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Narrow gauge goods vehicles

Started by Junna, April 26, 2013, 03:32:14 AM

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Junna

As a number of the present vehicles in -ex still are not in regular pak.britain, I thought this would be the right place: are there any plans for 1. a narrow gauge tunnel, and 2.  carriages for the remaining goods types for narrow gauge? There's, for example no tanker wagons for NG, as I have discovered upon wishing to use such;

From Mainland Europe there are examples of NG multiple units, perhaps something speculative based upon such should be included, to give the player a wider variety of options for using NG. I seem to recall there were at least some electric NG railways in the UK as well, though this is less relevant and far less crucial (and they were probably mostly mine-related operations any way.)

There's also no way of conveying a few goods types by rail later-on in the game - livestock in particular. This I assume is because there is no modern rolling stock to transport livestock in use in the U.K. (I assume the same is the reason there are no oil tankers for NG), but I don't think the extreme decline of goods conveyed by rail in the U.K. after the 60's is a good reason to force this upon the player; indeed the reality of today is a consequence of certain material conditions which were not inevitably going to develop the way they did, and we should allow where possible the player to affect the fate of things: we should thus be open to speculative uses without real-life precedent if necessary - within reason, of course.

jamespetts

I had not noticed that we were missing a narrow gauge tunnel: that is an unforunate omission. I have added two to the Github repository, based on an amalgam of the tube tunnel graphic with narrow gauge tracks. It might be good to have a concrete one one day, too, but these should suffice for the present.

As to narrow gauge vehicles for, for example, oil - I do not think that there are any historical precedents for these. What would they look like? One wonders whether narrow gauge railways would ever have been an economically viable way of transporting oil. It is often the case that the reason that there are no historical examples of vehicles is precisely that it would never have been economical to have such a service.

The only electric narrow gauge railways in the British isles of which I am aware are the Manx Electric Railway (more of a narrow gauge tramway, and 3ft rather than 2ft gauge; also not strictly in the UK) and the Post Office railway in London (which has been out of use since 1995 and is a specialist automated underground railway for mail only). I do not think that these examples are mainstream enough for inclusion.

As to narrow gauge multiple units, these do not exist in the UK because narrow gauge had ceased to be a viable means of transporting passengers before multiple units became popular (it could always be out-competed by 'buses because of its low capacity and speed compared to full sized railways). The modern passenger carriages in the pakset come from the Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland railways in the preservation era, when the lines' economic viability is/was largely limited to tourist use. There is such a thing as a push-pull narrow gauge train on the Ffestiniog which I had thought of including at one point.
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AP

I think there are differences of opinion within the team developing the paksets regarding 'hypothetical' vehicles. The fact that Simutrans allows us by design to play many different terrain types and economic scenarios,  which do not all tally with the geographic reality of the British Isles, does mean that in-game there can easily be a demand that did not exist in (this) reality. E.g. a UK map without the highly-indented coastline gives a very different scenario.

Britain is a given size and shape and in reality certain types of transport did not develop because there was no need.  Narrow gauge was not demanded by the terrain in the same way as in switzerland, and was mostly disappearing as the motor car / oil industry took off, so whilst it was used in the aluminium/peat industries extensively, oil tanks apparently have no precedent. Obviously we could import vehicles from the continent, but that's a choice to be made.

Re electric NG - the Camborne & Redruth was electric, Glasgow underground and Hythe Pier Tramway still are (ditto Seaton Tramway but that probably doesn't count.  NG lines in the UK are usually pretty obscure... there are other precedents at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_industrial_narrow_gauge_railways (e.g. Winnal Gasworks Railway), also here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_narrow_gauge_railways

Junna

Quote from: jamespetts on April 27, 2013, 12:28:00 PM
As to narrow gauge vehicles for, for example, oil - I do not think that there are any historical precedents for these. What would they look like? One wonders whether narrow gauge railways would ever have been an economically viable way of transporting oil. It is often the case that the reason that there are no historical examples of vehicles is precisely that it would never have been economical to have such a service.

I imagine they would not look much dissimilar from the smaller 1920's type short-wheel tanker-wagon (but smaller), as such was the appearance of similar vehicles on NG lines where they did carry oil or fluid (and any other goods not yet included in the game). I've found it is a bit troublesome as I have a paperworks served by a narrow gauge line, yet I had to run a standard gauge spur into the territory to get chemicals there (I had planned initially to transfer it at another station). Later vehicles would probably just be shorter and smaller versions of the regular tanker-wagons, so this I think could easily be accommodated by modifying existing graphics.

The reason that oil was not (as far as I know) carried on the narrow gauge network has to do with the material realities of most of the UK NG lines being primarily networks serving mining country and transporting coal and meeting an untimely death due to a conspiracy of reasons; if the network had been under other circumstances (as there very well be in a game), it might very well have carried oil and fluid products as well; indeed, there was petroleum-product carrying on Swedish narrow-gauge lines (which did indeed face a similar end to their UK counterpart, most being closed very soon after the 1937-1940 nationalisation or converted to standard; a few surviving into the 60's when they went with the Swedish equivalent of the Beeching cuts.

jamespetts

Hmm - I shall bear that in mind, in that case, although I have quite a long queue of things of somewhat higher priority (at the top of which is rebalancing comfort, which I am about half-way through).
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jamespetts

I have now added narrow gauge tanker wagons to my Github repository: see this commit.
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