Geir beat me to it. The CT version had trains with engines vs regular cars, which is a significant price advantage, which isn't in the mongoose version. So in the mongoose version, effectively you have to just make one very very large car, as every car has to be an engine.
Rail lines on high TL worlds?
- Thread starter MasterGwydion
- Start date
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
Yeah. Mongoose forgot trains existed...lol... Guess what that means? No trains exist in Mongoose Traveller...lol... I guess that solves My quandary...
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Transportation networks can be complex, and quite integrated.
A lot of governments, and electorates, don't quite comprehend that.
I remember when the discussion about air/rafts came to the point where it was stated there won't be roads.
There will be roads.
In the end, most of these issues come down to convenience and economics.
It really does come down to what you're transporting, and from where to where.
Spacecraft are comparatively damn cheap, and as far as I know, non polluting, if you use manoeuvre drives.
I had a go at designing zeppelins, for regional cargo, but from technological level ten onwards, it's kinda pointless.
What we're moving is either passengers or freight.
Material science is going to make passenger vehicles lighter and stronger, which means that the improved propulsion systems, are going to shrink considerably; and you won't have pseudo light trucks roaming the roads, due to vanity and/or paranoia, just in the countryside.
In regard to rail, the primary bugbear of management appears to be labour relations and costs, hence mile(s) long convoys.
This is where autonomous self driving comes in, in spades.
The autonomous vehicle can't go off the rails, so accidental accidents are really going to be rare.
A lot of governments, and electorates, don't quite comprehend that.
I remember when the discussion about air/rafts came to the point where it was stated there won't be roads.
There will be roads.
In the end, most of these issues come down to convenience and economics.
It really does come down to what you're transporting, and from where to where.
Spacecraft are comparatively damn cheap, and as far as I know, non polluting, if you use manoeuvre drives.
I had a go at designing zeppelins, for regional cargo, but from technological level ten onwards, it's kinda pointless.
What we're moving is either passengers or freight.
Material science is going to make passenger vehicles lighter and stronger, which means that the improved propulsion systems, are going to shrink considerably; and you won't have pseudo light trucks roaming the roads, due to vanity and/or paranoia, just in the countryside.
In regard to rail, the primary bugbear of management appears to be labour relations and costs, hence mile(s) long convoys.
This is where autonomous self driving comes in, in spades.
The autonomous vehicle can't go off the rails, so accidental accidents are really going to be rare.
Thomas the Tank engine was certainly skeptical of diesels “Sodor Steamies don't go to the Dieselworks. It's dark, and it's dirty, and it's full of diesels. Diesels can be devious.”
Grav vehicles seem pretty expensive, in general, in Traveller compared to other options. IRL, Trains are currently the cheapest land transport both for passengers and freight - given sufficient demand - so it is plausible there will be trains in Traveller, and also that they might be present at high tech levels. Maglevs are really fast and might be cheaper than grav transport at high tech. It is all down to how the tech develops, which means if you want trains on your planets, then you can have them, and if you don't then you don't have to have them. They are easier to automate than grav vehicles would be.
Trains are less weather susceptible than other vehicles, so there is that. But not immune. Not sure this would apply to maglevs, though.
One thing that probably won't change is that trains can really transport a lot of people very efficiently and therefore serve to deal with congestion really well. Grav vehicles might do that too, by operating in 3 dimensions, but there will be limits to this - traffic control could get messy. In really dense situations, like archologies, they'd probably want train networks at various levels for its efficiency, plus grav transport on top to take advantage of all the available space.
Trains are less weather susceptible than other vehicles, so there is that. But not immune. Not sure this would apply to maglevs, though.
One thing that probably won't change is that trains can really transport a lot of people very efficiently and therefore serve to deal with congestion really well. Grav vehicles might do that too, by operating in 3 dimensions, but there will be limits to this - traffic control could get messy. In really dense situations, like archologies, they'd probably want train networks at various levels for its efficiency, plus grav transport on top to take advantage of all the available space.
Oh right. You can do a grav-based train, to increase speed of a train in CT. It triples the cost of the track (but I wouldn't expect that to triple the maintenance because most of the maintenance is the terrain, not the track itself.. tripling the cost would increase the expected maintenance by 3k, so i'd increase up to a total of 30k maintenance per mile of track), and lets you increase the speed dramatically - probably up into the 2000 range? i didn't think to note that.
