Electric Locomotive

The Electric Locomotive is a vehicle used to transport cargo and engineers along the Railway. Connected Freight Cars can be loaded/unloaded via Freight Platforms. The Electric Locomotive can be automated, by setting a list of Train Stations for it to stop at.

Multiple cargo freight cars and locomotives can be chained together to form a single train. The train is currently the fastest vehicle in game, capable of reaching over 365km/h downhill, allowing for efficient long range resource transportation.

Power

 * A locomotive requires at least 25MW of power to operate, and up to 110MW if it is going uphill or gaining speed.
 * If the railway is not powered, you cannot accelerate the train. You can still brake a moving train on a powerless railway.
 * In a multiplayer game, locomotive always appear powerless to the client. This also disables the ability to control the train by the client.

Construction

 * Do not build the locomotive on a slope, as it will start moving downhill by itself, making it difficult to take over control again.
 * To add more locomotives or freight cars to the train, select the blueprint and look at the railway behind or in front the current locomotive / freight car until you see the 'snap', then click to confirm. You can connect even if the train is moving. This feature is disabled for a client.
 * There is no option to detach or attach the individual vehicles. The only way to re-arrange the train is by de-constructing it then construct the new train layout.
 * A locomotive doesn't need to be at the front of a train. It could be placed at the end or at the middle. However, automated trains will only work if there is at least one locomotive at the leading section of the train, or at both ends if the train is double-headed.

Deconstruction

 * You cannot deconstruct the locomotive when it is moving, wait until it completely stops. You could deconstruct the railway beneath it to stop the moving train.

Collision

 * Trains and railways currently do not have any collision box along the travel direction, with the exception of wheeled Vehicles. This means trains can only be collided with a wheeled vehicle such as a Truck but nothing else. This holds true even if a player is in the train, that means riding a train can clip through player built structures and natural terrain, if the railway is built through. Engineers will not die if hit by a moving train.
 * The side of the train has collisions. However it only prevents the engineer from clipping through the side and will not cause train collisions.
 * If a player is standing on a moving train, and if it collided with another train, the player will then be carried away by the second train.

Train length

 * On horizontal railways, a locomotive can pull more freight cars easily (up to 100 per locomotive has been measured).
 * On uneven railways, it is advised to keep the ratio of locomotives and freight cars at 1:2.
 * A single locomotive can pull a maximum of 2 freight cars when moving steep uphill with a steady speed of 54km/h. More than that and the train will stop moving in the middle of the slope.

Speed
Trains have a horizontal maximum speed of 120 km/h, or 121 km/h without any freight car attached. When going down a long steep slope, trains can reach over 365km/h. Trains suffer speed loss when moving uphill or in curves. A locomotive alone moves at 91km/h when climbing up the steepest possible slope of 1:2.322. Trains with higher freight cars to locomotive ratio take more time to accelerate and brake. Manually driven trains can go backwards without receiving speed penalty.

While in manual driving, pressing the opposite direction key brakes the train. When additionally pressing the hand brake key (default spacebar) one can brake the train more effectively.

Tips for item transportation
The speed in which a train can transport items is dependent on a few factors:


 * Total round-trip time of the train
 * Number of freight cars
 * Inventory of each freight car (currently 32 Stacks)
 * Stack size of the transported items
 * (Input to the train station / should be handled by conveyors)

Most likely a certain transport speed is needed by the Engineer, similar to the speed of the conveyor belt in the unit items/minute. Therefore the following formula can be applied to calculate the needed amount of freight cars for a desired item speed (DS):

Number of freight cars = (DS [items/min] * RoundTripTime [min]) / (StackSize * 32)

For each item with different stack size this calculation needs to be done. The round trip time depends on the speed of the train (number of locomotives), the length of the train (number of cars), the length and incline of the track aswell as loading / unloading time (both combined are 50 seconds). One full cycle should be measured with a stop watch to determine the RoundTripTime.


 * For higher throughput, it is advantageous to extend the current train length instead of adding more trains. This also saves power.
 * The train average speed reduces as the distance reduces. Thus it could be disadvantageous to use trains as short distance transportation.

Round trip time
Two end-to-end stations with a fixed length of railway in between are built, and the time taken for a round trip is measured: The train is configured as 1-n-1 double-headed train, where n is the number of freight cars attached in-between.

First test: Distance = 8km (approx. diagonal length of the map)

Second test: Distance = 800m (approx. the distance from grass field to coal)

A double-headed train with no freight car and manual drive is measured as a reference. Where a freight car is present, the loading and unloading time of 25 seconds at each station is included.
 * (More precise measurements needed, please help.)

Horn

 * Press left mouse button to horn.
 * In some occasions a different horn sound is played.

Automation

 * Pressing the vehicle menu while in the train, or interacting with any connected train station will bring up the train schedule. Set the name of the train and station name before doing so. Select your train in the train list. Set at least two different stations, you can pick the station and edit their order in a route.
 * The train station will only accept the incoming train from one direction. The train can depart from the station to any direction though.
 * If a train route is set for that train, it will always attempt to run in automated mode; there is no button to toggle between manual mode and auto mode. Entering a train will switch the train from auto mode to manual mode. To return to auto mode, the engineer has to exit the train. (You can stand above the locomotive if you want to take a 'automated' ride)
 * If the train does not move even if its train route is set, check if the railway is connected properly. Check if all train stations are built at the correct direction. Check if power is connected to at least one of the stations.
 * Automated trains accelerate slower, brake slower and brake more often at turns and near stations.
 * In a multi-locomotive train, all connected locomotives are treated as a single train and thus share the same train schedule. All connected locomotives provide pulling force regardless in which direction they face. Thus it is advantageous to build at least one forward-facing and one backward-facing locomotive in a train.

Leaning
Train visually leans while driving curves.

Current issues

 * At the current version, client cannot interact with the locomotives. This also means the train schedule may only be set up by the host.
 * Trains appear laggy to client.
 * Attempt to 'ride' a train by standing on top of it will crash the game, this particularly happens to client side only. It may kill the client-controlled engineer during the re-join process.
 * At the current version, if more than one train shares a common track, the train and the freight car can become detached from each other and appear on different parts of the map at the same time. However the freight car will still stop and start in accordance to the train, and unloading and loading the freight will make a crate spontaneously disappear and appear out of thin air on the freight car. The cuffs will also separate and appear to spaz around in mid-air in seemingly random locations between the train and freight car. Current workaround is to limit each rail system to one train each.
 * At this time, there is no train collision detection (resulting in the ability for two trains on the same track to phase through each other). Likewise, the player can phase through a moving train when standing in its path instead of being killed.