V 1.0
Efficiency is good for your Cost per Car/Mile, Operating Ratio, and Return on Investment. Indirectly, an efficient rail network can increase your share of traffic, which in turn leads to more money. An efficient railroad can mean the difference between spiraling death and skyrocketing profits. Clearly then, efficiency is a critical part of managing a successful railroad, and in many games, you’ll find it’s the efficient railroad, not the one who constructed the Trans-Continental route who wins the game.
So how do you improve your efficiency? When do you upgrade your tracks? What signaling is best? What on Earth is Cost per Car/Mile?
This ratio indicates how much it costs you to haul your cars. Literally, it tells you how many dollars it will take to move one car of traffic a mile down the track. Clearly you want to keep this number low – efficiency is keeping your costs low compared to your profit. But what is low? The consensus is:
Anything over $1.00 per car/mile is expensive.
Tracks that are near and over this number are problem tracks – they’re probably costing you more money than you’re gaining off the traffic.
First, make sure the track is running at its peak utilization. Once this is done, there are some things you should check concerning an expensive track.
· Do you have more capacity than you need? Do you have triple-tracking, but only 2% congestion? It looks like at some point in the past, this used to be an important, high-volume line, but over the years the traffic has shifted away, and now you’re left with three empty tracks. You’re paying money to maintain those tracks- a lot of money. If you’re not using them, abandon them. This will dramatically reduce your cost per car/mile if it was a problem.
· Are your engines too old for the job? It’s possible that you are running engines that are too old for the volume of traffic. High volume tracks can sometimes cost you a lot of money – if you are running outdated trains. An amount of traffic easily handled by the latest, greatest train can totally overwhelm an older, slower, and weaker locomotive. Make sure you’re running the right kind of engine for the traffic.
Ok, so you’ve checked the track, and it’s still way over $1.00 per car/mile. You’re carrying almost no cargo, and there’s no way to steal traffic away from a competitor. What do you do? Well, how important is the track to you? The best way to deal with an expensive track is to let someone else deal with it, by giving you millions of dollars for the privilege. Sell the track at an auction. Click on the track and press the Sell Track button. Check the Abandon option to get rid of it even if nobody wants to buy the track.
There are, of course, many strategic considerations that play into whether you should sell it or keep it and put up with the pain.
· Does the track play into a Grand Plan? As you’re building out west for the transcon, it’s likely that every single one of your tracks is going to have a hideous cost per car/mile right up until you connect to SFO, LAX, or the SEA/PDX area. Once you finally connect, you’ll start carrying (hopefully) huge quantities of cargo.
· Is the track in an area that is interesting to your competitors? The west coast, or mountain region, for instance, is interesting to an east coast player trying for the transcon. Obviously, if they could buy one of your tracks, they could build twice, or even three times as fast. Avoid giving your opponents an advantage if you can help it.
o However, you can also use this situation to your advantage. If there are two people racing for the transcon, any track that you put up for auction is likely to be fought over, sending the price soaring. This can really help a struggling west coast player early in the game. Just keep in mind that prestige, not money is the way to win the game.
So you’ve decided that your track is part of your grand plan, or it’s critical to keep it out of your competitor’s greedy little claws. But it’s still burning money like it’s going out of style. There’s got to be some way to ease the pain, and there is.
· Take the track out of service. It feels like the antithesis of everything you stand for as a railroad company, but if there’s only one passenger who makes a weekly trip between Kansas City and Portland, it’s clear that you’re never going to make enough money to justify keeping all those tracks in service. Removing all your trains from a track takes it out of service. No Service on a track reduces the track maintenance to ½ the normal cost, and you’re obviously not paying any maintenance on trains if you’re not running any. If you’re strapped for cash, removing service on your poorly performing tracks and using that money to bolster service on those tracks that have traffic can mean the difference between bankruptcy and survival.
Keeping your tracks well utilized is the first step to an efficient railroad. Once you’ve got everyone as utilized as possible, look for other areas to streamline.
Don’t panic. Congestion is a sign of a healthy, growing rail network. It indicates that you’re a popular railroad to ship cargo with. Although it can be difficult to keep up with the huge increase in traffic when you make a major connection (such as a Trans-Continental route, or Central Mexico, for instance), the system will soon balance itself, and all the frantic upgrading you did will pay itself off.
