I can think of a couple of situations, where stats for a train can come in handy.
The train crashes into something, what damage does it do, and what damage is done to the train? Though AFAIK Gurps Vehicles crash rules are pretty basic, so you hardly need more then a general train as guideline.
Someone shoots at a train with a given weapon, either intentionally or not, in what shape will the train be. Again you hardly need more then a general train, unless someone intentionally targets a train with a locomotive, that is small or fragile enough for their bazooka, which is an exotic situation. There also might be sniper fire at specific components of a train.
Someone has destroyed a train and must pay the damage. How much does it cost?
How long will a train ride take between 2 points, in a given setting? In a historic or quasi historic setting, you will need more the stats of historic trains, and building them would be an academic exercise to get something with Vehicle rules, that has the same stats. In a lot of sf settings the background/flavour will dictate the speed of the trains and again we are at an academic exercise. That leaves sf settings, where you are already commited to some technology, but are free to adjust travel times or distances between stations to the results train designs.
The pcs try to McGyver a damaged train going with components of other vehicles or similiar. Like the electric train is not going because there is a power outage, but we could use the energy cells from all thoose anti grav vehicles here. How far do we get with that? Most GMs would design the train for there adventure in that case, rather then designing a fleet of trains, when creating the background, just to have them ready.
Trains might be transported, like for instance by spaceship in a Traveller game. That means cost, weight and volume might be relevant. If you are into details, you might also calculate if it is ecconomically viable to transport some train components of build them locally, like having the higher tech world build locomotives and the lower tech world wagons.
The pcs might operate a train in a wild west like region, where bandits will try to stop the train, and at stops at backwater stations, they can be usefull outsiders (like they are the only person in town to have a good alibi, so they should make the investigation). Actual train stats will be needed seldom, but you still might want them, if the train is such a central feature of the campain.
The overall theme i see, is that required stats are either very general (you can use pretty much any train of any TL as approximation and get good results) or very setting specific or derived from a setting parameters. So it does not go that well with the vehicle of the weeks aim of many generic vehicles.
One mans groundfloor is an other mans earthmissle @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Johannes Trimmel @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
