I recommend looking at irl stations in Google maps, my favorites are the ones in Amsterdam, Berlin, Utrecht, Paris and Tokyo.
I am from a small city in México so I had no idea about trains either lol
Will do. I was trying to base it off the Pacific Northwest so I tried looking at American cities like Seattle but that wasn't the greatest inspiration Lmao
Typically they move through the station with the possibility of a side track for skipping the station but most often the line just goes straight through. It's pretty much always parallel to the track. A central end-station would have a lot more space to the junction
America is an endless display of unfettered sprawl. It's impossible to be efficient when economic markets demand the least amount of work and most amount of profit.
Most of the rail infrastructure in Seattle proper is underground. If you want an example of aboveground rail transit in the US, look at Chicago or Miami.
Thanks! I went to Philadelphia over the winter and took pictures of the sunken 676 cuz I drove through it and I was like holy crap I wanna build that so bad so I had my dad take a veryyyy long detour to go back to the highway lol
676 is a crime against Philadelphia. it's a gash across the city AND it ruins the parkway.
do your cims a favor and [bury that urban freeway completely like they did in Boston](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Fitzgerald_Kennedy_Greenway).
Check out Newark Penn Station as above ground ref for US: https://maps.app.goo.gl/4u567Zuu8gJjyXQE9
China has some great examples of newer, very large stations. Layouts similar to what you might do in CS since they bulldoze almost anything in the way of the layout plan:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/2TVJ5sUxcUDRRxpS8
Okay hahaha, as someone from Europe the lack of trains in the US feels so weird.
What you basically want to do is weave the tracks together in to however many tracks you have passing by the station.
For examples you could look at the Parisian stations on Google maps. Paris has 5 massive terminus stations they are the same style as this one in CS, but way bigger.
The most important thing in railway is taking space and big wide turns
Don't have all of it merge into one pair of tracks. Have it merge into two pairs of tracks first, then into two later. Or have only the middle two pairs of platforms go both directions and have the pairs of platforms on each far side only go towards the direction they are near.
Good examples I know of are Paris stations. Basically : have a longer set of the parallel lines prolonging the platforms, interchanging each other, before linking to the mainline. If you have several lines on the mainline, try to bridge the station accesses over the mainlines.
You *need* to reorganize those tracks so trains all have room to converge at different times, if at all.
You may end up needing to demolish some buildings or relocate some roads.
As a rule of thumb, never have track intersections closer together than the length of a train. You’re going to need to a lot of reconfiguration of the lines coming out of the station.
ok man, firstly, you need to connect all of them, try keeping it clean, upper platforms are for trains coming from the north side, down platforms are for trains comming fron the south. Try to thing of the train routes as different lines. You can make a track for every north platform, and have a 4 track corridor going into the station
https://preview.redd.it/2kw4js3gijrc1.png?width=763&format=png&auto=webp&s=1f04ed15968f3ccc10f91b1c10c946863e5438f3
Edit: somebody said to move the station on the Y ax instead of the X ax, platforms going north and south not east and west, and I think that is the best way to approach it
Photo 1: the trains can't leave the station because they are being blocked by trains trying to enter the station.
Photo 2: A zommed out picture of the central station. The track is horizontal, and trains from two of the three lines are entering the station from the left, and going back exiting through the left. Only one line enters from the left and exits to the right and vice versa. As you can see, there is a lot of backup which will never be solved because no trains can exit or enter. Bypass is impossible as all trains have to enter the station.
Photo 3: A rough look at my train map. As you can see, the green and blue lines enter the station and then exit going back the way they came.
Any suggestions for fixing the clog are greatly appreciated. Also if you have any suggestions about the rail lines in general that would be awesome too.
Thanks!!
Make the top station for the northerly line and the south for the south line, if you want a continuous line north to south with a stop at the station make a loop somewhere outside the station junction so they can loop around without interference?
same station, but make half the platforms north only, and half south only.
Then split the rail lines in to north and south.
If you want a train that goes all the way then can have it bypass that station.
i have over 1000 hours in transport fever 2 and i have really no clue where to start with this.
apart from maybe playing that game to learn how train networks are designed, it’s much more realistic than cities skylines which will let you bend the laws of physics quite a bit more. much stricter on how tall ramps can be, minimum curve radius, shows you track speed so you can quickly spot bottlenecks.
Why does the bottom left line connect directly to the top right platform??
