"French Trains Set - freight rolling stock needs drawing

[krtaylor]

Yes, France has the Alps, and for that you'd want MB's Alpine climate. The Arctic climate in TTD, as is, doesn't really fit.

[Snail]

We might draw some specific engines for a French alpine climate. There were some locomotives which were used by companies operating in the southeastern part of France in the first half of the century (before even SNCF existed) and it'd be cool to have them. Maybe doing something like the USSet's differences among the three climates.

btw my list is getting larger...

[DaleStan]

so if I break your IE, I'm sorry.

I believe the magic incantation is
...
*Hiss*sputter*cuss*
...
They fixed the <input type crash> bug[0]! Now what will we do for our fun?

At least OE still has the begin bug.

[0] At least, I can't manage to trigger it.

[Snail]

OK guys, I came up with a list of engines and I'd like to share my ideas with you.
This list wants to be a first draft and thus subject to corrections, cuts and/or additions. Constructive criticism is encouraged
Also, if you find any inaccuracies in the data, don't hesitate to point it out.

The steamers' list is the weakest part; I tried to gather some info of the most interesting models, including some cheap ones to purchase early in the game, and Chapelon's late masterpieces. I couldn't find all of the data for each and every engine though, and I know I left some of them out.
A couple of steamers, like the 141R, were produced in the US or using US design. Perhaps our friends developing the USSet could help us, if they drew the corresponding original version?

As for the rest, I included all the most heavily used models, including some early electric beasts owned by PLM (Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée) before SNCF was founded in 1938. As pointed out before, there are many engines which belong to the same family and are nothing but revised versions of earlier models: I tried to point this out in my list, highlighting each family with a particular color (I also wrote the real nicknames of some of them ).

This list includes engines, DMUs, EMUs, and TGVs. I might be adding passenger carriages too, but I think they're very well designed in the existing French set and we might want to start from them directly. As for freight cars, SNCF uses pretty much the same cars as DB: so we might want to include a freight car scheme similar to MB's one, with the due modifications because of copyright issues.

I didn't include any pictures, because they're hugely available on the 'Net (a great site is http://www.railfaneurope.net/pix/fr/). I did include a link to a website which has tons of info about them (it was my main, although not only, source of info) and also displays all of the historical liveries for our artists' convenience.

The list has more than a hundred entries so of course we'll have to choose. Maybe putting one engine for each family would do the trick.

Cheers!

[wallyweb]

Yes, France has the Alps, and for that you'd want MB's Alpine climate. The Arctic climate in TTD, as is, doesn't really fit.

Excellent point.
Maybe we should try to ensure compatibility with MB's work as other than the DB sets his stuff is fairly generic to Europe.

Snail and others who have posted web site sources ... when I get the Dev Pages up I'll include a list of all those links as well.

Any suggestions for a start year for the set? Might be a good idea to start from there and allocate new engines over a time frame ... I'll work on a scheme so be sure to include the available dates for the engines. It'll make picking and choosing a whole lot simpler.

Time for work so see you in the pm ... now where did I put that new US stuff

*Hiss*sputter*cuss*

[The Irish]

Hi guys.

Ok first of all. The new version is out of the USSet. Bad news for this set

I had a look on the xls file. Sounds pretty good already.
What we have to check is how we can save IDs.

Example:
TGV sud-est has livery override when postal only.

TGV atlantique might be refitet to Eurostar and Thalys PBA

TGV duplex might have refit option for Thalys PBAK and livery override for Double decker carriages.

I also had a look at the existing graphics from that french set.

Some might be usable, but I would really consider to carefully review and redraw most of them.

I really like the way this is going already. I post my part of the wagons table I have done. Can you please check if all types of goods are covered.
Of course, this is also subject to discussion.
Snail, maybe you can integrate in your Excel.

[The Irish]

just as a generall remark. Correct me if I'm wrong

BB = 2 + 2 engines (2 bogies of 2 axels each) (swiss 4/4)
CC = 3 + 2 engines (2 bogies of 3 axels each) (swiss 6/6)

[Siema]

Basicly ok, but if these are propulsive axles you use letters (A- 1, B- 2, C- 3), if these are rolling axles you use digits (1, 2, 3). Then you add small "o" if every axle is propeled by separated engine. Additonally you must use ' to separate bogies and + to separate engines parts (ex. engine is dual-headed).

