Rail lines on high TL worlds?

[MasterGwydion]

No, I'm not talking about Subway. I'm talking about trains.

But I found better numbers for North America anyway, editted above.
And strictly, that's just freight apparently, not even passenger at all.
10 freight cars per 1 mile of track in NA.

I am confused. 10 freight cars per mile of track. What does that mean?

I went to your new link. It is behind a paywall. Plus, knowing how many rail cars exist in North America doesn't really tell Us anything, since We don't know any of the variables that determine why that is the number of train cars.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Answering the OP here, there's a lot of good reasons to maintain an older technology. The Darrians maintain older systems as a backup for another disaster, for example. Sometimes a technology just works and people don't want to fix something that isn't broke.
The Third Imperium has 11,000 world and that means 11,000 societies with 11,000 ways of doing things. Some societies reject the rapid adoption of technology in a race of bigger /better /faster /more. They may not go all the way into the Vilani spectrum of actually retarding technology for the sake of social stability, but some world will definitely have a certain Luddite characteristic.
Consider power generation in Charted Space. Fusion power is clean, safe, and has no environmental or social costs. It simply works... it does its job with very little fuss and scales up to the point of powering entire civilizations. But if the Zhodani, with their highly organized society, or the Imperium, that lucratively rewards the successful, decided that antimatter was the way to go they could reach that plateau in a couple hundred years. But fusion works and thus far no civilization in Charted Space has felt the need to pursue other power systems. There's just no reason to.

I am not sure you are making the point you think you are by saying that the 3I would be focused on using a technology 5 TLs above themselves. What TL-13 world is not fusion powered? Try that to make you point. How many are there that do not use fusion power but are TL-13. What percentage is that of the total TL-13+ worlds in the Imperium?

Your logic is also flawed if you don't think that the Zhodani and the Imperium are not actively researching anti-matter technologies.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Super dangerous though .Everything is rusted and damaged (and, I'm sure, all the local teenagers have picked through it hundreds of times)

Growing up a played in an abandoned steam plant, I understand. I almost fell to My death a few times. lol

 

[Nelphine]

I am confused. 10 freight cars per mile of track. What does that mean?

I went to your new link. It is behind a paywall. Plus, knowing how many rail cars exist in North America doesn't really tell Us anything, since We don't know any of the variables that determine why that is the number of train cars.

huh, i have no idea why its behind a paywall. i found it just through google, and the paywall (for me) is showing up at the bottom if i want to explore further.

But yeah, i was just going with a 'how many active freight cars'. It doesn't really matter why, as long as we think it has some remote resemblance to useful.

But since we need to have 2+ miles of track per car for grav to be cost effective, and this is showing 1/10 of a mile of track per car, that means that NA currently has 20 times as many active cars as would make grav effective. While I'm completely willing to say that number may change (thus, the range I gave in the second math post), I'm not super willing to say that it would drop to less than 5% of what it currently is.

Thus, my conclusion from the original math post - on a high pop world, where you need thousands (or millions..) of cars, grav probably isn't worth it. Or more accurately, grav is worth it on low pop worlds with spread out population, but eventually, as the population centers both grow in number of sophonts (and therefore need more cars traveling over the same track) AND grow towards each other (and therefore have less track that is just transport from one population center to another, and instead have more track that is a stop at a location that needs something), trains overtake grav as cost effective.

 

[ottarrus]

Fusion power is available to any world that can afford the purchase price and the maintenance. There are worlds in the Imperium with a TL 6 that have regional power systems based on a fusion plant. TL is a measurement of what the world is capable of sustaining by itself, not a limit on what is available.
As for antimatter, most societies are researching antimatter technology but they're not focusing on it. Sure there are perhaps five or six really high tech worlds [TL 15 or 16] that are doing that work but the Imperium hasn't bent every effort towards that goal. There isn't a 'Manhattan Project' level of focus on it or that expenditure of resources and effort.

 

[MasterGwydion]

huh, i have no idea why its behind a paywall. i found it just through google, and the paywall (for me) is showing up at the bottom if i want to explore further.

But yeah, i was just going with a 'how many active freight cars'. It doesn't really matter why, as long as we think it has some remote resemblance to useful.

But since we need to have 2+ miles of track per car for grav to be cost effective, and this is showing 1/10 of a mile of track per car, that means that NA currently has 20 times as many active cars as would make grav effective. While I'm completely willing to say that number may change (thus, the range I gave in the second math post), I'm not super willing to say that it would drop to less than 5% of what it currently is.

