Cities, cities, and more cities!

After the introduction to the MRT system in my Simutrans world, it's time to introduce the various cities, and I'll start off with the Western cities: Springby, Mallilock, Baringham and Heppville.

Springby city

Springby is one of the first few cities to be developed, and as such, it plays an important role (think capital city!). Many monuments can be found at Springby, and passenger volumes through Springby station is very high, because the city itself is very big. While only 3 bus services serve this city, a total of 40+ buses run around to ferry people around the city.

Mallilock city

Mallilock is one of the last few cities to be developed, as it was born primarily to fill up the empty space between Baringham and Springby cities. It is a small-sized city, and has about 20+ buses running around to shuttle people around the city.

Baringham city

Baringham is one of the first few cities to be linked up to the freight network through its freight yard, primarily because it has a steel mill that produces steel when coal and iron ore are supplied to it. It is a mid-sized town, with 3 bus services and about 20+ buses shuttling people around the city.

Heppville city

Heppville is another one of the cities to be developed first, and Heppville station also has high passenger flows, as it provides a direct link to a medieval castle (tourist attraction). Currently, it is a mid-sized city, with buses going around to transport people between various parts of the city and the MRT station.

And now for the Eastern cities: Ashlock, Hillchester, Pollingwick, Pinemouth and Brentham ;)

Ashlock city

Hillchester city

Pollingwick city

Pinemouth city

Brentham city

And finally, here are the cities on the MRT Middle line!

Baringlock city

Torwick city

Brentmouth city

Torton and Newbury cities

Malliville city

More updates on the bus services are coming soon!

How would you design a MRT system?

First of all, Merry Christmas to you, my valued readers!

I have always been interested in MRT networks. Specifically, how to design such a network. Through Simutrans, I could experiment, design and build (and even monitor and test!) my MRT network. So to start off a tour of my Simutrans transport network, I thought the best place to start would be by introducing the MRT network in my network:

An overview of my transport network, showing all the cities, but I'm sure nobody can figure out where are my MRT lines!

 Since the map above is not so clear, I specially drew a system map:

And here the MRT lines are highlighted in the overview map: (the colours follow those in the system map)

And now it's time for some history behind the development of these lines:

Initially, when I first started playing the game, I had planned for a MRT line to link up all the cities (all 8 of them at the start), but then I realized that the positions of the initial 8 cities did not allow me to simply build a "Circle line" linking all the cities. Therefore I opted to build (or "found", as in Simutrans) more cities so that I could build such a "Circle line".

Hence, the first line to be completely built was the Circle line (currently the West and East lines). This line was built in stages (just like Singapore's Circle line) :

1. The section from Heppville to Pinemouth (clockwise direction) opens. All stations except Mallilock and Malliville are operational (those 2 cities were not founded yet). Trains went from Heppville to Pinemouth, and then back to Heppville.
2. The section from Pollingwick to Heppville opens, thus Baringlock station was opened (Brentham station was not opened as Brentham was not founded yet). Trains either went in the clockwise or anticlockwise direction around the line.
3. Mallilock and Brentham stations were opened as those 2 cities were founded, thus providing residents of those 2 cities a direct and quick link to the rest of the network (and residents of other cities more places to go to!).
4. Malliville was the last station to be opened on the Circle line. This station was opened in conjunction with its inauguration as the northern terminus for the Middle line (see next paragraph).

With the opening of the Circle line, Torwick was the only city not to have direct MRT service. Thus I started to plan for another MRT line to link up Torwick to the MRT system, and with this, the Middle line was born! 3 new cities of varying sizes were founded (Newbury, Torton, and Brentmouth) so that there would be sufficient ridership on the Middle line, and initially, the Middle line terminated at Springby and Baringlock stations. However, I decided to shift the northern terminus of the Middle line to Malliville station, where there is more space to build interchanges (and space to contain people - Springby station was getting too congested!).

After a while, I noticed that the trains tend to bunch up together, even though I deployed the trains at regular intervals. Therefore, to reduce the bunching, I decided to cleave the Circle line into 2 separate lines, the East and West lines, so that the trains have a terminal station that they can terminate at (and thus I can better space out the trains). Furthermore this allowed me to add more trains to the line segment that was experiencing higher ridership more easily.

With the overview of the MRT network complete, the next few posts would elaborate on the various cities in my Simutrans world :)

My Simutrans World

Hi there! Ever since the A Levels have ended (almost) a month ago, I have been playing this game (almost) every day; from when I wake up to when I sleep, which is about 12+ hours each day. While others are addicted to MMORPGs like DOTA or WoW, this is the game that I'm addicted to:

In a nutshell, the goal of the game is to transport passengers, goods and mail by a variety of modes of transport (rail, road, monorail). Seems easy? Consider the transport system that I'm working on, shown below in the screengrab:

This screenshot shows all the buildings. However it hides most of the road network!

This screenshot hides all the residential buildings, so that the road network is more visible!

Currently, my system comprises of 15 cities of varying sizes, 3 MRT lines linking up the cities, a railway network that is used to transport freight, as well as over 600+ convoys (buses, trains, monorails) running around in my Simutrans network!

In the coming few days, I will be posting more information on the following:

• Details, as well as the (feeder) bus network, of each of the cities in my Simutrans network
• Development of the MRT network as well as the freight network

So do check back to find out more about my cities in Simutrans!

Long time no post!

It's been a very long time (more than 1 year I think) since I have come over to Blogger to update my blog. Quite a lot of things have changed since then:

• Myself! I have since completed the A Levels (my last post was after the Promos!) and now I am waiting to get myself a boat ride into the resort island of Tekong. But more on that on another post (that is if I do decide not to procrastinate!) ...
• The Blogger interface has changed drastically! After changing to a brand new look, Blogger looks like it has totally shed its old look (like a caterpillar morphing into a butterfly?), and I'm still getting used to it. Upon exploring around, it seems that my blog still can get some pageviews which I don't know if it is due to friends coming to this blog or by bots. Hahaha :)

Later and in the next few days, I will be posting images of the things that I am involved in now that I've completed my A levels. So do check back for updates soon!