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Advice wanted: platform length

Started by Jando, October 02, 2019, 11:21:23 PM

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Jando

Greetings, all!

While used to play earlier years I now have a passenger map in the 1930s too. And I wonder how to handle platform length, i.e. how many tiles do you use for long-distance passenger stations? In my current map I find me contemplating to introduce 7-tile stations. Currently I have 5-tile long platforms but trains can't cope with the demand running every 32 minutes. Thus I need trains with more capacity, thus also longer trains. But a 5-tile platform already is a pretty long platform. A tile is, I believe, 125x125 meters in Extended, thus 5 tiles already means a station is 625 meters long, with 7 tiles it would go to 875 meters and that sounds pretty unrealistic.

Checked the typical platform length for real-life long-distance services here in Germany and it's about 400 meters. How many tiles do you use for passenger trains?

ACarlotti

Something to bare in mind is that there is a difference between the scales used for graphics and physics. The length and capacity of a train are determined roughly according to the graphics scale. I don't know exactly what the scale is, but looking at the class 365, we see that a 20m carriage has an in-game length of 11. So each tile is about 30m long (in train graphics terms), your 5 tile platform can hold about 150m of train, and a 7 tile platform would hold about 210m of train. This would correspond to 10 20m carriages; for comparison, suburban railways around London typically have their longest trains consisting of 8-12 carriages. So 7 tiles seems perfectly realistic, considering the graphics scale involved.

Rollmaterial

I use 9 or 10. An 11-car Class 390 is 10 tiles long.

Jando

Quote from: ACarlotti on October 03, 2019, 01:09:40 AMSomething to bare in mind is that there is a difference between the scales used for graphics and physics.

Thanks, I had indeed forgotten about that.

DrSuperGood

The length needed increases with the year. Early on one can use 4 tile and be fine. However later on 6 tile is required since density starts to drop. If one uses the separate coaches one may need even 9 tile or longer because the late game separate coaches have very bad passenger density for their length.

Mariculous

Writing while sitting in a ~8 tile long regional train.

Currently I use a platform length of 2 for local trains (S Bahn), 6 for regional trains (Regionalexpress) and 8 for long distance trains (Intercity)
When my 32 minutes regional services becomes crowded, I shift another category of trains (Regionalbahn) in between, which serves a few additional stations and has a train length of 3-4.

However, due to length 2 high capacity third rail EMUs not being available anymore, I switched to catenary EMUs for some lines but will extend platform lengths to 3 to use third rail rolling stock for the others.
Due to capacity troubles of my long distance trains, (32 minutes service with regional trains shifted in between) I will extend platform lengths to 12 (240 m), which was roughly the length of early intercity trains in Germany.
However, I didn't decide this for realism reasons. Instead, I simply expect it to solve my crowdoing issues.

As for realism, I guess I have a slightly different understanding of it: Instad of thinking about "how long would a platform of this train be in reality" Ask yourself "how long should a platform be to serve the required demand". And "should I increase trains length or better decrease time between schedules?"
That's what real life rail companies also do.

Ideally, both would come to the same conclusion.

In Germany, platform lengths >400m are very common for Intercity express stations, which would be more than 20 tiles ingame.
An ICE2 full train is slightly longer than 410m, so it would require at least 21 tiles.
Even som platforms >600m exist in real life. Essen Hauptbahnhof has a 667m long platform (34 tiles), although this is very exceptional, it would still be realistic.
Australia, known for bad rail service and long trains due to bad knfrasgructure, even has a 44 car and 1.1 km long train. So realls dln't think too much about real world train lengths. In Simutra s it is much easyer (and at meast feels) much cheaper to build and maintain new tracks, than it is in the real world.

Even for local trains, platform lengths of 80m (4 tiles) for half trains or 160m(8 tiles) for full trains are most common.
In the Rhein-Ruhr area, platforms for the RRX will have 220m. (11 tiles)

Furthermore, when it comes to realism, I suspect the passenger generation/ time ratio pretty unrealistic by at least a factor of 2, if not even 3 or 4.
In tve feality, most services run hourly. Ingame an hourly service is far from enough. You need at least a 32 minute or even 16 minute service. However, this will deserve a whole thread on its own.