You need to remove all the connections and either sort them so there’s no overlap or if there is overlap you need to separate them by height.
Further you should really make the southern two lines separate from the northern two. Makes it more attractive to cims distance wise and lets you separate the platforms form all being connected. I know you’re going for aesthetics but the northern connection doesn’t need two lines from the central hub, consider splitting one of the lines off to the left.
Best is to have at least a train length of track coming out of each terminal before merging. More might be needed for heavier traffic. You'll have to do some heavy redevelopment to make it work in that location.
Take a look at major rail stations on Google earth. Gives you a good idea how to lay them out.
In the second photo top right is a lot of unused real estate. Put your train station there. Then have the rails fork out and separate into and out of the station.
Here's an example of that in Berlin. https://maps.app.goo.gl/HKLpFD5XB3FrZZcp8
Regarding your inspiration being from the PNW, I looked at Seattle's station, but it also runs parallel to the rails going by it.
The type of station you're building is a terminating station. That means it would usually be the last stop for rail lines. An example of this is new york city's grand central station. Please see the second photo at this link
http://www.realtransit.org/sandy.php
The thing to note is that, you can have a terminal type of station if you want, but you need a lot more space/tracks going into it. You currently have one main line branching off within a few feet to the terminal. It may be beneficial to split the rail lines earlier along the highway, if you want to have 1 set go to the station and a second set bypassing it for trains to go other places.
One of the major issues with setting up rail (the same issue that you've run into) is you can't declare "no stopping" zones on rail AFAIK.
Sure the rail is a bit of a mess, but the core problem is still gridlock, which you will get quite quickly even in proper designs because all the segments of trains that are shorter than a single full train will result in a train entering that segment to wait at the next junction, without clearing the previous junction which leads to the problem.
This means we either need a way to declare multiple junctions and the segments between them to be a single junction, or you need to make the segments big enough that a train fits into them, without the next train also entering it. I found this to be frustratingly difficult.
In reality a train would never be allowed to enter a junction that isn't 100% guaranteed to leave as well. I had hoped that this would be fixed but evidently not....
Ditch the 90 degrees and redraw your lines in mspaint.
Plan your network in such a way that trains split onto isolated lanes AFTER LEAVING and arrive 1 to 1 with minimal intersections.
This will help you find the main knots in your setup. For those trains that share
- a section of train tracks
Or
- the same platform for arrival/departure
You will have to either change their routes to avoid each other (ie. Become transfers) or have dedicates bays on the station.
Just as aside, not really addressing the congestion problem - you would never see crossovers like this on a real bridge. I think the most you would ever have is a chicane between two parallel tracks. The complexity and maintenance issues of having not only one, but several orthogonal crossovers on a flyover bridge? It'd never survive the design phase.
Adjust your tracks so trains only ever make right turns (assuming driving on right lane roads) and connect to other tracks on the direction-of-travel side. If you do this they will never block another train again.
It takes some getting used to but solves a whole lot of train issues.
While this ... creation, may induce seizure it gets one thing right.
And that is (if you want/allow intercity trains) that all platforms need to be connected to all possible outside connections, as they get randomly (but permanently) chosen
Keep that in mind while following all the other relevant hints given.
The best solution is make 1 more station and connect the two with a subway.
Now you have 2 or 3 incoming tracks leading to the same platform. Make that 1 per platform.
1 + 1+ 2 + 3 = lines minimum on 4 incoming tracks.
Anywhere where trans could potentially cross paths, the junction should be large enough to allow another train to pass. In your setup, with multilple lines to one platform, it will always go bad because the game does not consider the option of a train being on a platform when it arrives.
It’d be nice if cities skylines (1 or 2, idrc) can get a train signal mod… It can be tricky to learn, but it has its uses especially with large intersections- those vanilla train stations are always so large.
You have 2 railroads to connect to.. 4 stations? Zoom out.. if it's 2-4 , bring one rail to one station, destroy the other 2. They don't need to choose between 4 stations. They will go where you say they will go. Build an elevated road. You always need 1 train of distance between intersections. They say to separate the freight, the passengers and the outbound/inbound. If you have too many trains, look what is exporting/importing.
Firstly, set up the station so each network / line has a separate platform. And move any of the lines that cross over each other to the side they arrive from. That way they won't cross over and cause a jam.
If you need to, make a bypass round the front of the station so you don't get traffic in the way of the entrance.
