Heavy Hauling

[robozed20]

There needs to be a way to haul over 20 cars. I just tried moving 30 cars and it's nearly impossible, especially when going up hill.
I was using a steam locomotive and 4 shunters.

[King Of Essex]

try adding sand to stop the slipping

[robozed20]

I did that, then ran out of sand. I'm a little frustrated that I work to unlock the steam engine and then longer trains and am unable to pull a train, up hill, that's quite long.

[TheLostPenguin]

Hmm based on some quick maths from the loaded wagons available to me right now at Food Factory (I'm aware weights vary so some cargo will be lighter/heavier than this) a loaded 30 wagon train would come out as 1350 tons, which doesn't seem terribly unreasonable for a fairly large 2-8-2 with small drivers to handle. A train of 30 empty wagons on the other hand comes in at only 630 tons (again based on the weight of empties only at Food Factory), which should be fairly comfortable across most routes I've travelled so far in DV as I typically aim for a load of 700-something tons for a total train weight approaching 900 tons.

That said many routes in DV include pretty harsh climbs which would realistically significantly reduce the viable total train weights even if it could handle ~1300 on level track, plus at present traction is all messed up anyway, it's not uncommon for me to see locomotives and/or full trains continually sliding down the rails when 'stopped' with 100% applied brakes and all wheels locked. The steam loco also seems somewhat prone to slipping even at higher speeds right now, whilst some types certainly had traction problems IRL it would be nice if the eventual balance of it was to be a little more on the sure-footed side of things :)

[Hellmasters]

I kind of worked around this one and also was reported, the shunters are not distributing the work load between themselves and the dev told me they will work on this later on in a few months but the work around is to jump from shunter to shunter and increase or decrease your power requirement, so climbing hills all my shunter were working at the same time for that I had to go in each of them to adjust the speed, this is fun trying to do that on the move and try to do it fast especially in turns lol, teleporting in the lake or outside the mountain while your train is still inside lol

[TheLostPenguin]

My post was regarding using the steam loco on its own, yes you can pull 'anything' if you spawn in enough shunters and throw them all on 1 train, at least up until the point where you either get fed up of running around managing them all or you start outright breaking couplers even with careful throttle application due to extreme train weight.
One thing I didn't mention is that whilst I believe the loco is fictional and not based on a specific type (although I'm open to correction on this if there was a specific example in mind when making it) we may need to bear in mind what period of loco it's roughly meant to represent, if it's envisaged in the developers minds as something from 1900 its performance maybe isn't so bad, if meant to represent something from say the 1950s near the latter days of steam then it's quite underpowered.

[Cosmic Lemonade]

i think it is possable to do two missions at once. good money but roton experience. leave it to the pros B). but still i agree uphills are hard on steam engines.

[TheLostPenguin]

Originally posted by cosmic lemon-Nades:

i think it is possable to do two missions at once. good money but roton experience. leave it to the pros B). but still i agree uphills are hard on steam engines.

Whilst the inventory makes it a pain to do so currently you can do as many as you like at once, I've had as many as I think 5 or maybe even 6 jobs combined into 1 train at times, when they each only consist of 3 or 4 wagons and/or are empty stock moves it can take that many to make up my rough target weight of around 700 tons of wagons. Of course the routing has an impact too, some routes I'll aim to take less weight when I know there's especially nasty climbs to tackle.

[Cosmic Lemonade]

woaw :0

[BigVern]

I'm not sure how relevant this is to DV physics, but in the real world the maximum load for a 3300hp Class 66 loco up the UK Lickey Incline (two miles 1 in 37/2.8%) without assistance or a banker is 1050 (metric) tonnes. In the US they calculate power by allocating horsepower per tonne and for something like Tehachapi with up to 2.4% gradients the minimum is something around 2.5 hp per tonne.

Of course there are other factors at play such as tractive effort, for example in the UK the Class 59 or Class 60's have more "grunt" and can therefore haul heavier trains than the Class 66 even though the HP is the same. Then you have the forces on the drawbar which, of course, is why the Americans distribute power throughout the train to balance the forces on the couplings.

It would be nice to see bigger more powerful locos in DV eventually combined with the ability to put helpers or "DPU" in the middle or rear of the train, linked to the lead locomotive(s).

[Cosmic Lemonade]

Originally posted by BigVern:

I'm not sure how relevant this is to DV physics, but in the real world the maximum load for a 3300hp Class 66 loco up the UK Lickey Incline (two miles 1 in 37/2.8%) without assistance or a banker is 1050 (metric) tonnes. In the US they calculate power by allocating horsepower per tonne and for something like Tehachapi with up to 2.4% gradients the minimum is something around 2.5 hp per tonne.

Of course there are other factors at play such as tractive effort, for example in the UK the Class 59 or Class 60's have more "grunt" and can therefore haul heavier trains than the Class 66 even though the HP is the same. Then you have the forces on the drawbar which, of course, is why the Americans distribute power throughout the train to balance the forces on the couplings.

It would be nice to see bigger more powerful locos in DV eventually combined with the ability to put helpers or "DPU" in the middle or rear of the train, linked to the lead locomotive(s).

wow GG

[robozed20]

So I did it! I used the steam locomotive to move 20 cars from the harbor to the goods factory. I took the southern route and headed north via the section of track between the sawmill and forest south. The only issues I has were running out of water about half way and then traversing the slope uphill immediately before the goods factory. I ran out of sand with the steam locomotive and had to spawn in 3 shunters to make the last 1000 ft into the station.

[Limmin]

I've not read the development roadmap yet, but it sounds like having a water station along a difficult hillclimb would be a good idea. Are they adding water stations like this?

[robozed20]

I just looked at the road map and there's nothing about water stations along routes. It would be nice if you could buy them as upgrades along the routes or to have then as upgrades for stations.

[BigVern]

Sounds like we also need some sand towers en route as well!

[TheLostPenguin]

Originally posted by robozed20:

I just looked at the road map and there's nothing about water stations along routes. It would be nice if you could buy them as upgrades along the routes or to have then as upgrades for stations.

Having water towers be purchasable items if a Tycoon game mode is ever added would be neat, although possibly also a chicken and egg type problem if designed such that you worked through loco types in a roughly historical fashion.
For now they could definitely do with adding a few more, even just 2 more at Oil Well Central and Food Factory would greatly improve coverage and eliminate having to ditch the loco on arrival because you can't service it (Food Factory). 3 or 4 more, maybe not all necessarily at existing stations, should cover just about all routings with at least 1 place to service a steam loco.