Topic: Sleeping cars and their relative values and liveries.

[Spenk009]

Hi all, I've had a bit of time on my hands and decided to try to get a better understanding of the workflow and improve my Blender skills. The result is a set of Mk1 and Mk3 sleeping carriages, where the Mk3s are available in all liveries present for its base. The Mk3 is based on the Mk3A first class open carriage (FO), with the window sill raised, all windows moved and original colours applied in their respective places. I'm quite happy with the result. For the Mk1, I've modified the second class corridor carriage (SK), moving the central door, adding the window pairs. This carriage looks too short in my opinion, due the bogies sitting far outside underneath.

I have updated my Blends repo found here. In due course I'll add some .dat files and create a fork for people to try out in the source repo.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on the carriages, probably best seen in the .blend files. What carriages aside from the Midland 12 wheel carriages were used prior to these, and were the exteriors vastly different to the other carriages they were like? Also, input on where to find good data aside from Wikipedia is very much appreciated.

[jamespetts]

Interesting work. I did wonder about adding sleeping carriages; they would, I think, have to be rated for a very long journey to be comfortable to make sense, and also have a higher first cost and higher maintenance/staff cost. One issue with adding modern sleeping carriages is that the pakset then becomes unbalanced if these are not available in earlier eras, and adding accurate sleeping cars for all earlier (and later) eras will be a very substantial undertaking.

[Spenk009]

If implemented it would be a significant change to the balance of large maps. I would suggest we make them unwieldy (boarding times 60-180, can only be coupled to restaurant and brake vans, 1.6x purchase and 3x fixed costs) and see how they compare. One of the main issues would be very long journeys before the 20th century, which could see a surge in popularity as the comfort values increase.

My main question was whether the requirements for adding accurate sleeping cars in the cases of the Mk1s (updated to all liveries) and Mk3s are satisfied. These liveries can't be correct, but which ones should be kept? I've opened a branch on my repo, called sleeping-carriages, for anyone to check out.

[jamespetts]

I should note that, at present, comfort does not affect the popularity of a route, only the revenue, as this would require a very major code change.

As to the liveries, I do not really understand the question, as both of your links just point to your base repository. For reference, Mk. 1 sleepers appeared, I believe, in (possibly) crimson/cream, maroon and blue/grey (we might also add Inter-City livery for players who want to use these longer than British Rail did). Mk. 3 sleepers appeared in blue/grey, Inter-City executive, Intercity swallow livery, Great Western Trains livery, the various First Great Western liveries, the (21st century) Great Western Railway livery, and various Caledonian sleeper liveries.
As noted, adding sleeping cars to some but not all eras would be fantastically confusing, and the history of sleeping carriages dates to the 1830s and is highly complex, so would take a great amount of work to implement fully.

[Spenk009]

As noted, adding sleeping cars to some but not all eras would be fantastically confusing, and the history of sleeping carriages dates to the 1830s and is highly complex, so would take a great amount of work to implement fully.

I'll just see about adding things as I go along then. It becomes very difficult to find information online.

I am hoping to keep working on further conversions of vehicles into the transparent workflow instead. Pull requests should surface in time. I'm getting the hang of the workflow, it's straightforward and well documented.