Ok, I was thinking of having two types of goods rolling stock unfitted stock and fitted stock. In my mind it seems more realistic. The difference between the two would be that unfitted stock would require a break van and have a top speed of 50 MPH/ 80 kph and fitted stock would not require a break van and have speeds above 50 MPH/ 80 kph.
For example, 12T food van, unfitted, top speed: 50 MPH/ 80 kph, 12T food van, fitted, top speed: 80
MPH/ 128 kph.
That seems sensible. Do you happen to know, when, historically, fitted goods vehicles first began to appear? Some of the fitted vans for things like fish and piece goods were quite large, weren't they?
To my knowledge fitted vans started to appear around the turn of the century, late 1890 early 1900. As for the size the G.W.R. fruit/fish vans were the size of about two regular vans and were loaded to 12 tons as opposed to the 8 ton vans of the time, they were also used for printed materials, news papers, magazines, etc. Ballast wagons started to get fitted mid 1910s early 1920s and were loaded to the same tonnage as 4-5 plank wagons, they tended to be shorter and longer than wooden waggons. Tankers to my knowledge were always fitted. Flats and well wagons were fitted late 1910s especially if they were used to transport steel.
Very useful information - thank you! Although, returning for a moment to the first post, I don't think that they dispensed with brake vans until the late 1960s, even on fitted stock, did they? After all, passenger trains, which were always fitted from the 1890s onwards, still had brake vehicles.
Incidentally, I don't think that I'll have the time to draw these for a good while, although they're on my list of things to add. Had you thought about adapting existing freight vehicles and making a go of them yourself? Adapting existing graphics is actually rather easy.
They kept brake vans into the 70's on departmental trains, and the use in the 60's was more on long (in length) or long (lots of running hours) trains, there were still some unfitted vans and wagons around though. They were also used as buffer vehicles on petrol/hazardous trains until they were withdrawn, then they started using old vans.
The passenger vans are different, they were more a place for luggage, ticket sales at rural stops, and for office space on passenger trains.
As far as the graphics go I'm willing to learn how to modify stock, I was hoping to try some narrow guage, and make some changes to the wagons to add L.M.S. , L.N.E.R. , G.W.R. , and S.R. to them so that they don't all look brown.
Oliver,
hmm, I think that regulations required brake vans even for fitted stock - certainly, a vehicle with a handbrake was required by law on passenger trains until at least after the war. Anyway, the correctness or otherwise of that point can easily be checked by research in due course and modified very easily. The graphics are more the key points, and we definitely need more fast freight vehicles.
As to modifying existing graphics, the place to start is this (http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=2401.0) thread. Next, you need to PM The Hood and ask him for the original .blend files of the wagon(s) that you want to modify, modify them, then export them.
One or two tips for exporting: first of all, don't forget to use CTRL to constrain the rotations to increments of 5 degrees when rotating the vehicles in Blender, or else it'll be difficult to get them rotated by exactly 45 degrees each time. Secondly, use the rail vehicle templates available in the trains/images subfolder of the source files, and use the second version, with the pink guidelines: align the vehicles using those pink guidelines, then simply select all by colour using that garish pink that will never actually be in your graphics, and paint over the selection with a large brush using the background colour. That is the easiest way that I have found so far to export the graphics.
The Hood knows more than I do about creating graphics, though, so ask him - he'd be more than happy to have a new contributor on board!