Steam & Steel - Vehicle Upgrades for Steam Trains

[Conaill]

Sounds like a really cool set of additions, Auld Grump!

Some details you may want to consider revising a little:

- Improved Speed: despite calling this a modification, it seems like you assume this is added to a regular steam train engine. If you really want this to be available to anything from hand carts (hey, maybe some of those maintenance crews were holding hand cart races ! ) to huge freight ships, you may want to make the price of the modification be a fraction of the engine price. Obviously, a 500 gp handcart would be cheaper to modify than a 8000 gp Heavy Load engine.

- Likewise, under travel times and speeds you may want to clarify that "Cannonball" refers to a *normal* steam train engine with the Improved Speed modification.

- Your "Speed Change in Rounds" table seems to indicate that a fast-moving train can't decellerate as much as a slow moving one. Are train brakes less efficient at high speed? Under constant decelleration, it should take just as long to go from 300 ft/rnd to 240 ft/rnd as it takes to go from 60 ft/rnd to a full stop.

Perhaps you should have a different entry for speeding up and braking. When speeding up, it *does* take longer to go from 240 to 300, than from 0 to 60. Unless you have data to prove otherwise, it seems like braking should (1) be much faster than speeding up, and (2) give a fairly constant decelleration.

- You have an entry for Improved Brakes... it would be nice to have some rules for emergency brakes as well. These would be standard equipment, but need to be reset manually after a full stop, before the train can start moving again. (You just know... any train-based adventure is going to involve *some* use of the emergency brake. It's almost a law of nature! )

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Sounds like a really cool set of additions, Auld Grump!

Some details you may want to consider revising a little:

- Improved Speed: despite calling this a modification, it seems like you assume this is added to a regular steam train engine. If you really want this to be available to anything from hand carts (hey, maybe some of those maintenance crews were holding hand cart races ! ) to huge freight ships, you may want to make the price of the modification be a fraction of the engine price. Obviously, a 500 gp handcart would be cheaper to modify than a 8000 gp Heavy Load engine.

- Likewise, under travel times and speeds you may want to clarify that "Cannonball" refers to a *normal* steam train engine with the Improved Speed modification.

- Your "Speed Change in Rounds" table seems to indicate that a fast-moving train can't decellerate as much as a slow moving one. Are train brakes less efficient at high speed? Under constant decelleration, it should take just as long to go from 300 ft/rnd to 240 ft/rnd as it takes to go from 60 ft/rnd to a full stop.

Perhaps you should have a different entry for speeding up and braking. When speeding up, it *does* take longer to go from 240 to 300, than from 0 to 60. Unless you have data to prove otherwise, it seems like braking should (1) be much faster than speeding up, and (2) give a fairly constant decelleration.

- You have an entry for Improved Brakes... it would be nice to have some rules for emergency brakes as well. These would be standard equipment, but need to be reset manually after a full stop, before the train can start moving again. (You just know... any train-based adventure is going to involve *some* use of the emergency brake. It's almost a law of nature! )

The reason I referred to Improved Speed as a 'masterworking' was to imply that it is not something that you add to an existing engine - it is rather something that must be built in and then maintained. Sorry if that was not clear. And as I put in the description for Hand Cart there are no modifications available except for Headlight. (Armor a hand powered vehicle? Oi! me back!)

*EDIT* Hmmm, the word 'only' seems to have disappeared from the Hand Cart entry, but it is in the original document... Ah well, I put it back in.

*EDIT* Clarified Improved Speed entry, and added cost of rebuilding the engine to the price of the modification in the event of a retrofit.

You are correct on referring to 'Cannonball' on the travel times, when I wrote the original version of Improved Speed I had called the improvement 'Cannonball' then changed it to avoid confusion... Boy, that worked... I may go back and change one or the other. At any rate I will add a line in regards to the Heavy Load Engines, which should indeed cost more to masterwork. (Though they still end up only being as fast as a standard engine.) And indeed clarify the 'Cannonball' = Improved Speed issue.

*EDIT* Fixed above.

