Steam Engines for Railroads

[dapullia]

This is something that has been bothering me a bit. Right now you jump from Nothing to Diesel Electric Railroad Engines. Following the natural progression, it would seem that you should not be able to get Diesel Electric Engines until you can produce oil and process it to make the oil based fuels to power them. In real life, a Diesel Electric must be fueled by liquid fuel (Diesel). This is missing right now in that the current engine should not be available until you can produce and refine oil. An old fashion steam engine makes better since for your first engine as it would permit access to railroads earlier. Here is my suggestion. I am suggesting 3 new rail cars and a new type of railroad engine. Basically, Steam Railroad engines, Solid Fuel Tenders, Liquid Fuel Tenders, and Water Tenders. I am thinking something like this...

The current Diesel Electric engine should be changed so you have to power it by fueling it with liquid fuel (Heavy Oil). As such, you must bring the oil in via a pipe or barrels. If you build a pipe to ground or a pipeline carrying heavy oil to your train stop spot, then the train would automatically hook up and refuel, or you can use inserters + a chest + filled heavy oil barrels.

The alternative for starting would be as follows:

Steam Railroad Engine would take some reasonable mix or steel, iron, and copper plus some amount of pipe plus a steam engine and two boilers as parts. As in real life, the steam engine by its self is useless. The engine would not have enough room for tanks for water and fuel or a bunker for solid fuels (coal and wood). This would not be an electric drive either, were taking about a true steam engine with push rods, valve gear, and pistons here. Watch out for bitters as this monster produces some degree of pollution and could trigger attacks while standing in stations. I don't see attacks while under way as the train could easily outrun the bitters or run them down. This would make you need to put up additional gun turrets at your train stops. One other problem would be that if you put an engine on both ends of the train, you would need to duplicate your tenders on the other end behind the second engine as fuel and water would not pass through cargo cars making your train longer and heavier.

This leads to the new cars. Tenders.

Fuel Tenders:
Fuel tenders would come in two types. Solid Fuel which would require two burner inserters in order to stoke the boilers and would require some amount of iron or steel. There is no electricity on this train, so your fuel loaders must power themselves. Maybe it is assumed that they operate off of steam from the engine so they have had their built in furnaces removed and don't produce pollution in themselves. You could put multiple fuel tenders together just so they are the first car behind the engine and before the water tenders. In this case, the fuel would be transferred tender to tender till it reached the engine. These would also require some amount of pipe to build as the tenders for fuel would also have a water pipe built into them to pass through the water from the water tenders.

Liquid Fuel Tenders:
Basically tank cars capable of carrying raw oil or refined petrol product. There would be two pipe lines on these cars, an fuel supply line to the engine and a water pass through pipe. These would require more pipe to build than a solid fuel tender. Would also require a water pump (assumed to be converted into an oil pump). Each end of the car on either side would be a fill port where you just stop at a pipeline or pipe to ground fitting then the train will automatically hook up and fill up. Fuel would be heavy oil or crude oil. Heavy oil would burn for efficiently and give you more power.

Water Tenders:
Same as Liquid Fuel Tenders but for water. Only has a single pipeline for filling and feeding the engine. Must be the last cars before your cargo cars. Same as the LFTs the last spot on each side of the car front and back would have pipe connections for filling. Stop the train by a pipeline or pipe to ground to automatically connect and fill. Also requires a water pump to build in order to feed the water to the engine.

This type of engine would let you have rail but not the range of another option. Multi-heading in the traditional since would not be an option due to the need to service the engines with fuel from the rear. You could assemble engine power packs as follows to provide you with one engine each way that share water but there would be no way to share fuel unless you do some research to retrofit water tenders to pass through liquid fuel as well:
Engine for Forward Travel at full speed - (One or More Solid Fuel Tenders) - Common Water Tenders - (One or More Solid Fuel Tenders Facing Reversed) - Engine Facing Reversed for Opposite direction travel at full speed. Then your cargo cars would be coupled to the front of either engine.

In this arrangement, the forward facing engines in your train for the direction of travel would provide power as they do now such that you kinda get a two way multi-headed train. You could always use separate tenders and resources for a traditional multi-headed train.

This would be the logical starting point for railroads. The disadvantages are that You would have to setup bunkers (for coal or wood then have inserters on the platform to reload your tenders possible also belts to refresh the bunker supplies) and also pipelines (water from a water pump to load the water part of the fuel and later for oil if liquid fuel is used) in your station. Tenders would load from the furthermost from the engine forward from tender to tender much as you would have happen with inserters between each box in a row of boxes towards the engine for solid fuels, liquid fuel and water would flow as it does through a pipeline.

What are you thoughts on this? I have posted a link the referenced thread as well.

[ssilk]

I added it to viewtopic.php?f=80&t=17734 New types of vehicles (train, tank, car, plane, ship...)