Monorail and Maglev should be only one

[CoD]

Hello,
Even this is my first post on this forum except some screenshots, i play ttd since it was released and i really mean i spent a lot of time playing.
On short, i propose to remove the monorail from game completely and also to change the graphinc of the maglev tracks.
Reasons:
- i believe that the monorail is the same thing as maglev. It was called monorail by the game makers because maglev is a commercial name (the same as the Concorde plane and Airbus which was called Airtaxi etc). Technically they are both magnetic trains only that monorail was an early concept of the existing maglev (monorail was never built).
- many players preffer to skip monorail because of the overhead replacing all rails
- in real life the monorail is not at ground level but raised because it floats at less than an inch and therefore any tiny obstacle on track could produce damage (not disasters).
- the mororail tracks in game are hard to distinguish in a line node. For example when you place a depot on a straight line, then a small triangle appears. In order to force the train to service in that depot then you may want to remove a line segment but the game continue to show that segment without some tiny black lines. In my opinion this is a graphic bug (a very annoying one).


I was always upset when i had to replace 200+ vehicles one by one in ttd.
Fortunately this is not the case in openttd where all vehicles are automatically renewed but there still is one important thing that should be also 'fixed' in my opinion: replacing an entire rail network to monorail and maglev.
It can be fun to do this in a small rail network but its almost impossible to do it if you've built one single huge rail network.
Why i say that is impossible?
Imagine that you have 400 trains that runs on a single rail network whith 50 stations all connected to each other and you are unable to temporary split the network in 2 or more independent pieces.
You would ask why i build something like that. Well, i believe that this design is the most fun, the most realistic and challenging.
You can start by build stations in every city and every industry and then add trains to transport what you want where you want.
Later in game i usually wait for the maglev and then sell all trains, upgrade all rails on the map at once and then start again from zero.
This sometimes creates a mess because the electric trains get old and breaks too often creating traffing jams and also i never manage to create back all routes as they were before.

[CommanderZ]

i believe that the monorail is the same thing as maglev. It was called monorail by the game makers because maglev is a commercial name (the same as the Concorde plane and Airbus which was called Airtaxi etc). Technically they are both magnetic trains only that monorail was an early concept of the existing maglev (monorail was never built).

Nope. Monorail is can be a wheeled train which uses only one rail as well.

Maglev is usually portayed also as monorail - with the conductor rail in the middle and the magnets of the train on the left and right of it. But some prototypes use the TTD-like maglev concept - with the U shaped track.

[Qu@rks]

I'm glad you're into the huge networks. The problem you are describing, however, is not new. This has always bugged people and I don't think there is any easy solution in the making (correct me if I'm wrong!). I usually use the year cheat in singleplayer because I find regular rail more realistic than maglev (and also monorail). This helps me keep my rail engines at a good reliability (which decreases in later years).

[CoD]

i believe that the monorail is the same thing as maglev. It was called monorail by the game makers because maglev is a commercial name (the same as the Concorde plane and Airbus which was called Airtaxi etc). Technically they are both magnetic trains only that monorail was an early concept of the existing maglev (monorail was never built).

Nope. Monorail is can be a wheeled train which uses only one rail as well.

You seam to have more knowlege than me about this subject but as an engineer i doubt that it is possible to build a weeled train which uses one rail.
The train would derail under the action of traction, balancing forces (which may be magnetic in this case) and also vibrations that are produced by the wheels.
The maglev on the other hand uses magnetic fields for all purposes (float, traction and balance). The magnetic forces are elasic allowing the vehicle to move a bit up-down and left-right therefore it will not derail.

[CoD]

I'm glad you're into the huge networks. The problem you are describing, however, is not new. This has always bugged people and I don't think there is any easy solution in the making (correct me if I'm wrong!). I usually use the year cheat in singleplayer because I find regular rail more realistic than maglev (and also monorail). This helps me keep my rail engines at a good reliability (which decreases in later years).

Speaking of reliability i think i just found a much better solution than removing monorail (which i still believe it is not technically possible):
What if the reliability of electric rail engines would continue to improve over time instead of decreasing???
New engines for the normal rails should also appear long after the maglev appeared. Its very probable in real life that the normal rail will be always used in paralel with other future technologies and also the engines will become more reliable and powerful.
Of course the electric engines will never reach the speed of maglevs but probably they will have more traction power than maglevs.
What do you think about this?

[Yexo]

I'm glad you're into the huge networks. The problem you are describing, however, is not new. This has always bugged people and I don't think there is any easy solution in the making (correct me if I'm wrong!). I usually use the year cheat in singleplayer because I find regular rail more realistic than maglev (and also monorail). This helps me keep my rail engines at a good reliability (which decreases in later years).