Thus, my conclusion from the original math post - on a high pop world, where you need thousands (or millions..) of cars, grav probably isn't worth it. Or more accurately, grav is worth it on low pop worlds with spread out population, but eventually, as the population centers both grow in number of sophonts (and therefore need more cars traveling over the same track) AND grow towards each other (and therefore have less track that is just transport from one population center to another, and instead have more track that is a stop at a location that needs something), trains overtake grav as cost effective.

Hard to say. Freight trains travel an average of 25-30 mph. Grav travels way faster than that. Normal freight trains could go fast, if they use grav-stabilization to keep from tipping over on turns, but then they be more expensive. Don't see a whole lot of high-speed freight trains on earth currently. So, 3 days to its destination or 3 hours? Round trip in a day or in a week? Need a whole lot less Grav-trains to do the same job across a continent. Deliver to Hawaii? No problem. Grav-train. Again. Regular trains can't do it.

All of this on top of Us still not having an actual price for what a grav-train would cost. Anyone have the Vehicle handbook that can run the numbers real quick on this? Need an Engine and a 40' cargo container car. My digital copy won't load right. It is slow as hell and fuzzy.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Fusion power is available to any world that can afford the purchase price and the maintenance. There are worlds in the Imperium with a TL 6 that have regional power systems based on a fusion plant. TL is a measurement of what the world is capable of sustaining by itself, not a limit on what is available.
As for antimatter, most societies are researching antimatter technology but they're not focusing on it. Sure there are perhaps five or six really high tech worlds [TL 15 or 16] that are doing that work but the Imperium hasn't bent every effort towards that goal. There isn't a 'Manhattan Project' level of focus on it or that expenditure of resources and effort.

False equivalency. The Manhattan Project was during a war to create a bomb before the germans. Not to create a power source to light up all of humankind. lol

 

[JustEastOfTheEdge]

One needs gravity for anti-grav trains. Normal trains don't.
Not every community in every country has the funds, know-how, or need of the latest whatever. For example, I have not seen many shinkansen (bullet trains) go past my window out here in the sticks, just choo-choo trains.

 

[Nelphine]

OK, current vehicle handbook doesn't have trains as an option. So I went back to.. CT I think, which has mostly comparable numbers.

In both versions the engine is 4000 per space. In CT it's from 4-30 spaces.

In CT the cars are from 20-40 spaces, and a TL 11+ engine can pull 4500 spaces (including itself).

So call it one engine per 100 cars. It's a bit more but meh.

A heavy grav vehicle (in current) is 80000 per space.

So my original price of 2 million, 150k, and 50 million was wrong.

If we call a grav car 30 spaces for simplicity (and to easily compare to a train engine), and each train car 40, then we get:

120,000 for the train engine. 80,000 for the train car. 2,400,000 for the grav car.

also in CT, the train track cost is 100,000 to 1,000,000 per km depending on terrain. We'll call this 1,500,000 for 1 mile of train track, but with 25k annual maintenance (instead of expected 1.5k, to reflect dealing with terrain).

Total train:
8,120,000 + 1,500,000 per mile of track.
8,120 + 25,000 per mile of track annual maintenance.

Total grav:
312,000,000
312,000 annual maintenance

So, with these numbers (which are the most basic possible, obviously we can customize with gadgets and doohickeys) we see that the numbers say that the initial investment cost would let us buy about 200 miles of train track per 100 cars in the train/130 in the grav vehicle.

However, annually, we can only afford ~12 miles of track per 130 grav cars.


Given this, we see modern North America as roughly break even, and you could do either trains or grav.

More densely populated areas would want trains. Less dense would want grav. Super flat boring terrain would also favor trains, since our assumption is fairly high on the cost per mile due to terrain.


(Note: the original math was roughly right about the ratio between train engine and grav, and roughly right for train car, but had the train engine as wildly expensive, which then made the grav cars (due to aforementioned ratio) wildly expensive.)


Edit: strictly, NA actually favour's trains, but I'd probably allow for a cost reduction on the grav cars of around 10%, as they can 'hold up' each other with the same principle of a train, where they have engines that go forward and the rest just need to keep themselves aloft while they get pulled. So I call it even anyway.

 

[MasterGwydion]

OK, current vehicle handbook doesn't have trains as an option. So I went back to.. CT I think, which has mostly comparable numbers.

In both versions the engine is 4000 per space. In CT it's from 4-30 spaces.

In CT the cars are from 20-40 spaces, and a TL 11+ engine can pull 4500 spaces (including itself).

