Does anyone use wooden rails in an established republic?

[Cullen's Hound]

Curious

[Dave]

For cargo trains, speed is deceptively unimportant. For one thing the cheap locomotives don't go much faster than 70km anyway. Also, a huge amount of your train's time ends up being spent loading/unloading, or waiting at junctions, or stuck behind a track layer on it's way to the next rail expansion. A 50% higher max speed for example, probably only speeds you up by ~10-20%. And then finally, in the rare case where a train is "too slow" to keep pace with a task, you can solve it by just adding more cargo wagons. Remember, you can haul ~400m long trains, which is 2000+ tons of cargo.

All that said, wooden track doesn't save you much time or money to build either though. But early on in a cosmonaut/realistic game, you need to be as frugal as possible so I don't think it's stupid to make your first rail project with boards. And don't buy them! Make them yourself directly connected to the rail construction office to save trucks/fuel/traffic.

[Fiend]

I use them quite a lot for areas of track that should be slow, like tighter curves or little factory branches. If there were speed limit signs available, I'd use those instead though.

I would probably still occasionally use wooden track just for the look, especially on an early start.

[MG83]

Originally posted by Dave:

For cargo trains, speed is deceptively unimportant.

in my city designs speed is critical. i use top speed vehicles all the time and they make drastic increase in my games both as income and happiness.

[MG83]

Originally posted by Dave:

But early on in a cosmonaut/realistic game, you need to be as frugal as possible so I don't think it's stupid to make your first rail project with boards.

the cost difference is so insignificant that i never used it in my realistic mode starts.

[SiberianDev]

Originally posted by Stele:

We could get half of it if there would be signs for rails to limit line speed.

This would make a lot more sense if the track gradually wore out with time.
Factors like the speed and weight of the trains using that track would influence how fast it would wear out.

[Silent_Shadow]

Originally posted by MG83:

the cost difference is so insignificant that i never used it in my realistic mode starts.

Isn't the difference like 1000 rubles a km, or 2k to 3k rubles per km with a sawmill and wood cutters post? That can save a decent sum of money for a small railway, and you don't drive up the price of prefab panels.

[MG83]

Here is some game number for people who does not like to be fooled by inaccurate manuplative numbers.

for 107m wooden track it costs near border 2738ruble for 107m concrete track it costs 2823 ruble. difference is for aprox 100 meter is 85 ruble which is 795 ruble for km (date 6 jan 1970 when start selected as 1970)

also when amounts are considered relative numbers need to be in thought. it is pointless to invest a million ruble to gain couple thousand rubles. therefore the relative percentages of those two tracks need to be compared thus :

2823/2738 which results as 1.031 that means concrete is only %3.1 expensive than wooden tracks as rails.

%3 price difference is INSIGNIFICANT when you compare when the speed difference is 150 kmh to 70kmh . losing more than half speed to gain %3 cheaper construction is definitely the sing of idiocracy is in fact in play.

[Silent_Shadow]

You don't need to invest millions of rubles to knock the cost down. Even as far away from the soviet border as you can get, a sawmill and a woodcutting post cost only ~31,800 rubles. For every km of track, you can save almost 2,000 rubles (plus delivery charges) per km of track by making wooden ties instead of buying prefab ties for concrete tracks (~7.5% cheaper). You also save money on the many other construction projects that need boards while keeping the price of prefabs down, which are also used in a ton of buildings.

If you plan on using a lot of railways early on, wooden rails can save a lot of money and the most fuel efficient locomotive (the CME2), as well as the motor wagons, can't really make use of the increased speed of concrete railroads.

Cableways are the most frugal option if you really want to save money.

[MG83]

according to some believers it makes profit with wood cutting post. belief is irrelevant but to calculate is divine.

So lets calculate.
in case of building a wood cutting post however wood cutting post require fuel to work and workers which means wood is not cheap either.

The net profit per man for wood cutting post is -7.6 ruble per worker. yes it makes cheaper to buy from border. how ? here is the calculation :
wood cutting post spends 3 power per day which result 3x1.32 = -3.96 ruble
spends 5 man power (when you consider you just 5 man it to chop woods some times it require more ) 5*10.25 = -51.25 ruble
uses 0.4 ton fuel 0.4*130.38=-52.15 ruble
and produces 8 ton wood 8*9.58=+69.36

sum is 69.36-3.96-51.25-52.15= -38 ruble which is net negative profit.

For the sawmill since you will require it to turn wood to boards:

the net profit per man for sawmill is -6.35

1.6 power 1.6*1.32=-2.11 ruble
20 manpower 20*10.25=-205 ruble
180 wood(here buying number from border is taken due to its cheaper to calculate cheapest since own production is more costly ) 180*8.67=-1724.40
and produces 140 board 140*12.89=1804.60

sum is 1804.60 -1724.40 -205 -2.11 = -126.91 ruble which is net negative profit.(loss)

(numbers are from 1960 game start)
in conclusion even you produce your own board you still lose more .

Dont be fooled with religious fools who "believes" in things. Belive in science and technology and calculate your costs and see what is what for real and dont be manuplated by them. They talk alot about their beliefs but at the end lightning arrestor has been installed at the top of church or at the top of mosque's tower.


how many times i repeat my self i do not know but it is absolutely INSIGNIFICANT to buy wooden tracks.

this is why they require improvement. if they were build 4 times faster or something it would be useful (i dont know how realistic to have that fast build time. i have no experience in construction speed of wooden rails in real because i never supervised such work. If an old railway engineer here to share some info i would be glad)

[BanzaiCharge]

I used them only once. But I don't use them in my newer games, because I electrify my railways ASAP to cut the fuel costs.

