Express Goods Mechanics

[StudlyCaps]

Hi all, does anyone know (for sure, not just guessing) what the % statistics for each express good and destination actually mean? It appears to go up when a train picks up goods in that direction, but most start above 0% even when there is no connectivity between the cities. It also doesn't add up to 100% in a station. It would obviously be useful to know when planning routes.
Additionally does anyone know for sure whether express goods can change trains? if I have routes A-B and B-C will passengers spawning in A with destination C take route 1 to B then route 2 to C or will they only board an express train A-C?
Thanks in advance.

[gardlt]

The % is pretty straightforward: how many of the passengers to that destination are being transported by trains.

The important thing to remember is that passengers will board any train going in the DIRECTION of its destination city. They don't mind taking the coach to complete the journey. The limits of this are defined by rule of less than double the direct distance.

I think that answers your second question too. They will happily change trains. Mail works the same way.

[StudlyCaps]

Thanks! That's good to know.

[Rhosta]

How do you know that?

[gardlt]

I spent 500 hours playing. So I observed a good deal. You can always try for yourself. Make a simple line between two cities. Run one train. After a little while you will see the percentages go up. You will notice that even though your are only running to one city, the % rises for others too.

This knowledge helps a lot with direct passenger haulage tasks. By blocking local deliveries in the direction of the objective city, we then get the opportunity to haul all available. We don't want some taking the local train. Speculation, but I think passengers MAY wait for a direct train.

But the key to this type of task is to capture the volume to as many cities surrounding the destination as possible. Passengers to the other cities as far as I can tell do NOT wait. That's why blocking local makes these tasks a lot quicker.

[Tiggs]

Thank you!

[Jenska]

Originally posted by Rhosta:

How do you know that?

Many people have worked on this to figure it out and its in some of the guides. and forum posts. Gardit is on target with the numbers others have mentioned. The only thing you can change is the length of time traffic waits for a train before vanishing by tech investments.

As an aside, for those point to point specific tasks (say A->B), you can sometimes benefit by running trains from the nearby cities, c->a->b, d->a->b, etc to boost the volume going from A to B.