So call it one engine per 100 cars. It's a bit more but meh.

A heavy grav vehicle (in current) is 80000 per space.

So my original price of 2 million, 150k, and 50 million was wrong.

If we call a grav car 30 spaces for simplicity (and to easily compare to a train engine), and each train car 40, then we get:

120,000 for the train engine. 80,000 for the train car. 2,400,000 for the grav car.

also in CT, the train track cost is 100,000 to 1,000,000 per km depending on terrain. We'll call this 1,500,000 for 1 mile of train track, but with 25k annual maintenance (instead of expected 1.5k, to reflect dealing with terrain).

Total train:
8,120,000 + 1,500,000 per mile of track.
8,120 + 25,000 per mile of track annual maintenance.

Total grav:
312,000,000
312,000 annual maintenance

So, with these numbers (which are the most basic possible, obviously we can customize with gadgets and doohickeys) we see that the numbers say that the initial investment cost would let us buy about 200 miles of train track per 100 cars in the train/130 in the grav vehicle.

However, annually, we can only afford ~12 miles of track per 100 cars.


Given this, we see modern North America as roughly break even, and you could do either trains or grav.

More densely populated areas would want trains. Less dense would want grav. Super flat boring terrain would also favor trains, since our assumption is fairly high on the cost per mile due to terrain.


(Note: the original math was roughly right about the ratio between train engine and grav, and roughly right for train car, but had the train engine as wildly expensive, which then made the grav cars (due to aforementioned ratio) wildly expensive.)


Edit: strictly, NA actually favour's trains, but I'd probably allow for a cost reduction on the grav cars of around 10%, as they can 'hold up' each other with the same principle of a train, where they have engines that go forward and the rest just need to keep themselves aloft while they get pulled. So I call it even anyway.

I love this break down! Thank you! Water is also no boundary to Grav-trains. I bet the Herny Flagler would have preferred Grav-trains for the Overseas Railroad to the Florida Keys. lol

So how many less trains do you need on Grav than on Rail since Grav moves so much faster?

 

[Nelphine]

Hard to say. Per CT trains, we're looking at 250mph (kph? i can't remember which unit they use), whereas the grav vehicle is 4000 of the same unit. NOTE: this is the big difference between the CT trains and current 'no-trains-at-all' - the closest equivalent would be going 800, making all the following comments even more pronounced.

So about 16 times faster. However, since we only want trains in densely populated areas anyway, we're probably getting anywhere with the trains in 2 hours at most, and the average is probably noticeably less than that (probably between 15 and 30 minutes). So while the grav vehicle is much faster in absolute terms, its not really knocking that much off in practical terms.

I'd expect that on worlds where it matters, you use grav for cross oceanic trips, and trains for everything else. But, trains are only going to matter on Pop 9+ worlds (well, if they're size 7 or higher. Under size 7, you can probably make the case for it at pop 8. And realistically, its only a clear favourite at one population higher (so pop A+ on a size 7+ world)

Edit: Actually.. on size A+ worlds, the speed difference probably DOES matter. So its probably a break even at low pop A, and you'd need to be getting close to pop B+ before you'd want trains on such a large world.

 

[Arkathan]

Grav trains would probably look more like a very tight convoy of grav trucks, with an integrated robotic follower guiding each car... And no cab in the followers.

I have a hard time wrapping my head around a Chinese dragon of freight swimming through the sky.

 

[Geir]

Grav trains would probably look more like a very tight convoy of grav trucks, with an integrated robotic follower guiding each car... And no cab in the followers.

I have a hard time wrapping my head around a Chinese dragon of freight swimming through the sky.

I see a flock of grav trucks, either a nice line-up, like geese, or a shapeshifting form like those drone light shows...

 

[MasterGwydion]

Hard to say. Per CT trains, we're looking at 250mph (kph? i can't remember which unit they use), whereas the grav vehicle is 4000 of the same unit. NOTE: this is the big difference between the CT trains and current 'no-trains-at-all' - the closest equivalent would be going 800, making all the following comments even more pronounced.

So about 16 times faster. However, since we only want trains in densely populated areas anyway, we're probably getting anywhere with the trains in 2 hours at most, and the average is probably noticeably less than that (probably between 15 and 30 minutes). So while the grav vehicle is much faster in absolute terms, its not really knocking that much off in practical terms.