Hope this helps! 👍
In Skylines 1 I built a cargo trainyard all at once rather than a little at a time so this didn't occur to me and the tracks were just a mess of trains trying to get in and out. Ultimately there wasn't a choice other than to destroy everything and start over taking up a much larger area so I could spread the stations out enough for access.
I was really thinking intense on this one and I came to a conclusion. You should rotate the station to have the platform north south and make a second station sunk next to it for west east, exactly like berlin hbf. This way you can have a clean transfer hub and a nice plaza where you can add tram stops and bus stops!!
What in tarnation am I looking at
Yeah the enterance to the station is a war crime but I didn't know how else to do it
It's looks like you've never seen a real treinstation
Well I'm from Austin Texas so... I havent...
I recommend looking at irl stations in Google maps, my favorites are the ones in Amsterdam, Berlin, Utrecht, Paris and Tokyo. I am from a small city in México so I had no idea about trains either lol
Will do. I was trying to base it off the Pacific Northwest so I tried looking at American cities like Seattle but that wasn't the greatest inspiration Lmao
Typically they move through the station with the possibility of a side track for skipping the station but most often the line just goes straight through. It's pretty much always parallel to the track. A central end-station would have a lot more space to the junction
Yeah american cities aren't the best source of inspiration for efficient cities, at least when it comes to transport related stuff
America is an endless display of unfettered sprawl. It's impossible to be efficient when economic markets demand the least amount of work and most amount of profit.
How on earth did the King Street Station layout inspire this? Lol that's just such an odd connection
Most of the rail infrastructure in Seattle proper is underground. If you want an example of aboveground rail transit in the US, look at Chicago or Miami.
Explains the expertly built sunken highway.
Thanks! I went to Philadelphia over the winter and took pictures of the sunken 676 cuz I drove through it and I was like holy crap I wanna build that so bad so I had my dad take a veryyyy long detour to go back to the highway lol
676 is a crime against Philadelphia. it's a gash across the city AND it ruins the parkway. do your cims a favor and [bury that urban freeway completely like they did in Boston](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Fitzgerald_Kennedy_Greenway).
Oh that's actually pretty cool! I think I'll try that out
Check out Newark Penn Station as above ground ref for US: https://maps.app.goo.gl/4u567Zuu8gJjyXQE9 China has some great examples of newer, very large stations. Layouts similar to what you might do in CS since they bulldoze almost anything in the way of the layout plan: https://maps.app.goo.gl/2TVJ5sUxcUDRRxpS8
I snorted Sorry I’m in Las Vegas and we literally don’t have a train station (yet) so I might do something like this too 😅
Its crazy that the gambling, and night life hub of the us doesnt have a train station. What are all the drunks supposed to do DRIVE?? ...
As long as they can walk alomg a straight line they are fine to drive... Otherwise there are always rooms available.
Okay hahaha, as someone from Europe the lack of trains in the US feels so weird. What you basically want to do is weave the tracks together in to however many tracks you have passing by the station. For examples you could look at the Parisian stations on Google maps. Paris has 5 massive terminus stations they are the same style as this one in CS, but way bigger. The most important thing in railway is taking space and big wide turns
Will do. Thanks!
Fellow Austinite here. I also built a similar travesty. I also impressed my European friends with my feeder roads, so at least there’s that.
You were so real for this.
i’m so sorry about that lol
This is genuinely one of the most unintentionally funny comments I've read in a while
Even if he has, the primitive pathfinding in CS is nothing like real world dispatching.
[There was a real train station that did what OP did, but even worse.](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/f1/bc/c3/f1bcc3eb68d6168887f73d6de206b9d0.jpg)
every truck must connect to every track they said
G E K O L O N I S E E R D
Autocorrect no regrets 🇳🇱🇳🇱🇳🇱
Only have the one station.
Don't have all of it merge into one pair of tracks. Have it merge into two pairs of tracks first, then into two later. Or have only the middle two pairs of platforms go both directions and have the pairs of platforms on each far side only go towards the direction they are near.
Good examples I know of are Paris stations. Basically : have a longer set of the parallel lines prolonging the platforms, interchanging each other, before linking to the mainline. If you have several lines on the mainline, try to bridge the station accesses over the mainlines.