And yes, the braking (or deacceleration) on a train was increased over time, the pressure to the brakes was increased gradually in order to avoid the horrible consequences of an engine stopping while the carriages continued. Without this precaution the carriages pile up around and over the engine cab, generally killing the engineer and stoker. Air brakes sped up the process, and that is what I refer to as Improved Brakes.

Likewise acceleration was added gradually to limit stress upon the carriage couplings.

*EDIT* Modified the price of the Improved Brakes for the size of the vehicle, and added a per carriage cost as well. Added note as to acceleration/deacceleration times.

And emergency brakes, well, that (among other things) is exactly what improved brakes are. I could have called them air brakes but felt that went into too much detail. (Emergency stopping with airbrakes was only done when they failed from being used at the engine. Then some poor schmuck would have to climb along the roof of each carriage manually turning the brakes... When (if) the train crashed said schmuck usually ended up messily dead.)

Though it was possible for an engine to weld itself to the tracks by applying the brakes too swiftly. (When you see sparks flying from the wheels of a steam engine while it brakes in a movie or an old tv show that is exactly what they are risking.)

Plus that could only be done for the engine alone, not with cars. (Again the pile up.) Which is why when you see that scene in a movie they only show the engine, cutting away afterwards to show it with cars after it has stopped, implying that the carriages were attached when the train stopped though when they filmed it it was with the engine alone.

In essence Improved Brakes are brakes on each of the carriages, not just friction or traction brakes on the engine alone. I was for the most part aiming at the early to mid 19th century in regards to technology.

Plus, I want the possibility of a train crash to be a horrible likelihood. I grew up on songs like 'Wreck of the Old 97' and 'Casey Jones'.

The Auld Grump

*EDIT* Just be glad I avoided the whole issue of 'Railroad Time'! The time at any station along a route was the same as at the home station for the rail line, regardless of actual time in the zone that the station happened to be in.

 

[Conaill]

Sounds good.

I'm still not convinced that gradually adding pressure to the brake, or gradually opening the throttle actually results in a gradual change in *acceleration* (in terms of meters per second squared). But I'm willing to bow to your superior knowledge on that.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Sounds good.

I'm still not convinced that gradually adding pressure to the brake, or gradually opening the throttle actually results in a gradual change in *acceleration* (in terms of meters per second squared). But I'm willing to bow to your superior knowledge on that.

Oh, I'll admit to both simplifying and exaggerating the change in rate. I used to have the specs for the Pacific 2-6-2, what I paid attention to was the total time taken to slow down with a full load, which was indeed a full minute and a half on the straight (15 rounds). And since I knew that the pressure was applied gradually I simply used a an equation that worked rather than finding out how much deacceleration was appled in any six second period. Hills of course change things way more than I want to get into,, and having a different group of numbers for different sized trains would drive me nuts! Part of this of course is that smooth steel wheels and smooth steel rails are not great for trying to stop, and in rain the numbers chane incredibly.

The Auld Grump, the K-4 Pacific 2-6-2 is the train the classic Lionel O scale train was based on...

*EDIT* The numbers seperated by dashes refer to the wheel arrangement. So a 2-6-2 has a single pair of lead wheels, 3 pairs of drive wheels, and two wheels trailing. The Big Boy on the other hand has a 4-8-8-4 arragement, 2 pairs leading 2 sets of drive wheels set in two pairs each, and 2 pair of trailing wheels. The lead wheels and trailing wheels were mounted on a trolley, and allowed the locomotive to remain seated on the rails while taking curves. The biggest was the Alleghany 2-6-6-6. The first number always refers to the lead wheels, and the last number to the trailing wheels, if there are no trailing or lead wheels then a 0 is used as either the first or last number, so a 0-4-0 switcher would have no leading or trailing wheels, and 2 pairs of drive wheels.

I paid a lot more attention to the heavy freight engines than I did to the passenger locomotives, the Streamliner was cool looking, and fast, but the heavy freight just had so much raw power...

 

[TheAuldGrump]

To ressurect a long dead topic... Has anybody tried these out, aside from myself?

 

[Night Watchman]

Sadly, I have not yet been able to get to a point in my campaign where the need for a train has arrived.