A different approach to buying MU's

[Hyronymus]

A part of the Dutch Trainset team went on an 'excursion' yesterday and during that excursion someone (I believe it was Bastiaan) proposed a brilliant idea. Would it be possible to buy a complete MU with one click in the vehicle list even if the MU is longer than 2 wagons. If the MU is only 2 wagons in length there is no problem: just select the dual-headed option in your grf so 'our' area of interest is really MU's >2 wagons.

[Purno]

someone (I believe it was Bastiaan) proposed a brilliant idea.

It was me

Anyways, this idea would be similar to Locomotion's handling.

[Patchman]

You can make it an articulated vehicle. Then all the parts are bought and handled as one.

[michael blunck]

> Would it be possible to buy a complete MU with one click in the vehicle list even if the MU is longer than 2 wagons [...]

Yes. That´s already possible in TTDPatch by simply regarding the MU as an articulated engine.

However, until now that hasn´t been realized because it´s not easily possible to allow the user to choose between passenger and mail cars.

Nevertheless, v0.83 of the DB Set includes this feature with some of the more modern MUs (e.g. BR425).

regards
Michael

[Hyronymus]

I start hating you, Michael. Everytime we think we have a brand new idea you already conceived of it . Well, sounds like diving into that kind of coding to get it working.

Can articulated engines be refited entirely after they have been bought btw?

[michael blunck]

> I start hating you, Michael. Everytime we think we have a brand new idea you already conceived of it [...]

Hehe.

Well, that´s not really a new idea. Indeed I had been thinking on MUs when we first discussed the possibility to have "articulated" engines (more than a year ago?). The reason they didn´t get implemented in the DB Set XL until now was because Josef (and other people) didn´t find it appropriate to patronise the user. [*]

Anyway, meanwhile I find it useful again because modern MUs doesn´t need to transport mail at all, at least not in mixed consists.

> Can articulated engines be refited entirely after they have been bought btw?

Yes.

regards
Michael

---------
[*] http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=18860

[krtaylor]

It wasn't just MB. We considered this in the US set (M2s) and the Japanset (almost everything, they use tons of MUs there). And it does have the advantage of solving the MU operating cost problem. But the mail / valuables / passengers refit problem was the stumper.

I could conceive of some system whereby you'd purchase the MU and it would appear in the appropriate length, with passengers by default. Then you would purchase mail or valuables cars, which would appear separately in the depot window. Then you'd drag-and-drop the mail / valuables car onto the MU, wherupon the car would replace one car already in the MU. So the MU would stay the same length, but now have one mail car instead of one passenger car (or whatever), and take on the appropriate appearance.

Of course, you could multihead MUs (if allowed) to make longer units.

This would require Patch coding. I've got no idea as to whether it's possible. It would solve all the other problems, though - operating costs would be sensible, and you'd still be able to change the cargoes.

Thoughts, anyone?

[Hyronymus]

Yeah, I do have a thought but I wonder if it's new.

If you buy a MU without pressing any keyboard buttons you would just get a motor unit and buy additional wagons the 'old way'.
If you buy a MU and hold Any*-key pressed you would get 1 complete MU. In case of the NS/SBB 'TEE' RAm that means you would get a complete, 4-wagon train. After buying this complete MU you can still attach a new motor unit with clicking at the vehicle while pressing the Ctrl-key and attach wagons behind that motor unit and re-create a 4-wagon train manually. The problem lies in consists that come with a normal length of 9 or more wagons of course.

Something more radical would be to have your MU's come with a variety of advanced livery refits. For the RAm that would be 7 advanced livery refits (note that the RAm has one motor unit with no passenger capacity):

• - 2nd wagon mail + 3rd and 4th wagon passengers
  - 3rd wagon mail + 2nd and 4th wagon passengers
  - 4th wagon mail + 2nd and 3rd wagon passengers
  - 2nd and 3rd wagon mail + 4th wagon passengers
  - 2nd and 4th wagon mail + 3rd wagon passengers
  - 3rd and 4th wagon mail + 2nd wagon passengers
  - all wagons mail

This of course would require a bigger choice of options in the refit menu and I assume that's 'too much work'.

*Any-key is a key that isn't connected to a function in the depot window yet

[krtaylor]

Yuk, that's too complex. I like my way better.
Patchman, is what I describe too hard, or would it be at least somewhat feasible?

[Patchman]

Patchman, is what I describe too hard, or would it be at least somewhat feasible?

Really quite hard.

I think these problems would have to be solved with special refitting options, e.g. using the callback it should be possible to refit only certain wagons. Say, you offer as refit options "Mail (3rd wagon only)" for several useful combinations of wagon number and cargo types. That should do.

[krtaylor]

Hmm. And if you had multiheaded several sets of the same MU, then it would repeat? Or not?

I'm thinking of two different examples, a long one and a short one.

First, consider the ICE, which is 8 carriages I believe. You could fix it with refit options of all passenger, 1 mail, 2 mail, etc. If you multiheaded two complete ICEs, and did the refit, you'd get 1 mail per set, and so on. Straightforward.

