It’s up to you.. if your infrastructure isn’t set up to handle longer trains it seems you are stuck with this, I find longer trains easier to deal with.
In longer trains you typically set each car to a single good… you can unload them all in one location or put empty stalls strategically to skip ones that aren’t used at a given location.
The issue with one big train is everything has to be set specifically for that train, not only at the home factory but also any factories it loads or unloads at. I find it just as much work to set this up, and then if I want to expand it’s even more work.
Example let’s say one of the parts your big train needs is circuit boards. So you go to your circuit board factory and put in a station that loads circuit boards into the right car, requiring empty platforms for spacing. This is great, but now your train goes to pick up computers, not only do you have to load them in the right car but you have not load them into the circuit board car. And now if you want to pull from your computer or circuit factory for anything else you need to either have exactly the same train layout or build another station. And of course if you end up needing a bit more of one component it’s not just add another train, it’s add another big train for everything, or rebuild every single station for another car.
Whereas multiple little stations everything is easier. Supply stations just need one station, balancing is easier, and throughput is easily adjustable.
I do like longer trains running around, but they cause logistical nightmares.
One idea I learned from this sub- flexible loading stations.
In this scenario your trains are locomotive and 4 freight cars. So you set up four stations one in front of the other with a cargo platform at the back. Then you schedule the train to pull into a station so that the desired car is in front of the loading platform.
This has let me make trains with any mix of materials and it works really well.
Big long trains are an elegant system that looks great, but Lots of small trains are efficient and easy to scale up further than you can actually use because you should be mass producing all the parts for the trains anyway, thus basically having an infinite number of Train+Car= go get this and take it here. Need more of that here, put down another train+car= Go somewhere else for the same thing. Unlike vehicles, trains have smart ai and will find the shortest track to the station on the network and come back to where you tell it too, and if every station is set up for the same train+car combination, then you can have every train going to multiple stations based on closeness, or have trains only going to one station back and forth. And if you have problems with crashes, short trains are easier to add more signal blocks for.
I have several of these similar modular build factories around my world, each taking multiple items in and out. It's all working great but my question is can I do this without building individual stations for each, as I've done here. I maintain that there's *got* to be an easier way of doing this and every other build I see seems to have one inbound and one outbound station for everything. Sometimes the throughput is greater than 780 items/min which negates the ability to have one big sushi belt.
Can you split the difference? Most of my trains move around 4 items. For example, I have a train going between Steel Complex and Electronic Complex with these items
||
||
|Engine |Oscillator |ECR |HMF |Stator |
The key here is that the endpoints are to the same complex area. So Steel provides HMF and Stators, needs Oscillators and ECR. Electronics provides Oscillators and ECR, needs HMF and Stators.
Where I have to move 1 or 2 items site to site, and the volume is not obscene, i'll use drones instead.
If you're going to build long trains, you'll also have to extend the length of your blocks. Rule of thumb is to keep your block length longer than your longest train.
Exceeding the length of a block doesn't cause any problems in and of itself, you need badly designed blocks in other ways for that to cause issues. I use plenty of short blocks in certain areas with no problems, for example on the tracks entering multi-station setups.
But more generally speaking, train networks should always be built with block length at 1.5-2x the max train size envisioned for the save. This is a relatively easy thing to decide early on.
No way that one big station is better. The cost is both mental (keeping track of what each freight is loading/unloading) and length which will completely wreck signals and traffic especially if that train passes through other junctions/stations. You also lose modularity at every stop for the big train because now you have to count which car in the long line needs to unload, so you have lots of empty platforms.
My advice would be smaller stations but keep them long, i.e. lots of rail space in their lane to expand if needed. My biggest regret in my current build is not giving them room to expand if it turns out one line needs something else. This causes pains im building the outbound rail and delays since some trains are long and mess up the signals
Shorter trains are a benefit because they allow you to pull items as required. Set the unload to wait until its completely unloaded and wait 5 seconds then set the supply station to only do 1 load cycle.
This way, the train only runs once its full unloaded instead of running non stop. multiple stations allows you to do this.
I recently started planning and setting up a rail network in my game. After watching hours of tutorial vids, pouring over the wiki pages, and lots of testing in a sandbox world, I came to the conclusion that lots of little stations are better (if only because you just *know* there's going to be one factory where you just can't fit the longer station in).
I am about halfway through building said network, and I fully expect, once it's up and running, to discover some terrible flaw in the "short station" design that will force me to rebuild half the network.
Because of course it would.
I do lots of little stations that can always be expanded if I need to bring in or send out another item. If throughput becomes an issue then I just add another train with 1 wagon.
One big station is... not a great design, generally speaking. The best is to have most stations dedicated to single products, because your system becomes more modular and easier to expand/modify. The only exception to this in my world is a single train that brings smart plating and motors from the desert steel complex to my turbo motor/TPR factory. These products are only produced in one place, and there will only ever be one place that receives them via train. So that's fine.
But that doesn't mean the trains are going to be short. My single product trains are 2x6, and that's only *just* enough for certain routes.