So,

B'B' - 2 bogies, 2 engines, 4 axles
Bo'Bo' - 2 bogies, 4 engines, 4 axles
C'C' - 2 bogies, 2 engines, 6 axles
Co'Co' - 2 bogies, 4 engines, 6 axles
Bo'Bo'+Bo'Bo' - 2 parts - 2 bogies, 4 engines, 4 axles each one
...

[krtaylor]

The set should start in 1920, with at least three steam locomotives - small, freight, and passenger. I don't know if they also had electrification then. The set should run until 2010, with a couple reasonable future locomotives; the last batch of locos never get discontinued, so you can play forever. That's worked well with the US set.

I'll look things over once Wallyweb has set up the tracking site. You might want to use the Excel files from the US set, as they do automatic calculations of various parameters; ask Oracle. I also have one from the Japanset which is supposed to calculate the relative usefulness of locos, and that's useful for setting the pricing.

[Bastiaan]

I could redraw my NS1300 and NS1100 to a CC7100 and BB8100. Good idea?

Bastiaan

[The Irish]

Hi Bastiaan.

Might be a good idea, of course. All help is welcome.

Krtaylor. This excel file might be very handy indeed. Thanks.

Wallyweb, You said that I have to change the treath-title. How do I do this? I think it should be changed to:

French Trains Set [research - needs artists & coders]

[Prof. Frink]

Edit the subject line of the first post.

[The Irish]

always ask the profi. thx

[krtaylor]

You can ask Owen haw many French people there are registered on the forums.

[The Irish]

good idea. I will PM him. They might give some input on train composition etc... and even draw or code some trains.

Edit:

I know I shouldn't do that right now, but I just had to

rest of the view for the CC72000 and first draft of the corail wagons

[orudge]

Owen ... thanks for the space ... much appreciated ... which versions PHP and MySQL? Some coding diffs between the versions.

PHP 4.3.11 and MySQL 4.0.24, running on Apache/1.3.33 (Unix) mod_auth_passthrough/1.8 mod_log_bytes/1.2 mod_bwlimited/1.4 PHP/4.3.11 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 mod_ssl/2.8.22 OpenSSL/0.9.7a. If there's anything else you need to know, just let me know.

[Purno]

I know somewhere around are other French trains, like I mentioned before. I bet the Dutch team would know something about that.

I drew the TGV Atlantique, Thalys, TGV Duplex, NS 1600 (which is based on a French Loco) and a Sybic engine (forgot which one). I can search for the links if you need them?

[Snail]

Great to see how much interest is gathering around this set!

I think the set ought to start from 1920, otherwise we'd miss some great steamers and the first electrics. Of course electric locos were already around in that year; at the start of a game, I think we might have:

- A very cheap, already old steam locomotive with poor specs to start the game with: might be the 040TA.
- A more expensive, fast passenger steamer: might be the 230.
- A more powerful steamer for freight service: could be the 131TB.
- An electric EMU for early, light passenger service: the Z4900.
- Small passengers and mail cars and small freight wagons to assure a basic service.

Optionally, we could decide to make available an even more powerful freight loco like the 140C and/or a faster passenger steamer like the 232. But they'd be a bit expensive as a start.

As time goes on, more steamers would be available and, from 1925, the first big electric machine would be introduced, which would cost a fortune. In the mid Twenties, longer passenger and mail would be introduced, as well as longer freight wagons.

We'd need more info about the steamers anyway. I'll keep searching, does anyone have more info?

2 The Irish: I saw your file and I agree with your suggestions. Maybe we might want to add a generic open freight carriage, refittable to goods, or just allow goods refitting for the coal/iron ore carriage. Tarpaulin cars for goods should be added too, as they're pretty heavily used.


As for ID saving, let's talk about the TGV a bit. Seeing the specs, I'd say to reserve just two IDs for that:

- the early ones (TGV Sud-Est), available in 1978 (that's the prototype date though: historically, the first ones ran in 1981 on dedicated lines). Max speed 270, three configs: 8 pax, 7 pax+1 mail, 8 mail. First two configs would have orange livery until 1992 and gray-blue from that date on: last config would be yellow all times.

