Motor Wagons VS Trainsets VS Trains

[RickiusMaximus]

My industry is quite far from my city, so mostly workers are delivered by trains - there is iron industry, coal, fuel etc so many different locations

Since I need three shifts of workers I need three trains

Now with Motor wagons I could achieve this easily, as they are cheep and hold quite a lot of passengers

Trainsets are insanely expensive... like, a decent 3 train setup to a factory would be nearly half a million alone -- and I'd need one of those for each industry...

Trains are actually a bit cheaper than the trainsets, but still very prohibitively expensive

Thing is - since all of the passenger stations are only two track once you start to get multiple motor wagons going to the same station you start to get massive queues

(NOTE: PLeeeeease add some smaller stations with 4 tracks as the large one is HUGE and every other station is only two track)


So how is everyone dealing with this?

[bspawn]

Three shift does not necessarily mean you need three trains, you just need a sufficient supply of workers. It's better to supply a 'relatively' small number of workers per train and have a lot of trains.

You can make your own trains sets by using a motor wagon as locomotive and add passengers wagons (and/or add small motor wagons, they will follow the speed of the front motor wagon) as needed.

As an example: i have a line with 7 trains a bit over 300 capacity each, supplying one industry complex of about 500 workers, and another complex further down the line of about 250 workers. That works out to about three times the total number of workers (enough for 3 shifts) - but spread out over 7 trains.

At the destinations i use the bus stop 'waiting station' trick to further spread out the supply of workers: send some of the workers from the train platform to a nearby bus stop, surplus workers go there and wait an hour then fill any vacancies that have occurred while they waited. I have three such bus stops in one rather large industrial area.


edit to add another point of reference:
i have a large industry (about 1200 workers) rather close to my city. Travel time is shorter than a work shift, so it works with a total line capacity less than 3 work shifts worth of workers: about 1800; 5 trains of 365 each.

[Silent_Shadow]

Originally posted by RickiusMaximus:

Since I need three shifts of workers I need three trains

There aren't actually three shifts; workers just tend to spend a third of their time working, so you need three workers per job slot to maintain constant staffing.

The actual number of vehicles you need for a route will depend on the required throughput of the line (so many workers must be delivered a day), the throughputs of the vehicles on the lines, and the desired station interval (needs to be under a day to prevent workers from waiting at stations for too long).

Originally posted by RickiusMaximus:

Now with Motor wagons I could achieve this easily, as they are cheep and hold quite a lot of passengers

Trainsets are insanely expensive... like, a decent 3 train setup to a factory would be nearly half a million alone -- and I'd need one of those for each industry...

Trains are actually a bit cheaper than the trainsets, but still very prohibitively expensive

Motor wagons are a budget option for cities and shorter runs to industry; they can fit in short blocks and are quite cheap. Their main downside is the relatively low speeds or capacity compared to other trains. Metro trains are similar, but with even more capacity and costs, while trams are basically an electrified version of motor wagons.

Most trainsets go faster than the locomotives and motor wagons of their time, so they are best suited for long range transportation. Eventually you'll get fast locomotives though, so later trainsets tend to be similar but a bit cheaper than buying a locomotive and a couple passenger wagons.

Trains simply have a lot of capacity and can go somewhat fast, but they are quite long and pretty expensive. Their only real use is moving huge amounts of workers to large industrial areas.

Originally posted by RickiusMaximus:

Thing is - since all of the passenger stations are only two track once you start to get multiple motor wagons going to the same station you start to get massive queues

The trick is to space them out with an end station, space them out with blocks, or force off extra workers at the workplace's station so they get another shot at employment.

[RickiusMaximus]

Originally posted by bspawn:

As an example: i have a line with 7 trains a bit over 300 capacity each, supplying one industry complex of about 500 workers, and another complex further down the line of about 250 workers.

How do you get them to not all exit the station on the first stop? I tried this but basically everyone leaves at stop 1

[Silent_Shadow]

You have to adjust the percentage for the "at this station unload:" setting in the unload part of the line menu, or you just move so many workers that there are not enough jobs for them all to take.

[bspawn]

Originally posted by Silent_Shadow:

Motor wagons are a budget option for cities and shorter runs to industry; they can fit in short blocks and are quite cheap. Their main downside is the relatively low speeds or capacity compared to other trains.

Imo that's true for all but the fastest motor wagon. Yes it is a budget option but at 120km/h it is as fast as the fastest separate diesel loc and its 115 capacity is decent - and it can be expanded with passenger wagons and/or smaller motor wagons while keeping its 120km/h speed.
Its main downside is the relatively low power motor which means it is somewhat slow to accelerate when pulling multiple wagons, but that's not a big problem if it makes only a few stops and has long stretches were it can go unobstructed.

The alternatives are either very costly and have massive electric power requirements, or have a relatively poor cost/benefit ratio. Those are perfectly good late-game options but do not seem viable or efficient mid-game. (mid-game defined as securely profitable and mostly self-sufficient, but with only a few 10k residents).

Given the cost of alternatives, i find that even mid-game the fastest motor wagon + a few passenger wagons is a good option also for somewhat long distances (in my case up to 6,5 km) and a line capacity up to few 1000 workers. Because it saves the length of a separate loc it's fairly short even with 300+ capacity per train.
A line with only a few of those motor wagons (no passenger wagons) is enough to supply a small remote mining operation (1 coal mine + 2 processing plants, 6km distance) with enough workers for domestic supply and some coal export.