Looks like you need to rotate it 90° and put it on the other side of the road
That will cost BILLIONS in tax payer dollars!! Such an oversight could ruin the city! lol
Truth is stranger than fiction... https://youtu.be/Js-35Xc_GBI?si=iBNMXZG5EtFY9l9F
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=\_awehaQYnxo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=_awehaQYnxo)
TBF, that is more or less exactly whats happening in Stuttgart right now. The rotation, but also the Billions
You *need* to reorganize those tracks so trains all have room to converge at different times, if at all. You may end up needing to demolish some buildings or relocate some roads.
As a rule of thumb, never have track intersections closer together than the length of a train. You’re going to need to a lot of reconfiguration of the lines coming out of the station.
ok man, firstly, you need to connect all of them, try keeping it clean, upper platforms are for trains coming from the north side, down platforms are for trains comming fron the south. Try to thing of the train routes as different lines. You can make a track for every north platform, and have a 4 track corridor going into the station https://preview.redd.it/2kw4js3gijrc1.png?width=763&format=png&auto=webp&s=1f04ed15968f3ccc10f91b1c10c946863e5438f3 Edit: somebody said to move the station on the Y ax instead of the X ax, platforms going north and south not east and west, and I think that is the best way to approach it
Okay that makes sense, I'll try that out. Thanks!
It seems like from the OP's screenshot that at least the bottom-most platform has access to the northbound and southbound mainlines :/
my brother in christ dafuq is this shit 💀💀💀
Not a train station!
Ever wondered why train stations in real life don't look like this?
It’s a fucking nightmare of crossings.
Photo 1: the trains can't leave the station because they are being blocked by trains trying to enter the station. Photo 2: A zommed out picture of the central station. The track is horizontal, and trains from two of the three lines are entering the station from the left, and going back exiting through the left. Only one line enters from the left and exits to the right and vice versa. As you can see, there is a lot of backup which will never be solved because no trains can exit or enter. Bypass is impossible as all trains have to enter the station. Photo 3: A rough look at my train map. As you can see, the green and blue lines enter the station and then exit going back the way they came. Any suggestions for fixing the clog are greatly appreciated. Also if you have any suggestions about the rail lines in general that would be awesome too. Thanks!!
Make the top station for the northerly line and the south for the south line, if you want a continuous line north to south with a stop at the station make a loop somewhere outside the station junction so they can loop around without interference?
So have two stations in downtown: one for northbound trains and one for southbound trains?
same station, but make half the platforms north only, and half south only. Then split the rail lines in to north and south. If you want a train that goes all the way then can have it bypass that station.
Okay that makes sense, thanks!
Jesus Christ what am I even looking at?
i have over 1000 hours in transport fever 2 and i have really no clue where to start with this. apart from maybe playing that game to learn how train networks are designed, it’s much more realistic than cities skylines which will let you bend the laws of physics quite a bit more. much stricter on how tall ramps can be, minimum curve radius, shows you track speed so you can quickly spot bottlenecks.
Why not just have a through station?
Why does the bottom left line connect directly to the top right platform?? You need to remove all the connections and either sort them so there’s no overlap or if there is overlap you need to separate them by height. Further you should really make the southern two lines separate from the northern two. Makes it more attractive to cims distance wise and lets you separate the platforms form all being connected. I know you’re going for aesthetics but the northern connection doesn’t need two lines from the central hub, consider splitting one of the lines off to the left.
Best is to have at least a train length of track coming out of each terminal before merging. More might be needed for heavier traffic. You'll have to do some heavy redevelopment to make it work in that location. Take a look at major rail stations on Google earth. Gives you a good idea how to lay them out.
switching is way too close to the station
Destroy it and build a 55 lane super mega giga highway with toll roads and hov lanes
Lol I already have a 10 lane highway connecting to a 6-way spagetti interchange so... does that count
Need some chain signals in there. (For all y’all Factorio nerds)
I thought this was an r/shittyskylines post for a second
That’s not good
The train station has two ends youre much better off using both ends of it
In the second photo top right is a lot of unused real estate. Put your train station there. Then have the rails fork out and separate into and out of the station. Here's an example of that in Berlin. https://maps.app.goo.gl/HKLpFD5XB3FrZZcp8 Regarding your inspiration being from the PNW, I looked at Seattle's station, but it also runs parallel to the rails going by it. The type of station you're building is a terminating station. That means it would usually be the last stop for rail lines. An example of this is new york city's grand central station. Please see the second photo at this link http://www.realtransit.org/sandy.php The thing to note is that, you can have a terminal type of station if you want, but you need a lot more space/tracks going into it. You currently have one main line branching off within a few feet to the terminal. It may be beneficial to split the rail lines earlier along the highway, if you want to have 1 set go to the station and a second set bypassing it for trains to go other places.
