working out how many carages a train can pull

[Gromit]

any ideas?

[thecrownprince002]

I know it's 8 max freight trains for the shortest station, anymore can cause bottlenecks from what I've experienced.

[Saint Landwalker]

Originally posted by Gromit:

any ideas?

"It depends."

It depends on how far you're going. It depends on how fast you want to get there. It depends on what kind of terrain you're going to cover on the way.

As long as a train can move at all (and in this game, any engine can move any consist), it can pull itself somewhere. It might take it an hour of real-time to get there, but it can pull it even if you slap 100 carriages on it.

[SirLANsalot]

from another post I just made LOL

Or you could...I dunno, trail and error?

The starting US loco cannot take more then 2-3 passenger cars without taking a significant loss in acceleration, and since we know track will never be perfectly flat, its a good rule to follow. The 4-4-0 can take about 4 passenger cars, or about 5 fright cars. The Baldwin 2-8-0 can take a good 5 or 6 passenger cars, or about 4 of the "newer" ones that you get a few years later.

After that, it gets pretty pointless to keep track. The Bouge 2-6-0 can take 5-6 passenger cars, but by then its getting expensive to build those trains.

Post 1900's, you can easily take 5+ cars on any of the locomotives, with very little to not loss in speed going up a hill. Fright cars you can go 8 or 9 with a little struggle with the 4-4-2 Atlantic, but otherwise its fine (plus that will be about the fastest loco you will get till 1930's with the Milwaukee Electric loco). The Mikida is a good loco, but slower then the Atlantic, however its a great freight locomotive with LOTS of tractive effort. The 4-12......is very expensive, high maintenance costs, but its got a good 60mph top speed, so good for the mid/long range fright trains where you will be making millions a trip, plus it can take a good 15+ cars with little issue.

After all that, its pretty much plug in play what you like. The little ALCO diesel is the only one in the later years that struggles taking long trains, mainly its aimed at short range deliveries, its cheap which is why I like it. For a longer range trip, it works for having 4 or 5 train on a line (for high freq) with 7 cars (I have tried 8+ and...it was struggling up hills). Its replacement is the GE for 3mil with a top speed of 65mph.

[Gromit]

sorry i generally run freight on trains :)

[Dan]

Vague rules-of-thumb...
Depends very much on the "ruling grade" - the steepest part of the line you want them to climb.

If you keep your whole route constrained to a maximum of a "medium" slope (the steepness arrow half way between flat and very steep), then you can maintain the earliest trains' top speeds uphill with... I think around 3-4 basic 10-ton wagons... that quickly climbs up to 8-10 wagons for all but the very first train. By the time you're at ones with engine powers around the 600-1000 range, you can get up to around 15 wagons. You can certainly go above that, but your trains will slow down on inclines.

If you're attempting to send them up full-steepness routes, then you should either expect some painfully slow trains, or literally knock it back to between half and a quarter the number of wagons. The earlier trains will struggle with anything more than 1-2 wagons.

Once you get up to 2000kW+ engines, you can start hauling big loads up steeper inclines, or VERY big loads up sensible inclines.


That's all a very rough and guessed estimate... you need to dive into the maths a bit if you want more specifics - check around on the Reddit group.

This also disregards tractive effort - even if a train has enough power to get up a hill, it can still take a long time to accelerate in the first place.

[Saint Landwalker]

Originally posted by grimdanfango:

If you keep your whole route constrained to a maximum of a "medium" slope (the steepness arrow half way between flat and very steep), then you can maintain the earliest trains' top speeds uphill with... I think around 3-4 basic 10-ton wagons... that quickly climbs up to 8-10 wagons for all but the very first train. By the time you're at ones with engine powers around the 600-1000 range, you can get up to around 15 wagons. You can certainly go above that, but your trains will slow down on inclines.

This paragraph prompted me to want to raise one other point:

"How many wagons can I pull?" is a meaningless question. Not just because of issues already raised, but because the wagons themselves have different statistics. 1850 European wagons aren't equal to 1850 American wagons, and they aren't equal to 1950 European wagons, either. They aren't even equal to other 1850 European wagons. A better (still ultimately meaningless, but at least pointed in a better overall direction) question would be "how many tons" (or preferred unit of mass), not "how many wagons."

[Dan]

Originally posted by Landwalker04:

Originally posted by grimdanfango:

If you keep your whole route constrained to a maximum of a "medium" slope (the steepness arrow half way between flat and very steep), then you can maintain the earliest trains' top speeds uphill with... I think around 3-4 basic 10-ton wagons... that quickly climbs up to 8-10 wagons for all but the very first train. By the time you're at ones with engine powers around the 600-1000 range, you can get up to around 15 wagons. You can certainly go above that, but your trains will slow down on inclines.

This paragraph prompted me to want to raise one other point:

"How many wagons can I pull?" is a meaningless question. Not just because of issues already raised, but because the wagons themselves have different statistics. 1850 European wagons aren't equal to 1850 American wagons, and they aren't equal to 1950 European wagons, either. They aren't even equal to other 1850 European wagons. A better (still ultimately meaningless, but at least pointed in a better overall direction) question would be "how many tons" (or preferred unit of mass), not "how many wagons."

Yeah, entirely true. I figured it was worth summing it up in measures of "basic-10t-wagon" - easy enough to work out if you have a 1950s 20t wagon, you should divide the number in half :-)

I believe the devs have mentioned somewhere that they intend to fix the whole "wagons weigh the same whether they're full or empty" thing at some point... at which point it'll get even more amusingly complicated :-)
At that point, it might end up hugely profitable to take huge cargo trains down a mountain and return with nice light, empty wagons.