The Ghost Train is a Gentle Ride in RCT1's Corkscrew Follies DLC and is available in all future installments.

(Haunted Train in Sprightly Park)

“Powered cars travel along a multi-level track past spooky scenery and special effects.” - In-game description.

Pre-Built Designs

*Ride ratings and statistics are measured using the ride with scenery (if it includes it), its default vehicle, and operating functions. Building the ride without scenery, as well as changing the vehicle type or operating functions will affect the results.

Technical Information

Stats

• Base Excitement Rating: 2.00
• Base Intensity Rating: 0.20
• Base Nausea Rating: 0.03

Stat Requirements

• Length of at least 590ft (180m)

If this is failed, the ride's Excitement Rating will be divided by 8, whilst the other two ratings will be divided by 2.

Stat Contribution Values

• Excitement Rating Value Multiplier: 70
• Intensity Rating Value Multiplier: 10
• Nausea Rating Value Multiplier: 10
• Soft Guest Cap Contribution: 50

Building Information

• Cost of Station Piece on Fully Flat Ground: $19.00 (Vanilla RCT2)/$19.50 (OpenRCT2)
• Cost of Straight Track Piece on Fully Flat Ground: $13.00
• Cost of Supports (per unit per tile): $2.50*
• Support Height Limit (ft/m/height units): 25ft/7.5m/+5

*Vanilla RCT2 does not decimal points in its support costs. Instead it will round down or round up to the next whole dollar amount at certain height intervals to equalize the amount as if it were spending a decimal amount. In OpenRCT2, it will correctly spend the decimal amount every time.

Other Information

• Maximum Guests Per Car: 2
• Maximum Number of Cars: Depends on track length - Upper limit of 12 in RCT1, 31 in Vanilla RCT2, and 255 in OpenRCT2.
• Sheltered?: No

Building a Ghost Train

The Ghost Train is in many ways, just like a Car Ride, but also different in just as many ways too.

It uses all of the same track pieces as the Car Ride and has all of the same value multipliers as it as well. As such, many of the same design properties are shared between the two rides. Its access to tiny turns allows it to be built compactly, and is generally one of the most space-efficient tracked rides in the game. Just like the Car Ride, it is also a good ride to use as a scenic setpiece when decorated with scenery.

The Ghost Train is marginally more expensive than the Car Ride, though you're very unlikely to notice this unless you build a giant design that takes multiple minutes to complete. It makes up for this and then some by having a higher support limit. The Ghost Train has a support limit of 7 height units as opposed to the Car Ride's 5 height units. This is a very small increase, but it will be extremely useful.

Just like the Car Ride, the Ghost Train has access to the Spinning Tunnel element. However, it is actually vanilla content on the ride in RCT1 and its sequels whereas the Car Ride only has it in OpenRCT2. As it does on the Car Ride, it provides a small bonus of Excitement for having one of them. Having one Spinning Tunnel anywhere on the track gives the ride an extra 0.08 Excitement, but any Spinning Tunnels after the first one will have no effect.

The Ghost Train also has the same feature with door scenery pieces as the Car Ride that allows them to be placed directly on the track and open when the cars get close to them. Both of the RCT2 pre-built designs take advantage of this feature.

Where the Ghost Train differs from the Car Ride considerably is its speed. The Ghost Train runs at a speed of 5mph when it leaves the station, which is the same speed as the Racing Cars on the Car Ride. However, the big difference is the fact that Ghost Train vehicles will build momentum as it goes down hill just like a roller coaster would. The vehicles have the ability to fly off the track if it goes over the top of a hill too fast. This happens if it travels over a 'gentle slope to level' track piece faster than 31mph (50km/h) or a 'level to gentle slope' track piece faster than 38mph (62km/h).

The Ghost Train is also the only ride in the game that can crash if it takes a turn too fast, which happens at even lower speeds than it does on the hills. This happens if the vehicle tried to take a small turn faster than 18mph (30km/h) or tiny turns faster than 15mph (24km/h). This is why brakes are very important on the ride. If you have any areas where the vehicle can gain momentum, you may want to put a brake track piece right before the turn even if you think it wouldn't be going too fast.