If congestion is over 110%, I do these things in order. If the first step doesn't solve it, then I go to the next.
1. Make sure you're running the best engines on the tracks.
a. If the newest trains have a higher top speed than your signaling allows, consider upgrading your signaling even if your congestion no longer requires it.
2. Upgrade the signaling to increase both the top speed of your trains, and let them run closer together.
3. Increase the number of tracks (double-tracking, triple-tracking, etc.).
If you're still over 110%, with the best trains, best signals, and quad-tracking, then try electrification.
If electrification isn't available, or you're still over 110% with electric trains, then consider constructing an alternate route - not between the same two cities, but running nearby - to alleviate that congestion.
Other ways to increase your overall efficiency:
· In areas where you don't have any competition, don't use those brand-spankin' new trains. Use slightly older, or slightly more efficient (but slower) trains. The Decapod, when it is available, is an extremely cost-efficient engine, so use it even after newer and better engines become available. But remember, if you use it on a line that has competition, you'll see all your traffic get shipped on your competitor's lines if they use faster engines.
· On tracks that do have direct competition, go for speed. All the shippers look at is how fast their traffic will get from one end of the track to the other (political status aside). With this in mind, when laying out your track for construction in the first place, make sure you choose speed over cost on lines you care about.
· Keep your cost per car/mile low. Any track over $1.00/car/mile is sucking away your money. Go in and streamline these tracks. Make sure they've got the best engines, and that they're well utilized. Upgrade the signaling from CTC to Radio (radio's cheaper to maintain). Remove unnecessary multi-tracking. At one time you may have needed it, but if the traffic shifted away, those extra tracks may be what's now causing the problem.
· If after all this streamlining, you're STILL over $2.00/car/mile, auction off the track, and make sure you choose to abandon it if it isn’t sold. Unless of course, you are keeping it around for some strategic purpose.
· I find that managers more than make up their cost, and keep me very efficient. Some people don't feel that way. I will typically hire managers if
1. It's at least 1890.
2. I started somewhere really lucrative (like the NE, MW or SE).
3. I have more than a dozen or so tracks, and it's starting to get hard to keep up with them all (I play on Fast speed).
Clearly electrification’s big benefit is very cheap maintenance, but with the huge initial investment, is it ever worth it? What are the pros and cons to electrification, and when should you make the jump?
· Electric locomotives have an enormous lifespan (and remain very competitive throughout their entire life).
· Early on, the Boxcab is an amazing engine for going through mountains. Notice the Avg. Speed in Track Details on a line through hills or mountains, then throw a Boxcab on it, and see how your speed increases.
· The second electric engine, the GG-1 is incredibly fast, and hauls a huge number of both cargo and passenger cars. It's not good through the mountains, but the sheer speed of the GG-1 will sometimes beat the mountain capable Boxcab when going over hills.
My theories with electrification may not make the most money right away, but I believe they will get you more prestige in the end. Initially, things may be slightly more expensive, but because your routes become faster and more efficient, the shippers will favor using your lines instead of your competition's. This means more traffic carried, which means more money, which means a better operating ratio. So not only do you end up with the various Traffic Carrying awards (including regional dominance), you also may get the efficiency awards after all.
· The route or line is in direct competition. It's not worth the expense if they are going to use your lines anyway.
· It looks like the competitor's line/route has a significant amount of traffic you can steal. You can look at their track, and it will tell you how many cars it carried last month. If that number is something like 90 or less, you're not going to gain anything by electrifying.
· The combined volume of traffic (your track, and all directly competing tracks) is a significant number. I usually look for numbers over 10,000 around the turn of the century.
· You have the best signals, quadruple-tracks, the best steam or diesel locos available, and you're still running over 120% congestion. The added efficiency, speed and power of electric locomotives may be enough to save you. If this is the case, electrify even if you don't have any competition.
· You want the speed of electric locomotives to help get you a larger portion of traffic. This is a great idea, especially in mountainous areas where the Boxcab shines. Remember that electrification is really expensive, and those tracks through the Rockies tend to be a lot longer than the short hops in the northeast. Make sure the track has a high volume potential before you spend the money. In the real world, almost all electric lines are found in the Northeast and Midwest. There's a reason for that.