But when you consider valuables, that makes it more complicated. Or, we could just decide that valuables don't belong in MUs, which is fairly rational, and OK.

We still have a problem, though, with shorter MUs. Consider the M2 in the US set, which IRL comes in pairs. So we make an MU be two carriages, and you can multihead them, always having an even number. Perfectly realistic.

But if you try to refit them with mail, how would that work? Since they only come in pairs, you have choice of no mail, half mail, or all mail, which is a bad proportion.

Although, I suppose you could do shunting - make the entire string of MUs, with one being a "real" loco and the rest multiheaded; set aside the multiheaded ones that want to stay passenger; refit the mail on to all mail; then put back the multiheaded ones as appropriate, which would have remained passenger.

How much work would this system be? Maybe we could test it out in the Japanset, which lends itself well to that because of the predominance of MUs.

[michael blunck]

[the many ways to buy a MU]

I wonder if we should invest more developer´s time into this because its mainly a UI problem - which are notoriously complex.

With a57 we´d be able to restrict the number of motor cars in a train set which gives us a total of four different methods of MU composing:

- traditional TTD
- STOP/MORE scheme
- one piece (articulated)
- var60

As a .grf developer I think these 4 different methods will be more than sufficient simply because a typical vehicle set will have more than one or two MUs.

I.e. for "older" MUs I´d choose the traditional approach (giving the user total freedom composing the set) and for modern ones I´d choose alternative (2) or (3) to limit e.g. horsepower in a reasonable way. The new method (4) would be a compromise between both methods.

Regarding the RAm, I´d implement it using methods (2) or (3). If you´d choose (3) you could possibly make the motor car refittable to mail if you need to.

regards
Michael

[Hyronymus]

Sounds like a solution but just for me, what's is prop 60?

[Patchman]

It's var.action 2 variable 60 (not "property", which goes with action 0). See the wiki for details.

[krtaylor]

Option 2, STOP/MORE, appears to be highly unpopular in the user community. Sure, it works fine, but people complain about it. So I won't use it in my sets.

It seems to me that the partial-refitting of an "articulated" MU, as Patchman suggested, is the right way to go. As he says, that would be very little coding work (if any? Can you do that already?), and people are used to the concept of refitting.

Of course, each person in charge of a set can choose their own preference.

What makes it slightly more complicated is the operating-costs issue. If it weren't for that, I'd be content with the old-style method: one single lead "locomotive", and then ordinary cars with livery-override. But that skews the whole game, since the length of the MU train makes no difference to the running costs. That's what I'd really like to see fixed, but apparently it is not practical to do so. So some other solution has to be found, e.g. Patchman's suggestion. Of course, with an "articulated" MU that was bought all in one piece, but 8 sections long, you just set the operating costs as whatever is appropriate for that size of vehicle.

[michael blunck]

> STOP/MORE, appears to be highly unpopular in the user community

I don´t think so. In the beginning, people needed getting used to it but now it´s a standard, believe it or not.

The new (5th) approach:

"Say, you offer as refit options "Mail (3rd wagon only)" for several useful combinations of wagon number and cargo types."

would be even more complicated for the general user. At least it would be too restrictive if limited to a small number of carriages. The best thing to avoid complaining is to either allow everything or to have strong limits (i.e. "no mail/valuables for this MU").

regards
Michael

[Hyronymus]

Indeed, and as you said too: MU's in the later years don't need to transport mail anymore. One reason for that is simply because railroadcompanies in real life stopped sending mail along on (local) trains. Another reason tied to TTD is that cities are finally large enough to justify special mail trains.

[krtaylor]

For sure, IRL you almost never find MUs doing mail, to say nothing of valuables.

However, the TTD world is a little unrealistic that way. For one thing, the mail is highly sensitive to not being picked up frequently, and to not wanting to sit around in a train with wait-until-full orders. So the only really practical solution is to combine mail and passenger trains, to allow for high frequency pickups of both. That's why in the Japanset, although IRL mail never travels on passenger trains, we decided we had to allow it. At first we didn't, and testing discovered this to be rather awkward. It's just a limitation of the TTD model.

Concerning STOP/MORE, that is indeed a standard feature of MB trainsets. AFAIK it hasn't been adopted elswhere, and whether it's a popular standard is another issue entirely. It's a fact that it is a perfectly functional solution, and thus not obviously bad. That doesn't make it the ideal solution, or necessarily the best practical one.

I agree that the new approach isn't perfect either. As stated, my preferred solution would be accurate handling of MU operating costs, but that's not feasible.

[Hyronymus]

Ken, the Dutch trains series Plan T/Plan V that were delivered in 1964 were delivered with a small mail compartment (which was also used if small goods had to be transported). It were the last series that were delivered with a mail compartment though but it was quite common.

[krtaylor]

Yes, the Dutch are kind of fun that way. In Germany, there's a cargo-carrying light-rail vehicle (tram), and in Japan they have an EMU that carries standard cargo containers! But none of that is particularly common.

Nevertheless, the TTD world requires it, or an approximation of it. Sure, nothing prevents dedicated mail trains in TTD, I've used them occasionally myself. But in the main, it doesn't work real well.