Topic: Tram Selection

[ianjazz]

I've been looking at the trams and I've noticed that there is only one tram the entire game, the Tram Team(horses). I went through many different years and haven't seen any others.
Is this the only tram in this pakset or am I just not in the right year?

[DrSuperGood]

All trams except the "Tram Team(horses)" are electric so require track electrification up to and including the depot to be available.

Additionally pak64 only really supports play after 1920. Before then there may only be 1 type of tram available.

[Ters]

Additionally pak64 only really supports play after 1920. Before then there may only be 1 type of tram available.

It does however support pain and patience between about 1850 and 1910/1920. So it's not as if all you can do is stare at nothing (assuming watching grass grow is not nothing), you can actually start building and transporting. But, yes, only the horse drawn tram until 1913. And it remains available until 1960, after which you can't do anything without putting some overhead wires up (not that not using them for trams is a good idea in the first place).

[jameskuyper]

Horse-drawn trams in pak64 have some weird features:

I'm running version 111.0. In pak64, between 1865 and 1960, a tram depot will show only one Locomotive: a Tram Team (Pferdebahn) with a max speed of 25 km/hr, that cannot, itself, carry anything. It seems to me like the retire_year should be earlier. Until 1932, it can be connected to a Tram Wagon (Pferdebahnwagon). But for three years, there's nothing for the Tram Team to pull. After 1935, if the Depot is electrified, it can also be connected to a Bennhardt T-26 electric (Lowa), but that car has power sufficient to go 50 km/hr and can carry passengers – so what point would there be in connecting them? It turns out there is one:  The electric engine alone can pull no more than 11 fully-loaded Bennhardt T-26 cars (Lowa_Anhaenger), at 6 km/hr  (31 km/hr empty). Adding a Tram Team raises the fully loaded speed to 15 km/hr, but drops the empty speed to 25 km/hr. This works because the Lowa has no Constraints.

I'm not sure whether all of those things are still true.

[Ters]

I'm not sure whether all of those things are still true.

The tram wagon has had a retirement year of 1960 for over 18 months now. I believe it was mentioned at some point that horses were kept around for longer than what it can pull in the pak set itself, in order to be usable for add-on wagons that might be available for a longer time, or maybe it is just one of my own speculations I remember. Horse drawn vehicles can still be encountered in modern cities today. True, they are used for things like sightseeing and weddings rather than normal traffic, but lots of players build things just for show. (Granted, these players will probably disable the timeline anyway.)

[DrSuperGood]

If electric convoys are available maybe there should be some form of notification on the depot informing the user about it? For example "Electric convoys hidden due to lack of electrification." An extra flag can be added to turn on all convoys even if not usable on the current way type. This is not the first time I have seen people asking this question, I even did when first playing.

[Ters]

I think it is just that nobody has figured out an elegant solution. The depot windows is big and complex already.

[DrSuperGood]

Extra flag to show "show incompatible types" would work. Would clutter the window a little bit more but I think the usability benefit justifies it.