I mentioned this in the thread for HSC when it came out but it still seems to have not been corrected. On HSC service time table the intermodal double stack container trains are all 74 cars long but extremely light. Only 2600-2700t trains. It works out to something like 35t per car. In comparison on SMH and SPG intermodal trains average closer to 76t per car. I think this is wrong since if you do the math on the weight of the cars and containers it only makes sense if every single container on every single intermodal train was empty. Also, from a gameplay and realism point of view it makes all these trains unrealistically overpowered, since with 4 GEVOs and such low weight they can rocket up the mountain and stop on a dime (figuratively). The horsepower per ton is way off the charts, 6-7hpt when I think real life trains are usually closer to 1.5-2hpt. This is probably my number one gripe with HSC and I hope it gets fixed at some point since weight and power are pretty much the most important thing to get right on a US freight train. Other than this issue it’s my favourite DLC.
I will update this to say that a modder in the discord looked into the game files and find that the mass per unit values for container cars were as follows: Sandpatch: 25000 Sherman Hill: 22700 Horseshoe Curve: 22.7 So it seems like something is way off there, and it might even be as simple as an error with a decimal point .
I was just doing some more experiments with these trains. 1 intermodal train is 74 cars and 2714 tons. I disconnected the locomotives, which changed my weight to 371 tons for just 2 locos. That means each loco 185.5t. Since there’s also 2 on the back that means of the 2714t train, 742t is just locomotives. So the cars themselves are 1972t or only 26t each. A real life 53ft shipping container weights about 5 ton empty. So two on a car would be 10 tons + the weight of the car itself, basically means the entire train is empty containers. By contrast a 53ft container at its max capacity would be about 26t on its own. So even if a train with double stacked containers were half full the train should be waaaaay heavier than 2714t.
HSC is such an abomination. Basically nothing works how it should and will probably never get fixed. Skyhook should be removed from making content for TSW.
