Part I
Introduction
As far as Railroad Tycoon is concerned, cargo has the following main aspects:- the nature and properties of the various goods
- the nature and properties of the businesses producing or processing them
Categorizing all goods transportable by rail
As implied elsewhere, the program's internal matrices dictate a maximum number of 52 cargo types, stored in the "Types" subfolder of the "Data" folder in the form of .CTY files containing the necessary information about each one. An attempt to add a 53rd Cargo Type in that subfolder will cause the program to crash immediately upon loading any scenario. So, everything that might be transported by rail (practically any conceivable commodity) has to be squeezed into one of as few as 52 general categories (or cargo "slots", if you prefer).
This has obvious drawbacks, in terms of fine detailing, but also a significant advantage in terms of playability. A more detailed categorization of goods might add undesirable complexity to this 1-man-management game, lead to almost unmanageable micro-management (pun intended) and consume far more time than acceptable for leisure/edutainment purposes.Of these 52 categories, up to 49 are handled by the programm as conventional freight. 3 of them -by default Passengers, Mail and Troops- are designated as "Express" and handled differently, with specific origins/destinations, not moving around according to price fluctuations.
Mind that these 52 -or rather 49- cargo categories may differ from scenario to scenario, provided that a separate game installation is used for the scenario in question. We can say that proper configuration for every geographical / historical occasion will require a separate setup. With storage costs per Gigabyte continuously dropping, there is no reason to try to squeeze every conceivable railroad from 19th-century Britain to 21st-century China or 20th-century America, into the same installation, which poses unacceptable restrictions.
Is there an advantageous starting point to utilise as a basis for a rational cargo structure?Few known attempts have been made so far to define a plausible and rational set of these 52 or 49 categories. Basically, the user-enhanced 1.06 version and "Trainmaster" feature fully-deployed cargo sets. "Trainmaster" does contain some creative and useful ideas, that have to -and will- be incorporated in further developments. On the other hand "Trainmaster" suffers from the fatal mistake of unnecessarily renaming stuff -which should have been done exclusively through the RT3.lng language file-, to the extent that keeping its content will require painstaking modifications of cargo-related items. Version 1.06 does employ a paradoxical internal name format (e.g. "~4465Ceramics" instead of plain "Ceramics") for the freight classes that it introduces in addition to the officially available game, probably in order to separate them alphabetically, nevertheless I think that version 1.06 constitutes a better starting point towards an improved cargo structure than "Trainmaster". |
| The following are not arranged absolutely alphabetically, but rather taking into account proposed mergers of items. Approved renamings will take place exclusively through the RT3.lng language file, leaving the codenames used in production chain definitions intact. | ||
| Item | suggestion by Stoker | Verdict/comment by Sbaros |
|---|---|---|
| ~4465Ceramics | ||
| ~4467Concrete | Rename to Cement | |
| ~4469Crystals | Rename to "Sand" | Rename to "Aggregates" and merge |
| ~4513Rock | ||
| ~4475Dye | Rename to "Hides" | Abolish altogether. Dye can be considered part of Chemicals and "Hides" covered through "Cotton/Wool" |
| ~4476Electronics | ||
| ~4488Ingots | ||
| ~4493Machinery | ||
| ~4505Ore | ||
| ~4494Medicine | Rename to "Consumer Goods" | Disagree in principle. However, the slot can be merged in "Drugs/Alcohol", as far as the latter's medical use is concerned
|
| Alcohol | ||
| Aluminum | ||
| Ammunition | ||
| Automobiles | ||
| Bauxite | ||
| Cheese | Rename to "Packed Food" | Rename to "Perishable Food" |
| Chemicals | ||
| Clothing | Rename to "Textiles" | |