The upside to this is that it's impossible to build a Ghost Train with penalties for excessive lateral or vertical G-forces since the threshold of this happening is much higher than the threshold for taking them too fast. This however of course also means that the ride is very dangerous to build and not very beginner friendly. You will always need to be mindful of the speed as you build it. OpenRCT2 adds a "simulate" function to run ghost cars on the track as you build the ride, but in the vanilla games, you'll have no choice but to eyeball it and test the ride after you've already finished it.

Do also keep in mind that the vehicles will travel faster with guests in them than without them. This means that it's possible for an empty vehicle to go through the entire track safely during a test, only for it to be able to crash because the guests gave it a tiny nudge of extra speed. Because the vehicles can only seat 2 guests, the increase in speed will be very minimal and in fact, may not even be noticeable, but it could still make all the difference. You should ideally take every hill or turn at a speed of about 4mph (6km/h) lower than the maximum possible without crashing so that you have a safety buffer for when guests board the cars. Brakes will slow the car down to the exact same speed regardless of if the vehicle is full or empty, so any speed lower than the maximum will be safe.

The Ghost Train has two different vehicle types: The Ghost Train Cars and the Haunted Mansion Cars. The two cars are exactly the same in performance, but the Ghost Train Cars are slightly smaller and more can fit on any given design, meaning that they are strictly better than the Haunted Mansion Cars. In vanilla RCT2, both cars are split into their own ride option, but OpenRCT2 combines them into one.

Stats

The stats of any Ghost Train will be roughly the same as a Car Ride design. It starts with the same base Excitement of 2.00 and has many of the same stat modifiers. The weird "train length" bonus of the Car Ride however is gone on the Ghost Train. Stats may have some slight variation because of the difference in average speeds, but the Ghost Train will always have a faster throughput because of this. Because the ride has the same rating value multipliers and very similar stats at all times, the ticket price for the ride will almost always be exactly the same or ever so marginally lower.

To test out the practical effect of this, here is a Ghost Train and a Car Ride with identical track layouts. The Car Ride has 0.15 more Excitement than the Ghost Train, however its ride time is also just over twice as high. If we charged the exact same amount of money for both rides and both of them had the same number of cars running on the track, the Ghost Train would be able to make a little over twice as much profit as the Car Ride because of this. The Spinning Tunnel also has different effects on both rides. Without the Spinning Tunnel, the Ghost Train and Car Ride would have 2.60 and 2.70 Excitement respectively.

The reason the rides have different ride lengths despite being the same layout is because the length is determined by how much distance is covered from the vehicle's starting point to the point where is stops at the station. Since the Ghost Train moves faster, not all of its cars will have left the station by the time a new one enters meaning that it will stop as soon as it reaches the back of the next car in the station instead of the end of the station. This influences the ride's length statistic and also has a small effect on its stats.

The ride otherwise has mostly the same stat functionality as the Car Ride. If you have a normal plan as to how you design one of the rides, that same philosophy will probably translate to the other ride perfectly smoothly (taking into account the Ghost Train's ability to crash of course).

Despite having a higher average speed, the Ghost Train has a slightly lower length requirement than the Car Ride of 590ft (180m) as opposed to 656ft (200m).

Throughput & Profit

As previously mentioned, the Ghost Train will have either the same or a $0.10 lower ticket price for any given design due to its extremely similar stats. However, because it moves much faster, it will have a much higher throughput. This results in lower queueing times and more income over any given period of time.

If we build the Ghost Train pre-built and let it run one in-game year at its highest capacity, it was able to process about 1700 guests in one year. Running at the ride's 5-13 month old price of $5.20 for one year would net us about $8,600 in one year.

Because the cars on the Ghost Train move faster than the Car Ride, the minimum waiting time is more of a factor since it increases the chances of cars being stuck in a line of cars at the station and guests not being to get off the ride. Because the Haunted Mansion Cars are smaller and can fit more of them on the track and both have the same weight, they are the strictly best choice for the ride. This however also makes them more prone to getting stuck if you forget to change the minimum waiting time.

The specific amount this is set to doesn't matter too much as long as this traffic jam doesn't happen, but setting it to 0 seconds means that the train leaves as soon as the guests board it.

Verdict

The Ghost Train is a cheap and compact Gentle Ride that is capable of making a good throughput and makes for a fantastic set-piece when decorated with scenery. You do have to be very careful with how you build it though to avoid the cars flying off the track.

Other Gentle Rides

[to come soon]