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
btw. What are you using for your annual maintenance costs? I always take the purchase price times 0.001. Your figures seem to be using 10% instead of 0.1% for annual maintenance costs
For tracks, I'm basing it on our original discussion of 25k, which implies real life being much higher than the normal 0.1% annually. In particular, I'm assuming there is a 0.1% annual maintenance for the tracks themselves BUT there is also keeping wildlife trimmed (both plant and animal) as well as far more 'weather' erosion than a ship/vehicle (which only gets eroded for the short periods of time that it's active, whereas tracks are 24/7). So I'm just arbitrarily using 20k (wildlife) + 0.3% (triple normal erosion) annually per mile in order to try to match that original 25k figure that seemed tentatively reasonable.
MarkAlexander
Banded Mongoose
The key advantage of rail is a smooth ride. MagLev is the obvious technology, where the train hovers just above the track and is moved forward by electro-magnets, perhaps GravLev could be an improvement on this. Take away the track and you've basically got a truck or a bus. That's fine on frontier worlds, especially if things have gone a bit "Mad Max", but I think any civilised world would want a MagLev, at least in urban areas. Even conventional high-speed electric trains running on rails can do 180mph+. Helicopter speed at ground level. Don't knock it till you've tried it.
Arkathan
Emperor Mongoose
That only works on a homeworld, or a backwater that lost tech during the Long Night.
Getting to the colony implies the tech to have grav trains.
Isolation, geography and availability of local resources are the main drivers in choosing the TL and makeup of an economical and sustainable transport network.
Arkathan
Emperor Mongoose
GravLev in an urban setting could work like a high speed WedWay for both people and cargo. Pretty much anything with a programmable ID tag attached to allow defining the destination could be moved at high speed, then diverted to an offramp when the tag for that location is detected. Cargo containers, single to bulk passenger pods, or vehicles could take advantage of such a network.
Geir
Emperor Mongoose
Problem is I'm having trouble finding where trains were done in CT. Not in Striker, as far as I can tell. Should I be digging through JTAS or Challenge articles?
Geir
Emperor Mongoose
Turbo lifts?
Or something like those electric trains at Disney world?
In any arcology-like setting I imagine any internal vehicles, from grav to golf cart would be under the control of the building management (Arcology Transport Authority : ATA ?)
Supplement 5-6 vehicle handbook
Geir
Emperor Mongoose
I think we have differing definitions of CT. For me, that's Little Black Books c. '70s-'80s, but you seem to be refereeing to Mongoose v1 from 2009.
Which I have now just dug up. No wonder I couldn't find it before...
... you are correct. Sorry, i was just flipping through anything i could find with vehicle stuff, but you're right, its mongoose 1e, not CT. (Sorry, my organization ... leaves something to be desired. I LIKE MONGOOSE 2E .. and everything else just gets tossed in the same place.. I thought i was in CT stuff, and only cursorily saw the words classic traveller when i was flipping through.. there's a reason i said CT? in the first post i mentioned it, I wasn't really looking carefully)
Geir
Emperor Mongoose
no problem... they are technical 'big black books' when you gave me the supplement numbers I knew that wasn't right because 5 was with the Azhanti High Lightning and 6 with 76 patrons, I think.
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
I am not talking about urban trains though. Urban trains are not 100 car freight trains. They are Light Rail. I am talking about continental and intercontinental freight trains. Heavy Rail. NY to LA or Hong Kong to Rome.
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
Multiple Editions can confuse any of Us. No worries,
Maglevs aren't limited to local trains. It is a propulsion tech, that could be used by any kind of rail over any distance. Long distances make more sense than short for maglev because of its extreme speed. So far I think the maglev lines are mostly short, because it is still in a proof of concept stage.
There is not such a clear dividing line between urban and intercity trains, but rather a gradation of types. IRL, many big cities have trams, subways, urban railways, regional trains, interregional and intercity. For many journeys, the traveller can choose between them. Helsinki-Tampere, for example is normally intercity service because of the distance, but is it possible to take a regional train, which uses the same cars as the urban train, if you don't mind taking twice as long. These travel the same tracks but have different cars and engines than the intercity. Helsinki subways, however, have different and lighter and slower cars than the urban trains, and trams still different and even slower.
If we are talking about a Traveller setting, though, the trains will be whatever is useful, or logically arises in a particular situation.
In terms of archologies, you'd have transport within, but also between them, and likely different types of trains depending on how far you go. Elevated trains would definitely be a way to save time taking those turbo-lifts.
The NY to LA connection uses 60s retro-tech like all the long distance Amtrack lines. I took Minneapolis to Portland and it was definitely an experience from another era.
