c933103 wrote:but what's a tram and what's a light rail?
That is an excellent question, and in development of this set it's one we had to struggle with at time when it comes to systems developed in the last twenty years, because the definitions have started to blur and overlap. What we decided was mostly what equipment it operated, and the manner in which the line was operated.
In the case of Sydney's system, while it is called light rail, it operates with tram equipment, starting with the Variotram and then upgrading to CAF's Urbos 2 and Urbos 3 equipment. It operates both like a tram network and a light rail network. So we leaned on the tram side of things.
Looking at the Hong Kong Light Rail system, it's very clear in both past and current operation that it operates as a railway and not a tram network. With that said, the vehicles that it uses don't appear to be much different from some of the single car trams currently offered by Bombardier and a few other, but it could possibly be argued that they are also more like railbuses. I probably wouldn't object to including it, but it would probably be really fudging it.
Emperor Jake wrote:Trolleybuses should probably be a separate set or an extension of the bus set, and metros are already in the 2cc trainset. Although some systems do blur the lines between metro and tram, so I've considered making a "2cc metros as trams" set before.
The Macau Light Rapid Transit is very clearly not a tram, but a rubber tire Automatic People Mover which uses a raised concrete beam to guide the vehicle. I think an APM set as trams would also be neat, and I've looked at a lot of them personally while researching a potential monorail set, but they don't fit into 2CC Trams. You would likely want not only a separate set, but new track type as well.
There is already a trolleybus set, but certainly more wouldn't hurt, just not in this set. Since trolleybuses also run on tires over open road, you'd want matching infrastructure. The one existing trolleybus set does that. Might also be interesting for another set to look at Kerb-Guided Buses (KGB).
And I'd also love to see a 2CC Metro Tram set, as I think for a lot of light rail and metro networks putting them in as trams would be more reflective of how some of those networks operate in tightly packed urban areas. Throwing them into 2CC Trams would just be overwhelming, though.
The main thing to keep in mind with 2CC Trams is that as of right now we have trams starting from as far back as the 1870s to as far forward as 2018 based on trams and networks that are currently being developed. The models we include are spaced, at most, only 3 or 4 years apart and are spread over the globe through the areas that have used them the most. It's a lot, and there's a lot of trams we didn't include that I, personally, wished we did but didn't because it was just entirely too much. We've not closed off the idea of adding more, but adding more must add some value to the set. So, for those reasons what we will consider are trams that are broadly in service in under-represented areas, and trams that are unique and useful to a particular time period.
To that end, I'd most certainly be interested in seeing more cargo trams from more areas. If you have information on these Japanese services, please link them. I'd also be interested in seeing a few more trams added that represent Japan, the broader Asian region, South America and Africa. I'd say we're pretty well booked up with anything from North America, UK, Russia, Europe and Australia.
With that said... I'm not the one who draws them, so ultimately it's up to Voyager One what gets done.
