Coal Mine Route

[bluegrasslumberjack]

Perhaps the most annoying and longest route to run on my map. It used to cut over the pass above the refinery at 4-6% but decided to make a maximum of 2.5% route up the East Valley. I can currently haul upwards of 40 freight cars with one climax and one class 70 without even slowing down. I'll share the map in a couple days as I still have some fine tuning to do including an expanded yard at the coal mine. I have upwards of 100 cars, 10-15 locomotives and over 20 million in the bank. Its been a lot of work but I'm more than willing to share with those who have interest.

[Dinoman_47]

That sounds really cool, you must have put a lot of time and effort into that. 👍

[bluegrasslumberjack]

I have 330 hours currently in game. Almost 100 of those hours has been on this save. when I changed laptops I lost my old saves to the blackhole called a Dell Inspiron.

[wulfgar28]

I managed to get a route through there at 3%. 90% of the grade distance was on the side of the refinery. Took a minute and nearly went all the way to the freight station to get it down to ground level. Might go the other way next time I try it.

[Wolfie]

I made a coal mine route at 1.5% max, same with iron ore mine. It's challenging but it can be done.

[Lost_Guardian]

Originally posted by bluegrasslumberjack:

Perhaps the most annoying and longest route to run on my map. It used to cut over the pass above the refinery at 4-6% but decided to make a maximum of 2.5% route up the East Valley. I can currently haul upwards of 40 freight cars with one climax and one class 70 without even slowing down. I'll share the map in a couple days as I still have some fine tuning to do including an expanded yard at the coal mine. I have upwards of 100 cars, 10-15 locomotives and over 20 million in the bank. Its been a lot of work but I'm more than willing to share with those who have interest.

would love to see the coal mine route

I have 1 thats 2-3 % grade most the way

[Skorj]

I don't see the point in long trains, myself. You just spend an hour loading or unloading. More fun to me to make short runs with short trains up steeper grades.

[Kitsune Dawn]

Originally posted by Skorj:

I don't see the point in long trains, myself. You just spend an hour loading or unloading. More fun to me to make short runs with short trains up steeper grades.

If you want to be technical about it, "long" trains really didn't become a thing until air brakes were mandated by the ICC. With NG railroads, even though standard gauge had already had them mandated around 1885, NG railroads fell into an exception as they were classified as industrial railroads, which weren't required to have them. It wasn't until 1918 that changed.

In any case, the link and pin coupling, and lack of air brakes limited train lengths to, at most twenty cars.

[Lizardman8891]

Originally posted by KibuFox:

Originally posted by Skorj:

I don't see the point in long trains, myself. You just spend an hour loading or unloading. More fun to me to make short runs with short trains up steeper grades.

If you want to be technical about it, "long" trains really didn't become a thing until air brakes were mandated by the ICC. With NG railroads, even though standard gauge had already had them mandated around 1885, NG railroads fell into an exception as they were classified as industrial railroads, which weren't required to have them. It wasn't until 1918 that changed.

In any case, the link and pin coupling, and lack of air brakes limited train lengths to, at most twenty cars.

Even after air brakes and knuckle couplers, you rarely saw >20 cars in a consist on narrow gauge railroads. It was pretty impractical to run long trains for a wide variety of reasons. And strong locomotives were more about pulling power up a grade than they were about train length.