Also low speed on long routes isn't economic. Once a train reaches full speed RPM will drop to 15. This means the train will consume the same amount of fuel for the same amount of travel time. Therefore a train going 100km/h on concrete track will consume 70% of the amount of fuel per km as a train going 70 km/h needs. Surely, accelerating to 100 km/h takes time, but if the route is long enough the acceleration phase is only a small part of the travel distance, and acceleration consumption is compensated by better top speed mileage

[Silent_Shadow]

Originally posted by BanzaiCharge:

Also low speed on long routes isn't economic. Once a train reaches full speed RPM will drop to 15. This means the train will consume the same amount of fuel for the same amount of travel time. Therefore a train going 100km/h on concrete track will consume 70% of the amount of fuel per km as a train going 70 km/h needs. Surely, accelerating to 100 km/h takes time, but if the route is long enough the acceleration phase is only a small part of the travel distance, and acceleration consumption is compensated by better top speed mileage

This is all true in real life, but unfortunately in the game, only the locomotives with large amounts of engine power are allowed to go up to high enough speeds to warrant concrete tied track. Faster speed helps, but not enough to offset the train's fuel drain.

The most fuel economic (ton-miles per liter) long distance train is the CME2 thanks to its comparably small engine. The DR Class V 100 is the next most fuel efficient and can go up to 100 km/hr, but after that, most engines are too big for higher speeds to offset their higher fuel consumption. Electric trains are just flat out superior, so long as you can afford them. Diesel trains are really only competitive from a cost standpoint.

Here are the formulas I found for train fuel use if you want to compare trains' fuel economies:
Fuel economy (ton-km per liter) = Speed (km/hr) × (3,600 sec per hour) × Cargo Capacity (tons) ÷ fuel consumption rate (liters per second)

Train fuel consumption rate (liters per second)
Diesel consumption = Engine power × Engine rpms ÷ (21,000 kW-RPM-sec per liter of fuel)
Electric consumption = Engine power × Engine rpms ÷ (204 RPM)
Accelerating will result in more revolutions the further the train is from its top speed.

At cruising speeds, diesel engine rpm depends solely on grade and then only when going uphill.
Rpms = 15 + (288 × grade, in %), bounded between 14 and 99 rpm.
(diesel idling rpm appears to be 15, which is reached near level grades or when going downhill).
Electric engine rpm depends solely on acceleration and ignores grades entirely. Its minimum rpm also appears to be 14 rpm instead of 15 rpm.

[MrKrabs]

My point of view is somewhat of an asthetic point.
It doesn't make to much sense to me to hook up a huge locomotive in front of 8 or 12 waggons.
For my taste anything less than 20 waggons can be done by shaunters.

[Silent_Shadow]

Originally posted by MG83:

according to some believers it makes profit with wood cutting post. belief is irrelevant but to calculate is divine.

Dont be fooled with religious fools who "believes" in things. Belive in science and technology and calculate your costs and see what is what for real and dont be manuplated by them. They talk alot about their beliefs but at the end lightning arrestor has been installed at the top of church or at the top of mosque's tower.

Alright dude, put up your fedora and take your pills I'm not saying boards/wood are a super profitable industry, but that they are good at reducing your import costs.

Fresh from testing:

Woodcutting Post
-maximum of 4 workers (you really don't need more for early construction)
-3 VS3 flatbed trucks (cheap, and has a small engine for best fuel economy at 25 km/hr)
-spend ~1.5 rubles of fuel for a 4.5 ton load (~30.38 rubles) of wood (1960) or 38.85 rubles of boards. Basically an average of ~11 liters of fuel (at ~132 ₽ per ton) per load of wood.
-very little electrical usage, maybe half a MWh every week or two? Not even worth keeping track of tbh.

Sawmill
-2 workers
-about 5.5 tons of boards a day or about 165 tons a month; just enough to keep up with construction.
-1 Skd 706 RTTN to haul boards
-2 FZK A07s to bring the workers.
-about 6 kW electrical draw a day on average for the site and I suspect most of that is from the accounting office. Actual sawing has only accounted for about 1 kW a day.
-Production cost per ton of boards:

• Fuel 0.429 ₽ - About ~1.5 ₽ per 4.5 tons of wood (so per 3.5 tons of boards)
  
• Power 0.072 ₽ - ~1.05 Ruble per MWh × 1.6 MWh per 140 boards × 6 to cover the actual power used (accounting office mostly).
  
• Workers 0.879 ₽ - 18 republic workers (on and off shift) budgeted at 1 ₽ a day each for food, meat, etc. Over two months, about 290 ₽ were spent for 330 boards.
  
• Total of 1.38 ₽ spent per ton - about 12.2% of their buy value.

I didn't include transportation because you'll need that either way, but a Skd 706 RTTN could export about 131 ₽ worth of boards for around 7.5 ₽ of fuel per km and still make about 100 ₽ or so. Not great for profit, but a decent price to sell a surplus at. The real win is in replacing the imports of boards (and prefabs, if possible). Saves about 800 ₽ per km on the price of wooden track and about 2,200 ₽ per km of concrete track. Not too shabby, especially if you are building a lot of track or the many projects that need them.

I think your estimates may have been thrown off by a couple assumptions.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2896234153

[MrKrabs]

I just use the carpenter mod.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2888669749

and the felling mod.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2889122583

I never had any lack of wood or boards so far.

[BSQ]

As someone aiming at authentic look of infrastructure, I place woodties everywhere outside main traffic lines. I've grew up in Polish harbor city of Gdynia afterall, right next to large switchyard (where prefab supports were nowhere to be seen).