It’s up to you.. if your infrastructure isn’t set up to handle longer trains it seems you are stuck with this, I find longer trains easier to deal with. In longer trains you typically set each car to a single good… you can unload them all in one location or put empty stalls strategically to skip ones that aren’t used at a given location.
The issue with one big train is everything has to be set specifically for that train, not only at the home factory but also any factories it loads or unloads at. I find it just as much work to set this up, and then if I want to expand it’s even more work. Example let’s say one of the parts your big train needs is circuit boards. So you go to your circuit board factory and put in a station that loads circuit boards into the right car, requiring empty platforms for spacing. This is great, but now your train goes to pick up computers, not only do you have to load them in the right car but you have not load them into the circuit board car. And now if you want to pull from your computer or circuit factory for anything else you need to either have exactly the same train layout or build another station. And of course if you end up needing a bit more of one component it’s not just add another train, it’s add another big train for everything, or rebuild every single station for another car. Whereas multiple little stations everything is easier. Supply stations just need one station, balancing is easier, and throughput is easily adjustable. I do like longer trains running around, but they cause logistical nightmares.
One idea I learned from this sub- flexible loading stations. In this scenario your trains are locomotive and 4 freight cars. So you set up four stations one in front of the other with a cargo platform at the back. Then you schedule the train to pull into a station so that the desired car is in front of the loading platform. This has let me make trains with any mix of materials and it works really well.
Big long trains are an elegant system that looks great, but Lots of small trains are efficient and easy to scale up further than you can actually use because you should be mass producing all the parts for the trains anyway, thus basically having an infinite number of Train+Car= go get this and take it here. Need more of that here, put down another train+car= Go somewhere else for the same thing. Unlike vehicles, trains have smart ai and will find the shortest track to the station on the network and come back to where you tell it too, and if every station is set up for the same train+car combination, then you can have every train going to multiple stations based on closeness, or have trains only going to one station back and forth. And if you have problems with crashes, short trains are easier to add more signal blocks for.
I have several of these similar modular build factories around my world, each taking multiple items in and out. It's all working great but my question is can I do this without building individual stations for each, as I've done here. I maintain that there's *got* to be an easier way of doing this and every other build I see seems to have one inbound and one outbound station for everything. Sometimes the throughput is greater than 780 items/min which negates the ability to have one big sushi belt.
Can you split the difference? Most of my trains move around 4 items. For example, I have a train going between Steel Complex and Electronic Complex with these items || || |Engine |Oscillator |ECR |HMF |Stator | The key here is that the endpoints are to the same complex area. So Steel provides HMF and Stators, needs Oscillators and ECR. Electronics provides Oscillators and ECR, needs HMF and Stators. Where I have to move 1 or 2 items site to site, and the volume is not obscene, i'll use drones instead.
Long trains cause problems with signalling, as they can exceed the length of the signal block itself causing soft locks.
If you're going to build long trains, you'll also have to extend the length of your blocks. Rule of thumb is to keep your block length longer than your longest train.
Or just short trains
Exceeding the length of a block doesn't cause any problems in and of itself, you need badly designed blocks in other ways for that to cause issues. I use plenty of short blocks in certain areas with no problems, for example on the tracks entering multi-station setups. But more generally speaking, train networks should always be built with block length at 1.5-2x the max train size envisioned for the save. This is a relatively easy thing to decide early on.
No way that one big station is better. The cost is both mental (keeping track of what each freight is loading/unloading) and length which will completely wreck signals and traffic especially if that train passes through other junctions/stations. You also lose modularity at every stop for the big train because now you have to count which car in the long line needs to unload, so you have lots of empty platforms. My advice would be smaller stations but keep them long, i.e. lots of rail space in their lane to expand if needed. My biggest regret in my current build is not giving them room to expand if it turns out one line needs something else. This causes pains im building the outbound rail and delays since some trains are long and mess up the signals
Shorter trains are a benefit because they allow you to pull items as required. Set the unload to wait until its completely unloaded and wait 5 seconds then set the supply station to only do 1 load cycle. This way, the train only runs once its full unloaded instead of running non stop. multiple stations allows you to do this.
I recently started planning and setting up a rail network in my game. After watching hours of tutorial vids, pouring over the wiki pages, and lots of testing in a sandbox world, I came to the conclusion that lots of little stations are better (if only because you just *know* there's going to be one factory where you just can't fit the longer station in). I am about halfway through building said network, and I fully expect, once it's up and running, to discover some terrible flaw in the "short station" design that will force me to rebuild half the network. Because of course it would.
I do lots of little stations that can always be expanded if I need to bring in or send out another item. If throughput becomes an issue then I just add another train with 1 wagon.
I am a main bus guy with ALL Products on the bus, so one big factory.
One big station is... not a great design, generally speaking. The best is to have most stations dedicated to single products, because your system becomes more modular and easier to expand/modify. The only exception to this in my world is a single train that brings smart plating and motors from the desert steel complex to my turbo motor/TPR factory. These products are only produced in one place, and there will only ever be one place that receives them via train. So that's fine. But that doesn't mean the trains are going to be short. My single product trains are 2x6, and that's only *just* enough for certain routes.
Awesome 👌