Considering Train Configurations

Our first train idea is made up of a B car along with an A car that has been reversed.

As the B car has all forward facing seats this train is recommended for continuous circuit shuttle use with the B car placed in the forward position. Although this train will only be made up of the two cars in the image, because we want the gamer to have only these two cars in this shuttle we'll flag the WagenDaten_ so that the maximum and minimum number of cars in this train will always be 2.

The Reversed A car is the final car in this train but it needs to be entered as the MiddleCar_ because the second car in all trains made up of two car types must be entered in the WagenDaten_ as the MiddleCar_.

This second proposed train is comprised of 2 A cars and since much of the seating in our A car is sideways it's a good option for a reverse shuttle set-up where the train travels backwards in addition to forwards on a track that's not a continuous circuit.

Again, because we only want the gamer to have these two cars in the train we'll flag the WagenDaten_ so the number of cars in this train will always be 2. Note that again we'll enter the Reversed A car as the MiddleCar_ in the WagenDaten_

While two-way travel is best for this train setup it could certainly be used in a single direction for a continuous circuit shuttle track.

This train will appear on the track with a capacity of over fifty guests and is just like our second proposed train except this time we've chosen our E car as the MiddleCar_ which is the car that will duplicate when the gamer adds more cars to the train. Because this time around the E car is the MiddleCar_ we can flag the Reversed A car in the WagenDaten_ as the RearCar_.

As an additional version of this train arrangement we'd like to offer the gamer a non-stretched version of a MiddleCar_ which we so far haven't created. You'll see that we've attended to this later on in this session.

The fourth train we've planned is made up of a single D car which is entirely suitable for two-way travel on any shuttle track in a small park. While it's the dual console version of our stretched car it seats under thirty guests. Of course we'll be sure to flag the WagenDaten_ so this train always places only as a single car.

Two-way travel is best for this train setup and it could certainly be used in a single direction for a circuit shuttle track. We've used two C cars instead of two A cars like we did with the first train we've planned so we'll again set up this WagenDaten_ for a minimum and maximum of two cars only.

Now approaching a guest capacity of a hundred guests right out of the gate, this is our fifth planned train. It has an E car as the MiddleCar_ along with two C cars, one for the front and one for the rear. This train would be restricted to a minimum of 3 cars and a maximum of 5 cars. Our Planned Tenth Train below will demonstrate how we settled upon a maximum number of 5 cars.

Here's another train with a C car both in the front and in the rear except here we've placed a G car as the middle car which will serve as the observation car. Again we'd only want a single G car in this arrangement and because the G car is the MiddleCar_ we need to adjust the WagenDaten_ so there is a maximum and a minimum of three cars.

This train will start out on the gamer's track with a capacity of nearly 120 guests. Because we again want a single G car in this configuration, so that we have a forward observation car we've made the G car the SecondCar_, have added an E car as the MiddleCar_ and finished with a Reversed A car as the RearCar_. As the E car is the MiddleCar_ on this train the gamer will be able to add as many E cars as they wish. Here we'd set up our WagenDaten_ for a minimum of 4 cars, and with perhaps a maximum of six cars.

In our ninth planned train we've switched the positions of the E car and the G car, putting the observation car at the back of the train while a reversed C car serves as the RearCar_. Just like with our eighth planned train the gamer will be able to add as many E cars as they need. For this train we'd again set up our WagenDaten_ for a minimum of 4 cars.

This train is just like our previous one except instead of using a C car for the FrontCar_ and for the RearCar_ we've used a B car at the front and an A car at the rear. We've gone ahead and added three MiddleCar_s to this image to bring the displayed train capacity to over 160 guests.

We've done that to aid in considering how many middle cars we want to allow our gamer to add to our train for which we need to take into account that the maximum time allowed for boarding rides in RCT3 which is 260 seconds. A safe guideline to estimate the boarding time for each guest is about two seconds per guest so with 260 seconds total time allowed for boarding this train we can look forward to a maximum of, say, 130 to perhaps 150 guests per ride. The total number of guests who board will depend on if the queue is nearly or completely full when the train arrives at the station to drop off guests from the previous ride. Of course guests won't always board at a constant rate so, even with full queues, sometimes this train will leave with about 125-130 guests and other times it will leave with closer to 150. With 3 middle cars giving this train a total capacity of 166 guests we can count on this train leaving the station with a RearCar_ that's either empty or that only has in it one or two guests.

We could restrict this train so the gamer can't make it more than 6 cars in length. We could also do what Weber's done with his MagLev and that would be to enable up to 30 cars per train which does look spectacular for screenshots. (See Weber's MagLev with a 30 car train in our advertisements here.)

One wouldn't want to permit less than four cars for this planned tenth train but the maximum number of trains would be a personal call that's up to the person creating this train.

While we've taken care to make a fair assortment of car types before configuring them into train types the overall shape of this train is not quite there and we immediately noticed when we planned our eleventh train that we'd missed something. We've created an F car and a G car but haven't created an F/G 'transition' car shape which we'll do now. We'll call this transition car the H car.

Returning to our planned eleventh train we'll remove the first and the third F cars and replace them with our H car. Having done over our planned train we'll cancel our eleventh proposed train design ...

... and list this new train configuration that we've updated with H cars as our twelfth planned train.

With the first H car set up as the SecondCar_ and the Reversed H car set up as the PenultimateCar_ the overall appearance of this train is more pleasing. We've also managed to reduce the guest capacity from 200 guests to 192 which, although not a huge difference, is closer to the maximum suggested train capacity of around 160 guests - it will mean the difference between a loaded train leaving the station with about 30 empty seats instead of around 40 empty seats.

We'd release this train configuration with a minimum of 5 cars. This train configuration as it stands will never load enough guests to make additional MiddleCar_s necessary but we could go ahead and enable additional MiddleCar_s and leave it up to the gamer to decide the maximum number of cars they'd like for this train to have in their park.

You'll recall we were missing a train type when we planned our First train and our Second train. At that time we discovered we needed a non-stretched version of our E car which we've now created. This is our J car.

Now let's get the J car into our train configurations. The following screenshot again shows our third planned train. Observe the difference between using only an E car as we've done here in our third proposed train ...

... and our adding a J car at either end of the E car to come up with a thirteenth train configuration. The design of the J car is such that it does not need to be reversed whether it's used as the SecondCar_ or as the PenultimateCar_.

Returning to our third planned train ...

... an additional train configuration is presented here where we've altogether removed the E car and put a J car between the two remaining A cars.

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