is realistic train acceleration realistic?

[magnato]

It seems that realistic train acceleration is only working proberly for trains with coal and iron. On passengers for example it seems to have almost no effect. I was using a rta of about 100 but the trains went quickly up to top speed as if they were not full loaded.

[VoxDissident]

I'm pretty sure a full passenger car doesn't weight nearly as much as a full coal/iron ore car. Full coal car carries 30 tonnes + car weight. Full passenger car is ~40 passengers which weigh maybe 80 kg each. So... 3200 kg is 3.2 tonnes + car mass. You're looking at a difference of almost 10x for the cargo weight. If you download some of the other train sets, like UKRS or the US Rail set, you'll notice that there are a lot of fast moving trains with low HP and low max. tractive force ratings, and slow moving trains with high HP and high max. tractive effort. This is due to the fact that passengers weigh very little and minerals weigh a lot and passengers need to get to their destination as quickly as possible while coal / iron ore can take a bit longer.

So... realistic train acceleration is still fairly realistic.

[PikkaBird]

What's "a rta of about 100"?

If you mean the cargo weight multiplier, it's not applied to passengers (although can be made to apply to passengers with a grf, if you really want to).

[Celestar]

You are aware that a standard (26.4m) passenger car is around 40-55 tons empty?

Celestar

[magnato]

So... realistic train acceleration is still fairly realistic.

I have not done any test of this other than I watch there is a huge difference in the trains when I put cwm to around 100.
Some of the trains moves around 3 km/h but others are at 128 km/h very quikly. I dont see the business in running at 3 km/h and in fact they are of course not going in profit. Is this still fairly realistic? I think the difference is too big.

I am aware of that passengers needs to get quickly to their destinations, but if you see the real trains, some of those who are carrying goods are also maybe 50 veichles long, much longer than a regular passenger train, and that explains their slow acceleration.

I also see cwm in all other trains but passenger trains. Is there a reason why cwm dosnt apply to passenger train? For gameplay it does give a priority to passenger train I would say. Is this intentional?

[PikkaBird]

I also see cwm in all other trains but passenger trains. Is there a reason why cwm dosnt apply to passenger train?

Yes, because passengers (and mail) don't get their weight multiplied. As I've said already, you can change this in grf if you want to. (Action 0 property 15).

[VoxDissident]

You are aware that a standard (26.4m) passenger car is around 40-55 tons empty?

Celestar

I'm assuming this was directed at me.

I'm aware of the fact that empty cars are quite heavy, though I wasn't aware of the exact numbers. 40-55 tons is still a pretty big range if you're an engineer who's designing a train or its components to perform to specification. Even if we assume passenger cars are about the same weight as freight cars, you're still looking at a huge difference when you add up the difference between a full passenger car and a full freight car over 10, 20, 30, 40 iterations along the length of the entire consist. Or we could assume a passenger car weighs 55 tons and a freight car weights 40, which I'm not sure is fair, but it doesn't seem fair to do this vague, pseudo-intellectual, bullsh*t forum math if we don't have the specific models that we're going to assume are used for passenger cars and freight cars. At a difference of 27 tonnes for the cargo payload, a difference of -15 tonnes for our crude assumption of a difference between the weight of a freight car and passenger car, you're still looking at a 12 tonne difference between freight and passenger cars, assuming they're all full. 12 tonnes x 10; 12 x 20; 12 x 40 =>> can be a big difference. I'm not going to bother to do the force / energy / friction math in front of you, since it will probably turn everyone off to the thread and prevent them from even starting to read this, but the realistic acceleration is supposed to take into account the mass of the cars, the mass of the cargo, rotational friction on the axles, the friction between the train and the tracks due to gravity, air resistance, tractive effort and horse power, changes in acceleration due to the force of gravity on slopes, remind me if I left something out. I have faith in the sheer math, even if the real world isn't quite as ideal.

Point is: I hate discussions about whether something is "realistic" in reference to a video game. The last time I rode a Eurorail I never saw a single full passenger car. So its not exactly realistic to portray people lining up to get on a train; not a huge portion of the world population rides around on trains nowadays. Don't ever see articulated buses rolling around New York City, or Seattle or Los Angeles either, and vehicles don't usually take 4 days to load with passengers and planes don't usually pay for themselves after two trips. To some people the "realism" discussion matters, maybe. That's fine. To each their own. To me, no, it doesn't matter. Why no? Well because what the hell are we using as our base of reference? What is our "tolerance" level for "non-realism"? Do we make dispensations, do we make concessions in order to make the game more fun? Or are we going to be die-hard and insist on realism even if it ruins the game? And why the hell am I getting so worked up?

... End rant? I guess. Haven't slept all night because of work-related crap. It was sunny yesterday, a Friday, and I spent all day inside working....

I prefer not playing with the cargo weight multipliers myself, since, like Pikka mentioned, passengers aren't subject to the weight multiplier, resulting in a huge discrepancy between the performance of passenger/express trains and freight trains. When you look at all the custom train sets, the freight cars have speed limits that typically run as low as 40% of the maximum attainable velocity of the fastest train available. Combine the speed restrictions with a cargo weight multiplier and you get... a pain in the ass. Play with breakdowns also and you're probably a bit of a masochist.

[michael blunck]

[...]

OTOH, "weight of cargo" seems to be negligible in the case of passengers, because for a 26m standard car holding, say, 60 passengers each 70kg, cargo weight would only add less than 10% to its empty weight.

Limiting cargo multipliers to "real cargo" only (in contrast to passengers) was initially introduced to simulate full-weight cargo trains, even on TTDs/TTDpatchs smaller maps, and in mountainous terrain.

regards
Michael

[VoxDissident]

OTOH, "weight of cargo" seems to be negligible in the case of passengers, because for a 26m standard car holding, say, 60 passengers each 70kg, cargo weight would only add less than 10% to its empty weight.

Limiting cargo multipliers to "real cargo" only (in contrast to passengers) was initially introduced to simulate full-weight cargo trains, even on TTDs/TTDpatchs smaller maps, and in mountainous terrain.

Thanks Michael. That is a far easier way to think about things.

And I think it answers magnato's question.