Speaking of reliability i think i just found a much better solution than removing monorail (which i still believe it is not technically possible):
What if the reliability of electric rail engines would continue to improve over time instead of decreasing???
New engines for the normal rails should also appear long after the maglev appeared. Its very probable in real life that the normal rail will be always used in paralel with other future technologies and also the engines will become more reliable and powerful.
Of course the electric engines will never reach the speed of maglevs but probably they will have more traction power than maglevs.
What do you think about this?

Go find a nice newgrf you like that has more normal rail trains and play with that

[michael blunck]

Nope. Monorail is can be a wheeled train which uses only one rail as well.

[...] as an engineer i doubt that it is possible to build a weeled train which uses one rail. The train would derail under the action of traction, balancing forces [...] and also vibrations that are produced by the wheels.

Hehe. You are an engineer??

Read this to be convinced that it´ll neither be possible to build a train using only one rail, nor to ride a bycycle:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyro_monorail

gyrotrain.jpg (23.79 KiB) Viewed 6141 times

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... ienerp.jpg

regards
Michael

[CoD]

Ok, it is possible
I wonder why it was never built for real usage

[CoD]

Go find a nice newgrf you like that has more normal rail trains and play with that

I really searched for this but i coudn't find. Do you know places where to find good newgrfs?

[Yexo]

http://grfcrawler.tt-forums.net/ or the TTDPatch graphic forums (most of them work in both TTDPatch and OpenTTD), but they are posted in the TTDPatch section for historic reasons.

[CommanderZ]

You seam to have more knowlege than me about this subject but as an engineer i doubt that it is possible to build a weeled train which uses one rail.
The train would derail under the action of traction, balancing forces (which may be magnetic in this case) and also vibrations that are produced by the wheels.
The maglev on the other hand uses magnetic fields for all purposes (float, traction and balance). The magnetic forces are elasic allowing the vehicle to move a bit up-down and left-right therefore it will not derail.

Never used? Ehm...

Nobody said the track must as thin as ordinary train track.

Pics from the Wiki (michael's bike train is there too):

Sydney... (no maglev)


Kuala lumpur...(no maglev)


Moscow...(no maglev too)


Only these three pics would suffice to claim, that regular monorail is much more widely used than maglev.

And here is a two pages long list of functioning monorail systems from all over the world.

Yeah, it is technically impossible to build a monorail.

[CoD]

Those are not gyroscopic monorails as previously described !!! they just look somehow similar.
Anyway i would like to close this thread because your latest pictures shows exactly what it was already implemented in some newgrf patches (converting monorails to undergrounds or suspended in-city-trains...)
Now i'm convinced that 'monorail' track system has its role in game and i'm sure that some good patches will be included into the official release in the future.

[nicfer]

It's already possible to get rid of maglev or monorail, just move the maglev engines to the monorails section or viceversa with a newgrf. Graphic glitches because of the differences between mono and mag couldn't be fixed because the graphics are copyrighted, althrough the opengfx ones are not encumbered by this.

As for the newgrf for the not-obsoleting normal rail, I think that they should be destined mainly to cargo and in multiplayer for the people that joins late in the game and discovers that almost all the vehicles are too expensive. Is there any newgrf that does this?

[michael blunck]

Only these three pics would suffice to claim, that regular monorail is much more widely used than maglev.

[...] Anyway i would like to close this thread because your latest pictures shows exactly what it was [...]

Well, not before mentioning the first monorail worldwide, the "Wuppertal Schwebebahn" in Germany, built in 1900.

This "train" proved to be a very fail-safe system with only one fatal accident until 1999 (i.e. 99 years after it had been opened!), when workers forgot to remove a metal claw from the track on completion of scheduled night repairs (killing 5 passengers and leaving 49 injured).

Besides from this particular accident, there´s only that "Tuffi event" mentioned on a regular basis in domestic newspapers:

21 July 1950

The Althoff Circus orchestrated a publicity stunt by putting an elephant by the name of Tuffi on the train at the Alter Markt station. Tuffi became upset shortly into the ride, crashed through the left side of the car and fell into the river Wupper below. The elephant, two journalists, and one passenger received minor injuries. Both the operator and the circus director were fined after the incident. To this day, the wall of a building at the location of the event (in-between the stations Alter Markt and Adlerbrücke) shows a painting of a jumping elephant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwebebah ... #Accidents
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuffi

tuffi-01.jpg (55.99 KiB) Viewed 5829 times

regards
Michael