Gear ratio?

[Fraoch]

Hello:

For locomotives, what does the gear ratio mean?

For example, let's compare the Empire F7A to the H-Trans BR212.  The F7A has 1120 kW of power, the BR212 only 990 kW.  Yet the F7A's gear ratio is 1.00 while the BR212's is 1.50 (I think, I don't have any running anymore).

You'd think the F7A would be more powerful because it has, well, more power! But in practice the BR212 accelerates faster given the same load.  Is this due to the higher gear ratio?

What is the point of more power then?  Can a more powerful engine haul a heavier load at a higher speed, while one with less power but a higher gear ratio will accelerate quicker?

Simutrans 110.0 pak64 on Ubuntu 11.04 64-bit.

[DirrrtyDirk]

Gear is simply a multiplier for power. So effective power = power x gear.

In your example:
1120 x 1.00 = 1120
990 x 1.50 = 1485

And the idea behind is: you can recreate real life vehicles with their real life power values, and then simply adjust the gear factor to get the desired in-game behaviour.

[Fraoch]

Thanks, that makes sense!