Between cities, not in cities. Trips of hundreds if not thousands of miles. Think New York to Los Angeles. Or Hong Kong to Rome. That should be a fairly large time difference

I'd expect that on worlds where it matters, you use grav for cross oceanic trips, and trains for everything else. But, trains are only going to matter on Pop 9+ worlds (well, if they're size 7 or higher. Under size 7, you can probably make the case for it at pop 8. And realistically, its only a clear favourite at one population higher (so pop A+ on a size 7+ world)

Edit: Actually.. on size A+ worlds, the speed difference probably DOES matter. So its probably a break even at low pop A, and you'd need to be getting close to pop B+ before you'd want trains on such a large world.

 

[MasterGwydion]

I see a flock of grav trucks, either a nice line-up, like geese, or a shapeshifting form like those drone light shows...

Either could work and still be a "Grav-train" Think Wagon Trains. They were separate and they were the reason trains are called trains. I just figured it would be cheaper if all of the power and propulsion was in one unit, with only grav lifters and acceleration compensators for all of the towed units. Probably aerofins to keep the train in line.

 

[Galadrion]

OK, current vehicle handbook doesn't have trains as an option.

Look in either light or heavy ground vehicles, the Rail Rider option. This allows the vehicle to run on a rail network, either in addition to running on roads, or instead of roads. Trains are built into the system from the start. Technically, they don't even have to be engine-powered; the rules allow you to build them as animal-powered as well - think mule-drawn mine carts for a historical example.

 

[agentwigggles]

This question feels a lot like asking why there were still steam trains when disealse and electric were around. Why didnt they just instantly switch over like a Civ world wonder replacing all the tile improvements. There were still making new steam trains till like the 1960s and and they were still in use till like the 1990s even heavy duty enough ICE were around since ww1.
Or feels like its asking why sea and train still exist even though air exists.

 

[Geir]

Look in either light or heavy ground vehicles, the Rail Rider option. This allows the vehicle to run on a rail network, either in addition to running on roads, or instead of roads. Trains are built into the system from the start. Technically, they don't even have to be engine-powered; the rules allow you to build them as animal-powered as well - think mule-drawn mine carts for a historical example.

Yeah, but the towing rules as written don't work well, at all, but especially for locomotives. Should be a significant advantage to 'towing' on rails.

The big difference between what I've seen in American versus European trains when it comes to freight is, at least in Norway I doubt I ever saw more than a dozen cars in a train, but in the US, a hundred, driven perhaps by up to four or five locomotives, is far from unusual.

 

[agentwigggles]

Yeah, but the towing rules as written don't work well, at all, but especially for locomotives. Should be a significant advantage to 'towing' on rails.

The big difference between what I've seen in American versus European trains when it comes to freight is, at least in Norway I doubt I ever saw more than a dozen cars in a train, but in the US, a hundred, driven perhaps by up to four or five locomotives, is far from unusual.

For the US in the 15 years we had the train lengths get deregulated, so they get to be a few kilometers long now. With engins at the front, in the middle and at the back.

When/if VHB gets updated, it needs more love for trains.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Yeah, but the towing rules as written don't work well, at all, but especially for locomotives. Should be a significant advantage to 'towing' on rails.

The big difference between what I've seen in American versus European trains when it comes to freight is, at least in Norway I doubt I ever saw more than a dozen cars in a train, but in the US, a hundred, driven perhaps by up to four or five locomotives, is far from unusual.

With gravity manipulation this should be very simple. We just need towing rules that aren't written from the perspective of a guy towing his boat to the lake. Towing a trailer with a pick-up truck is way different than a semi towing three trailers behind it or a train towing a hundred cars behind 4 or 5 engines. Grav should be the easiest to tow (power to weight ratio-wise), since they require grav-lifters anyhow, there is no friction with the ground. You also can't flip them over like you can a semi or a train since they have acceleration compensators. On a high tech world, trucks and rail lines could have these too, but that would just make them more expensive and make an actual grav-train an even more likely choice. You just know companies would have semi-trucks pulling 100 cars of freight as well if they could. Also, a grav-train can reach orbit, same as an air raft. Meaning, it can deliver 1,000s of tons of cargo per trip to the highport. Cargo Ships? Don't need them. Shuttles? Don't need them. Railroads? Nope. A grav-train can do all of those things. Smaller inventory needed to build and maintain only one type of transportation mode instead of 3 or more types. That also makes it cheaper. So now that I think about it. You'd have to factor in the Shuttles and Cargo Ships into the price as well since you'd no longer need those.

Still have to fix the towing rules though. This is basically Space Truckers in and out of an atmosphere. You guys ever seen the movie Pitch Black? That space ship was basically a space train. This is the same thing, just limited to planetary surfaces up to orbit.