Hill & incline climbing

Topic: Hill & incline climbing (Read 6342 times) previous topic - next topic

Hill & incline climbing

May 05, 2009, 01:57:33 pm

I remember seeing some locomotive stronger at climbing steep hills on railroad tycoon 2and3.
They were slow but very steady even at steep incline.
In RRTycoon, building tunnel and bridge was very very expensive. So often I had to build
normal track on mountainous region. As expected, locomotives very good at
inclines were available.

Another (Hidden or explained)parameter for locomotive for hill climbing capacity
Given that profit is controlled by tightly balanced good prices and harsh geographical
map setting, there will be some situation where large section of route go through
mountainous region where loco stronger at incline will needed, until player can afford
to build and maintain tunnel/bridge.

possible new situation
-In map where there is flat and mountainous region, one can transfer goods to the
freight train set with suited locomotive depending on where good go through.
(Imagine changing locomotive just before going in to mountainous region)
(by the way coupling and uncoupling will reduce the number of stocks...)

-In map where there is very large hills(not high but very large(Spain, France like))
where landscaping is no choice, suited loco can run without decelerating climbing
long hill.

Re: Hill & incline climbing

Reply #1 – May 05, 2009, 03:10:12 pm

Actually the only impact on hill clibing is for steam engines, which are very bad (since their maximum power is reached only for certain speed and goes down for lower speeds). For all other modes of transport hills are only impacting the maximum speed by the available power (which is mostly constant for diesel engines and allows for overloading for electric engines).

Re: Hill & incline climbing

Reply #2 – May 05, 2009, 03:32:18 pm

Hum...I thought there are locomotive specially designed to climb inclines. I will come back with some actual reading.
All I based was about game I've played before.

Re: Hill & incline climbing

Reply #3 – May 05, 2009, 04:02:06 pm

Some vehicles are designed to have a higher power so that they are better at climbing hills - that can already be done in simutrans though, with parameters in the dat file. I think what you want for climbing hills is a loco with high power, low speed, but for flat lines, lower power is OK, but high speed is important.

The only other exception is for rack & pinion systems (with a third rail with cogs on, and locomotives with a cog-wheel to fit in that and so climb very steep track that normal trains can't climb because the slope is too steep for adhesion to work properly). I don't think that is what you were thinking of though.

Re: Hill & incline climbing

Reply #4 – May 05, 2009, 04:05:54 pm

@prissi & The Hood
Yes, I think I should have make some reading before posting.
What I wanted to express was able to be expressed with current system.
I'm sorry.

Re: Hill & incline climbing

Reply #5 – May 05, 2009, 07:40:34 pm

Prissi is correct about the steam locomotives - they have progressively less power at lower speeds (unlike diesel/electric locomotives, which have broadly constant power at any speed): see here for details. This characteristic of steam traction is simulated in Simutrans-Experimental.