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... wait... what? last thing i heard about France was that power supply regularly almost fails during winter, because the consumption can't be met and importing power lines are close to capacity limit.

Actually most of Western Europe has a majority of track-kilometres electrified. However, France only has about half. Here is an interesting chart:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... 005_en.png

Emperor Jake wrote: Actually most of Western Europe has a majority of track-kilometres electrified. However, France only has about half.

So what?

According to that chart from 2005, Germany has a percentage of electrification of 56.5% versus 50.4% for France. Obviously because both countries still have a lot of non-electrified small rural lines which, OTOH, don´t count substantially for traffic volume. It would be more interesting to place emphasis on traffic volume per track type.

Other than that, I won´t call countries like Sweden, Bosnia-Herzegowina, Bulgaria, Norway, Poland, Spain, Portugal being "western-European" countries. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Europe

regards
Michael

I think that 'western' in this context is the countries that were non-sovjet/warzava pact countries. All in all everything west of finland-sweeden-germany-austria-italy



But I agree, volume per tracktype is more interesting

I don't see how this (or any) definition of "Western Europe" supports the proposition (that a "majority" of track is electrified)... e.g. Ireland has almost no electrification, and Britain less than one third. contrary, poland has above 50% electrification as well. there seems to be no correlation between electrification and "westernness" of a country...

[OT]

DJ Nekkid wrote: I think that 'western' in this context is the countries that were non-sovjet/warzava pact countries. All in all everything west of finland-sweeden-germany-austria-italy

Nah. "Cold war" ended 20 years ago. And Italy, e.g., was and is still "southern Europe", Spain as well.

Eddi wrote: I don't see how this (or any) definition of "Western Europe" supports the proposition (that a "majority" of track is electrified)... e.g. Ireland has almost no electrification, and Britain less than one third. contrary, poland has above 50% electrification as well. there seems to be no correlation between electrification and "westernness" of a country...

Hehe. Especially, with the U.K and Ireland belonging to "Northern Europe", and Poland to "Eastern Europe".


The only thing which can be seen from that chart is that countries with a historic heritage of electrification still have large electrified networks.

regards
Michael

michael blunck wrote:Especially, with the U.K and Ireland belonging to "Northern Europe", and Poland to "Eastern Europe".

personally, i would rather prefer this partition of europe:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: ... ctbook.svg
which makes poland "central europe" and britain "western europe". it imho makes way more sense, since britain and france are economically, politically and culturally way closer than britain and scandinavia.

The only thing which can be seen from that chart is that countries with a historic heritage of electrification still have large electrified networks.

regards
Michael

the only thing i can conclusively deduce from that chart is that "small" countries/networks tend to be (almost) 100% or 0% electrified, while "large" countries/networks tend to form a "normal" distribution around 50%

michael blunck wrote:[OT]

DJ Nekkid wrote: I think that 'western' in this context is the countries that were non-sovjet/warzava pact countries. All in all everything west of finland-sweeden-germany-austria-italy

Nah. "Cold war" ended 20 years ago. And Italy, e.g., was and is still "southern Europe", Spain as well.

Well, all definitions are schemes, and as such include both pros and cons.
We could split Southern Europe from Western Europe, but then we'd have to go beyond national borders. Northern Italy, for instance, has much more in common with the south-eastern part of France (Rhone-Alpes) or the southern part of Switzerland (Ticino) rathern than with the southern part of Italy (i.e. anything south of Florence). Historically, Turin, Milan etc. have never been part of "southern Europe". It just doesn't make sense to put Lugano in Western Europe, and Milan in Southern Europe together with Naples, which it shares nothing with (we could say, not even the language).
Also, the neighboring areas of France and Spain (sharing the Pyrénées) have a lot in common, culturally and historically. For this reason, I'd tend to say that the broader definition of Western Europe going from Portugal to Finland makes more sense unless we adopt a new definition based on regions, rather than on national borders.

michael blunck wrote:

Eddi wrote: I don't see how this (or any) definition of "Western Europe" supports the proposition (that a "majority" of track is electrified)... e.g. Ireland has almost no electrification, and Britain less than one third. contrary, poland has above 50% electrification as well. there seems to be no correlation between electrification and "westernness" of a country...

Hehe. Especially, with the U.K and Ireland belonging to "Northern Europe", and Poland to "Eastern Europe".


The only thing which can be seen from that chart is that countries with a historic heritage of electrification still have large electrified networks.

Now, to go back to topic, railroad-wise there were many reasons other than the westerness of a country that played a big role in how early and how massively electrification was adopted. Italy was one of the earliest countries to drop steamers, just because there was very little or no coal at all around there, while the mountains provided a good source of hydro-electric power; the choice was a no brainer. A similar reason applied to Switzerland, too.
The case of France was different, and had to do more with politics. In the '50's, the heads of SNCF decided that electrification had to be the way of the future. Period. So much for the work of André Chapelon, who envisioned to build what could have been the most refined steamer fleet in history; the funny thing was that his 242A prototype was much more powerful than any French electric engine of that era. What a waste! So, hadn't it been for that political decision, now France's railroads would probably remind those of England.

Hi, I love this GRF, because I very often takes the train station in real life
You plan to add lanes on locomotives normal shoe, such as the Bombers have found in France, or BB 67200 locomotives (see picture left) ansi as locomotives FRET (which is used to deliver the goods, see the picture below locomotive blue)





Good job on the TGV otherwise and good luck!

Regards,Digitals

Thanks for the encouragement, I'm currently struggling to find the time to work on a set such as this, and as you'll find out by reading this topic it's probably not ideal that we have 2 unfinished French sets . I won't be able to do anything for a few months yet but if you'd all like I'll simply publish this as a TGV set as I have the sprites coded for these, just a few tweaks required, I'll likely remove the locomotives on the basis I simply don't have time to finish rolling stock and such.

I know Snail's French set is nearing completion and probably has the locomotives you've suggested, however I'm still at a loss as to when that set will eventually be complete.......