[Silent_Shadow]

The MV 835 is the peak of motor wagons, but there are 5 diesel locomotives with higher top speeds and more power, and if you're worried about saving money, then motor wagons only make sense if you were already going to build a railway for cargo trains (tracks are not cheap). Buses and even trams are the real budget options.

[Bufnitza]

Originally posted by Silent_Shadow:

The MV 835 is the peak of motor wagons, but there are 5 diesel locomotives with higher top speeds and more power, and if you're worried about saving money, then motor wagons only make sense if you were already going to build a railway for cargo trains (tracks are not cheap). Buses and even trams are the real budget options.

This is quite important and I want to mirror it. Trains of any kind are never really a budget option because regardless of what vehicles you choose to use, the cost of track laying and infrastructure will far outweigh the cost of vehicles (unless you go with some absurdly expensive trains).

Road public transport is still the "budget" option by far.

[RickiusMaximus]

he railway is already built, just I've now added more industries to the far end and basically the number of motor wagons i need to keep them supplied with workers has increased to the point i cant use them because they are queued out the door of the station

Originally posted by bspawn:

Given the cost of alternatives, i find that even mid-game the fastest motor wagon + a few passenger wagons is a good option also for somewhat long distances (in my case up to 6,5 km) and a line capacity up to few 1000 workers. Because it saves the length of a separate loc it's fairly short even with 300+ capacity per train.
A line with only a few of those motor wagons (no passenger wagons) is enough to supply a small remote mining operation (1 coal mine + 2 processing plants, 6km distance) with enough workers for domestic supply and some coal export.

I didn't know you could attach passenger wagons to them so that's probably exactly what I'm looking for to be honest - at least short term until i can afford the trains

The fastest motor wagon I have right now is 90km/h which is not a million miles away from trains anyway

The end station also seems like a good idea - does it have to be at the factory end? or cam I make the City station my "end station" - (it would be handier in the city because thats where all my industries pick up from anyway)

[Phoenix]

I'm not sure what emphasis on infrastructure cost you guys are talking about. Concrete railway track (2 parallel tracks) is just about 15% more expensive than the same length of asphalt road, and about 35% CHEAPER than exclusive tram track (the one without cars access). Only electrified railway surpass tram track by cost. But we talk motor wagons here, so concrete railway is the fair competitor for comparison.

The only really expensive thing in the railway chain is train depot (around 25K in 1960), but even that is not quite the sum I would worry about.

Surely cost of trains themselves is, by far, the most major factor for budget consideration, as OP noticed.

[Silent_Shadow]

Originally posted by Phoenix:

I'm not sure what emphasis on infrastructure cost you guys are talking about. Concrete railway track (2 parallel tracks) is just about 15% more expensive than the same length of asphalt road, and about 35% CHEAPER than exclusive tram track (the one without cars access). Only electrified railway surpass tram track by cost. But we talk motor wagons here, so concrete railway is the fair competitor for comparison.

The only really expensive thing in the railway chain is train depot (around 25K in 1960), but even that is not quite the sum I would worry about.

Surely cost of trains themselves is, by far, the most major factor for budget consideration, as OP noticed.

In 1960, if you take away the cost of gravel and labor (stuff you should be making cheaply), the materials for railway tracks cost about 25k rubles for each km, while the asphalt for a km of road costs about 10k rubles. Materials for a km of tram road cost a few thousand rubles less than twice the price of a km of concrete tied track, but you effectively get two tracks side by side instead of just one, you don't need to build another road, and the other infrastructure is cheaper.

Buses also just need a cheap ~200 ruble station for pickup and no drop off station. Trains need a ~20k rubles for the materials for a depot and a 3k ruble passenger station. Buses and trams are also a lot cheaper for their throughput than trains are.

[Phoenix]

Alright, writing-off labor costs is a fair point.

[bspawn]

For most destinations where you need a lot of workers you also need to transport a lot of materials, so in most cases there already is track.
Laying track is a one-time affair so the cost is spread over many decades if not centuries (road- and track maintenance incoming?), and it's really expensive only if you have to import materials and labor.

edit to add:
Cost isn't a black-and-white issue where either cost doesn't matter or you need the cheapest option. For every state of development of a republic there are more or less appropriate options.
All i'm saying is the fast motor wagon is a very decent option mid-game also for medium long distance.

[John Moridin]

I've never used trainsets or motor wagons, at least not for ages.

I usually use buses until later in the game, when I build bigger cities and bigger industries.

When I use trains for passengers, I always use passenger trains with a minimum of 3 passenger wagons, with a minimum of 3 trains, probably 4 to 5 on the route.

I've transported 10,000 workers over 1km with just buses. I've also transported at least 3,000 people over 2km with just buses. So I think the OP can use buses to do whatever he is trying to use motor wagons for.

When using buses, you need to create dedicated roads for buses and try to avoid having those roads cross over with normal roads, even if you need to build bridges for them.

If you haven't planned it properly, having a high-capacity bus route will be hard.

[bspawn]

Originally posted by John Moridin:

I've transported 10,000 workers over 1km with just buses.

I'm not sure how you quantify that, but a line capacity of 10,000 with buses requires 74 of the largest vanilla soviet buses. At best that's going to cause some amount of traffic congestion with a massive queue at every bus stop. Maybe doable but not the most obvious solution.

[Silent_Shadow]

Not really.
In a test save, I was able to use ~40 Skd 706 RTO MTZ buses to move 7,500 workers over 2 km to a few vehicle factories. I wouldn't call the traffic light, but it was far from choking.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3151729807