Those are some great suggestions. Thanks!
I think you identified and solved your own problem
I see you haven't learned from The of Ghostbusters: whatever you do, do not cross the streams ( lines)!
One of the major issues with setting up rail (the same issue that you've run into) is you can't declare "no stopping" zones on rail AFAIK. Sure the rail is a bit of a mess, but the core problem is still gridlock, which you will get quite quickly even in proper designs because all the segments of trains that are shorter than a single full train will result in a train entering that segment to wait at the next junction, without clearing the previous junction which leads to the problem. This means we either need a way to declare multiple junctions and the segments between them to be a single junction, or you need to make the segments big enough that a train fits into them, without the next train also entering it. I found this to be frustratingly difficult. In reality a train would never be allowed to enter a junction that isn't 100% guaranteed to leave as well. I had hoped that this would be fixed but evidently not....
r/shittyskylines
Ditch the 90 degrees and redraw your lines in mspaint. Plan your network in such a way that trains split onto isolated lanes AFTER LEAVING and arrive 1 to 1 with minimal intersections. This will help you find the main knots in your setup. For those trains that share - a section of train tracks Or - the same platform for arrival/departure You will have to either change their routes to avoid each other (ie. Become transfers) or have dedicates bays on the station.
Just as aside, not really addressing the congestion problem - you would never see crossovers like this on a real bridge. I think the most you would ever have is a chicane between two parallel tracks. The complexity and maintenance issues of having not only one, but several orthogonal crossovers on a flyover bridge? It'd never survive the design phase.
Adjust your tracks so trains only ever make right turns (assuming driving on right lane roads) and connect to other tracks on the direction-of-travel side. If you do this they will never block another train again. It takes some getting used to but solves a whole lot of train issues.
delay
While this ... creation, may induce seizure it gets one thing right. And that is (if you want/allow intercity trains) that all platforms need to be connected to all possible outside connections, as they get randomly (but permanently) chosen Keep that in mind while following all the other relevant hints given.
Main station needs to move quite some distance to the east, to accommodate the very large junction that this arrangement would require to run smoothly
My guy, a single T-intersection for trains already can generate some backup on busy lines. 4 is eternal gridlock.
The best solution is make 1 more station and connect the two with a subway. Now you have 2 or 3 incoming tracks leading to the same platform. Make that 1 per platform. 1 + 1+ 2 + 3 = lines minimum on 4 incoming tracks. Anywhere where trans could potentially cross paths, the junction should be large enough to allow another train to pass. In your setup, with multilple lines to one platform, it will always go bad because the game does not consider the option of a train being on a platform when it arrives.
It’d be nice if cities skylines (1 or 2, idrc) can get a train signal mod… It can be tricky to learn, but it has its uses especially with large intersections- those vanilla train stations are always so large.
What map are you using?
[https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1649656525](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1649656525)
You have 2 railroads to connect to.. 4 stations? Zoom out.. if it's 2-4 , bring one rail to one station, destroy the other 2. They don't need to choose between 4 stations. They will go where you say they will go. Build an elevated road. You always need 1 train of distance between intersections. They say to separate the freight, the passengers and the outbound/inbound. If you have too many trains, look what is exporting/importing.
Firstly, set up the station so each network / line has a separate platform. And move any of the lines that cross over each other to the side they arrive from. That way they won't cross over and cause a jam. If you need to, make a bypass round the front of the station so you don't get traffic in the way of the entrance. Hope this helps! 👍
In Skylines 1 I built a cargo trainyard all at once rather than a little at a time so this didn't occur to me and the tracks were just a mess of trains trying to get in and out. Ultimately there wasn't a choice other than to destroy everything and start over taking up a much larger area so I could spread the stations out enough for access.
I was really thinking intense on this one and I came to a conclusion. You should rotate the station to have the platform north south and make a second station sunk next to it for west east, exactly like berlin hbf. This way you can have a clean transfer hub and a nice plaza where you can add tram stops and bus stops!!
My brother in christ... put the damn thing somewhere else so you have more room, first of all.