- the current ones (TGV Atlantique, Réseau, Duplex, Thalys), available initially in 1988 as Atlantique only, with new refits to be introduced in later dates. Ultimately, they'd allow many possible configs:
- 8 long-distance pax or 7 long-distance pax + 1 mail: blue-grey livery (TGV Réseau, since 1993), refittable to red-grey livery (Thalys PBA, since 1996: Thalys PBKA, since 1997)
- 8 mail: yellow livery only (TGV La Poste)
- 10 long-distance pax, 9 long-distance pax + 1 mail: blue-grey livery only (TGV Atlantique, since 1988)
- 8 double-decker, 7 double-decker + 1 mail: blue-grey livery only (TGV Duplex).
- 18 long-distance pax or 17 long-distance pax + 1 mail: EuroStar livery (TGV TransManche).

- How about a futuristic TGV Pendulaire, introduced in (say) 2006 or 2007, max speed 280 km/h or even 300 km/h, but which (if possible) doesn't slow down at all in curves, or slows down only a bit in very sharp ones? It's just a prototype now, but since the game goes on, it'd be cool to have it...

Now, four questions for the coders:

1. Is this possible? I mean, is it possible to allow only specific refitting options according to the train's length and/or composition? If not, we'd have to allow all liveries to be available with any train scheme and be careful to build an historically coherent one.

2. We should avoid creating "mixed" compositions in the same train: i.e., a TGV shouldn't have both long-distance and double-decker carriages at the same time. Either it's a duplex or it's a standard one. And if it's got more than one mail van, no pax coaches would be allowed (it'd become a La Poste model). Is this possible?

3. Unlike ICEs, TGV have got engines at both ends of the train, and the engines can contain no passengers. This would make the building of coupled TGV's a bit tricky. For instance, two coupled TGV Réseau's with all passengers would result in a 20-car train, which would have only 16 pax cars and four engines. How could we translate this to the way trains are built in TTD? Just buying an engine and add up cars like we do with MB's ICE wouldn't work...

4. Not all the engines of the modern TGVs look the same. Réseau, Atlantique and Thalys PBA are more squared; Duplex and Thalys PBKA are more round: and TransManche is different too. Would it be possible to change their looks by a simple refit?

That's it for TGVs. Concerning the existing French set: I agree, it's a good point to start from but it needs a lot of work. The engines should be redrawn, at least to keep proportions. The Danseuses (BB8100's), for instance, should look way shorter than the six-axle Nez Cassés (CC6500's). And I was also thinking letting some engines only work with specific cars (i.e., double-decker or long-distance), a bit like some of MB's engines. Refitting could be used to reproduce famous trains as Mistral and Capitole.


2 Bastiaan: your contribution would be much appreciated!
As for the NS1100: if you're referring to this,



then it's great. On the other hand, this one



wouldn't work, as SNCF Danseuses (BB8100's) never had those bonnets in the front and rear parts.

I guess the NS1300 comes directly from the CC7000/CC7100 so your work would really help us.

Also, as Purno said your NS1600's too were built using French design: they were a variant of the Nez Cassés (BB7200 and similar engines). If you could repaint those, too, you'd be of great help.


I know there are some french guys around here, it'd be helpful to get them involved. As for me, although I'm from the other side of the Alps (Italy) I've lived in Paris for a fair amount of time a few years ago, and I used to commute with SNCF's local trains, so I think I can help suggesting realistic train compositions. I'm also bilingual so there's no problem if you find documents without a translation.

Keep it up!

[Bastiaan]

I'm drawing both versions for the NLset, but I understand that the second version (with chrash-nose) has never been in France.

Bastiaan

[hovering teacup]

hi people

i have many french vehicle sprites already done for my set and i can offer them to this project. but i'm afraid it would not save much work because i adopted "one vehicle one livery" policy and suposing this french set will have many liveries for each loco there are still plenty of works.

also, my works have similar dimensions to NS set's and are too small for those who love the large locos of US set i think.