Pneumatic tubes (uses narrowgauge)

[Nazalassa]

This add-on introduces a new way of transporting mail and waste in pak64: pneumatic tubes. From 1841 onwards, solve congestion in your large cities with underground tubes carrying canisters at a speed of 30 km/h! (Simutrans speed 120 km/h, see note 1)

Implementation note: this addon implements pneumatic tubes through the narrowgauge waytype. It is thus not compatible with other addons that introduce narrowgauge-relatedthings, or if narrowgauge is ever added to pak64.
For this reason, the addon is a bit more complicated to install than most others as it requires modifying pak64's menuconf.tab to show narrowgauge things.

How to install:

• Put the pak file in your pakset's addon directory (typically <simu-dir>/addons/pak/).
• Open your pakset's menuconf.tab (typically <simu-dir>/pak/config/menuconf.tab) in your favorite text editor, then locate the line:
  

  toolbar[9][20]=dialog_tool[34]

  
  
  and add the following right after it:
  

  toolbar[9][21]=ways(8,0)
  toolbar[9][22]=tunnels(
  toolbar[9][23]=general_tool[17],16,,8
  toolbar[9][24]=signs(
  toolbar[9][25]=buildings(33,8)
  toolbar[9][26]=buildings(34,8)

  
  
  This will add the pneumatic tubes and related tools to the Special tools toolbar. (The smileys are harmless, it's the forum.)
  
• (optionally) If you want the pneumatic tubes to make sound, download the pneumatic-tube-2.wav.zip file, unzip it and move the resulting pneumatic-tube-2.wav file in your pakset's sound folder (typically <simu-dir>/pak/sound/).

Notes:

• The canisters can go up to 120 km/h instead of the more realistic 30 km/h. That is because, while in simutrans one tile is 1 km, this does not scale well on cities. Using speeds of 30 km/h would make city operation sluggish whereas the pneumatic tubes' greatest advantage is they are supposed to be fast.
• The canisters have very high capacity. That is because one simutrans canister is supposed to represent several real-life canisters, to avoid having too many vehicles. (Real-life canisters are not very large.)

[Nazalassa]

Source files.

2025-08-16: removed fireflies in cans.png
2025-08-18: made choose signals actually work
2025-08-19: better graphics for the signals

[Nazalassa]

Small bugfix: updated cans.png to remove fireflies from the unloaded waste canisters.

[Isaac Eiland-Hall]

Small bugfix: updated cans.png to remove fireflies from the unloaded waste canisters.

Well, that's good timing, because if the Simutrans environmental agency had caught that first, I can't imagine the fines...

[Nazalassa]

Another small bugfix: make the choose signal work. (dat file lacked an '_' somewhere.)

-- EDIT --
2025-08-19: Better graphics for the signals.