RE: [DL] Passenger Train Economics

["Spence, Roy" <r.spence@weir.co.uk>]

> To Roy Spence,
> Hmm interesting, could you tell me where you got those
> figures? I would be very interested in seeing it for
> myself. Oh and yes it was a factor of 50, I'm sorry I
> forgot to put that in there. I didn't have any real
> numbers to work with except the Deadlands rules when I
> wrote this.
>

I'm afraid the source I used isn't great, as it was the only "coal used to
mile travelled ratio" that I could find in the short time I had to browse
the net.  The source is an article written by a guy called Mike Brown, the
relevant URL is

http://www.mikebrownsolutions.com/steamart.htm


Maybe it's not of too much use.  I'll see if I can dig up something from a
more concrete source.

> In case anyone is wondering a modern day comparison is
> to take an 8000$ car that gets 32 miles per gallon,
> with that you pay 512$ per gallon of gasoline when you
> are at the pump.  

This I found funny, although it's far closer to the price of
gas/petrol/whatever on this side of the Atlantic than it is on yours :)

> Doesn't it seem odd to you that
> either of the two steam ships on the Missisipi
> (sternwheeler or sidewheeler) use 3 pounds of ghost
> rock to transport 325 passengers where a train takes
> 100 pounds to transport 210 (once again using the same
> 7 freight/passenger train to make my estimate) the
> same
> distance? That means that to equal the fuel to
> passenger ratio of a river boat a train must carry...
> 100 x 325 / 3 = 10834 passangers, which in turn
> translates into...  10834 / 30 = 362 passenger cars.

I'll have a look at the steamships, I hadn't thought about that comparison.
However going with the numbers above - if the steam train fuel rating is
coal then the equivalent ghost rock (again with the 50 coal = 1 ghost rock)
would be 2 pounds to transport 210 people, which seems to make more sense
and fits in with them building railroads rather than canals across America.

Also regarding the heating up of the boiler to begin with.  I would imagine
that they would use any cheap combustibles they could lay their hands on
first to get it going and then throw in the ghost rock last to finally bring
it up to the right temperature.


Roy

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