| Coal | ||
| Coffee | Rename to "Exotic Foods" | Rename to Food & drinks |
| Corn | Rename Grain to "Cereals" and merge | |
| Grain | ||
| Rice | ||
| Cotton | Rename to "Cotton/Wool" and merge | |
| Wool | ||
| Diesel | Rename to Fuel | Suggestion Rejected |
| Fertilizer | ||
| Furniture | ||
| Goods | Rename to Hardware |
|
| Iron | Rename more accurately to Iron Ore | |
| Livestock | ||
| Logs | ||
| Lumber | ||
| Meat | Rename to “Meat/Fish” in order to make it available from Fishports and process it in the food industry. Or better merge with "Perishable Food" | |
| Milk | ||
| Oil | ||
| Paper | ||
| Passengers | ||
| Plastic | Rename more accurately to "Polymers" |
|
| Produce | ||
| Pulpwood | ||
| Rubber | ||
| Steel | ||
| Sugar | ||
| Tires | Rename to "Car Accessories". Tires alone cover an unacceptably tiny percentage of an automobile-carrying wagon. |
|
| Toys | Rename to Luxuries | |
| Troops | ||
| Uranium | Abolish altogether. Nuclear stuff constitutes an especially insignificant portion of surface transport business |
|
| Waste | ||
| Weapons | ||
| New Cargo | ||
| Note: The general "Food" category was deemed too generic in terms of logistical properties. So, a "Perishable Food" subcategory was created to cover items with rapid deterioration rates requiring refrigerated transport, in contrast to long-lasting ones. "Exotic Food" doesn't necessarily need to be differentiated, once it is made available through appropriate seaports. | ||
- Salt is a pretty much unaccounted for commodity, despite the fact that salt sources often feature their own dedicated rail sidings.
- The sole "Automobiles" category may be considered inadequate, as heavy road vehicles are addressed to a totally different clientele, while they are not sufficiently covered under the "Machinery" label, both in terms of production and sale centers.
- Pipes and Wire are essential standalone commodities in the modern engineering industry and quite discernible within the related railfreight business, justifying inclusion in this project.
- Flour sounds like another welcome proposal from "Trainmaster", as it constitutes an important Intermediate product -and cargo- between raw "Cereals" and consumable "Food".
- Another major issue is receptacles of all kinds: Being hollow, they will fill many more freight cars than their raw ingredients will. So, they are far from logistically equivalent with other items of the same composition. A carload of tree trunks will produce far more carloads of, say wooden barrels than flooring planks. A beverage industry on the other hand, cannot produce more carloads of stuff than the carloads of receptacles it receives no matter if wooden, metal, glass or plastic. It seems unavoidable to provide a single slot for receptacles, regardless of their constituent materials, to provide all businesses with the containers necessary for shipping their products.
- Sugar-producing crops form a significant percentage proportion of rail traffic worldwide of a unique nature, which cannot be succesfully incorporated in the "produce" or "cereal" categories.
- Aerospace parts are not only a traceable part of modern railfreight, but more significantly an important missing link towards a balanced aluminium production cycle.
- Animal Feed better not not be treated as part of "cereals" because it also comprises leftovers from the entire human food & beverage industry that justify a dedicated slot.
Animal Feed
Alcohol-Drugs
Aircraft
Parts
Aggregates
Aluminium
Ammunition
Automobile
Auto Parts
Bauxite
Beets Sugar
Cement
Ceramics
Cereals
Chemicals
Clothing
Coal
Diesel
Electronics
Fertilizer
Flour
Food-Drink
Furniture
Hardware
Heavy
Vehicles
Ingot
Iron Ore
Livestock
Logs
Lumber
Luxuries
Machinery
Milk
Oil
Ore
Paper
Perishable
Food
Pipes
Polymers
Produce
Pulpwood
Receptacles
Rubber
Salt
Steel
Sugar
Waste
Weapons
Wire
Wool-Cotton
The above is thought to apply to temperate-zone, industrialized regions. Undoubtedly, each one of the ultimately discarded cargo categories -and many more- will find a place in special-case scenarios at the expense of others.
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