for these early trains as indicated in that link.

jamespetts

Is the Sampson not just the name of an individual member of the Planet Goods class, which we already have? Don't forget, the Rocket was the locomotive built for the Rainhill trials. Although, rebuilt, it was used in commercial service on the LMR, it was the Planet and Planet Goods locomotives that were built specifically to service the line.
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The Hood

I'm not familiar with the Planet Goods type other than your model. If it is the original 0-4-0 type for the LMR then it's probably the same type as the Samson. Either way, I'm suggesting we balance the Rocket for Pax only rather than Mixed traffic - the Locomotion is still available as a freight only loco then...

The Hood

@jamespetts - can you confirm what you based the planet goods type on? was it an 0-4-0 design?

jamespetts

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The Hood

OK - in which case I have balanced the Planet Goods in accordance with the "Samson" snippet above and the Rocket is effectively pax only. That seems to resolve some of the mixed traffic issues I was having before.

The Hood

Now moving onto balancing road vehicles. The problem here is that city roads are publicly owned and therefore free to use in terms of maintenance. This makes a huge difference to the profitability of routes. So my crazy idea is as follows - Maintenance for all roads should be set to zero to reflect the fact that basically all roads in the UK are publicly owned (OK this wasn't always the case e.g. turnpikes but...) and we just sort out the running costs on a level playing field... Build costs would be higher for bridges/tunnels/faster roads as expected.

jamespetts

Would it not be better to let players build roads as the public player if they want this effect, to allow for options?
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ӔO

how about giving players only a few roads that are maintenance free or locking certain roads to public player only?

Roads for freight don't need to be the fastest, but they need to be cheap enough to pave to factories and since they are unlikely to be very long, they should also be able to pay for themselves with the proceeds of transporting.

maybe adding a few player coloured pikes to the early player built roads to distinguish them from public player made?


on average, how many tiles of road will a player build for one factory connection?
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kierongreen

I'm really not sure about removing maintenance costs from roads... After all, there is practically no vertically integrated transport in the UK now anyway 99% of railways aren't, neither are ports or airports. Fuel duty effectively acts as a maintenance charge for roads, just as track access charges do for railways so I don't see why roads should be treated specially with regards to maintenance.

Imagine it as a parallel world where toll roads outside cities are the norm :p

jamespetts

There is much to be said for letting the player choose how vertically integrated to make things.
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The Hood

I understand the issues but standard has no way of paying tolls or taxes, so I was imagining that higher vehicle maintenance costs and no road maintenance costs would simulate the fuel taxes etc.

The other problem I can see is that intercity roads don't get upgraded automatically as time goes by. So a player would have to build new fast roads and pay maintenance on these later in the game. Otherwise the existing network can of course be used for free...

kierongreen

In my view the choice of using slow public roads (either in cities or in the countryside) or upgrading them is part of the gameplay. Yes existing network can be used for free but speed bonus should make this unprofitable in later years anyway.

sdog

Quote from: The Hood on August 01, 2013, 09:26:31 PM
Now moving onto balancing road vehicles. The problem here is that city roads are publicly owned and therefore free to use in terms of maintenance. This makes a huge difference to the profitability of routes. So my crazy idea is as follows - Maintenance for all roads should be set to zero to reflect the fact that basically all roads in the UK are publicly owned (OK this wasn't always the case e.g. turnpikes but...) and we just sort out the running costs on a level playing field... Build costs would be higher for bridges/tunnels/faster roads as expected.

Then you would also need a way to prevent a road the player places to be available within the next 30 years. Planin, endless lawsuites, budget acrobatics.

If you considerably increase vehicle running cost and reduce road upkeep. Players will be very quick to build new roads, just to save a few km of way. Public roads would not accomodate such needs of a transport company.

Vladki

Free usage of city roads should be IMHO balance to compensate the loss of speed bonus, as they are limited to 50 km/h.

Vladki

Just a few thoughts on passenger transport. I'm playing pak128 Britain - standard for quite a while and I have noticed the following things:

Airplanes cannot be profitable even if always full. Running costs per passenger are 0,24-0,32 credits/km, but revenue only 0,14/km. I know that real world airplanes are expensive but so are flight tickets. If simutrans "tickets" have the same price for any means of transport, then running costs must be reduced accordingly. For planes I would suggest dividing the running costs by 2 or 3.

Buses may be profitable if they get the speed bonus. But there are no buses that are profitable at 50 km/h (city transport). Running costs per person range from 0,01 to 0,10 credits/km. Revenue at 50 km/h drops down to 0,02/km (in year 2020). The only two buses that are profitable even on city roads are Leyland Cub and Guy Special - perhaps thanks to a bug - their running costs are 10x lower than other comparable buses. I think that all buses should be made cca 10 times cheaper to run.

Trams are highly profitable even if not full. Generally 10x cheaper to run than buses, and getting full speed bonus. However maintenance reduces the profits a bit. The game would be more challenging if trams would be a bit more expensive, maybe even 10x higher could be playable.

Passenger ships and hovercraft are ridiculously cheap to buy and run. And they are fast enough to get speed bonus thus making huge profits. And there is no congestion on waterways. Easy to use them to earn a lots of money (to sponsor the buses). It seems that prices were set without any thought... :)

Trains and narrow gauge are quite complicated to judge, but I think well balanced. However I lack some modern shunting engines -cheap to run and low power for short trains.

I have a spreadsheet (libreoffice) with costs per passenger per km for many buses, trams, trains and planes, that I use to choose the most efficient vehicles. I can share it if someone is interested.