Hello hello and welcome! My name is MiniBetrayal
and this is a Factorio tutorial - Trains. I'll start off by mentioning that this video
is quite long, but is not necessarily meant to be viewed all at once or even in order.
Check the video description for chapter headings and feel free to skip back and forward to
learn about whichever part of the train system you would like to, or you can watch the whole
video in order to get a more coherent and complete experience. At the end of the video
I have a few worked examples with links to blueprints. Remember though that Factorio
is still in early access and so some features could change in the future. This video was
made with Factorio 0.17, and if there are any major differences made in the future,
I will aim to either post a comment below or make a follow-up video explaining the differences. Starting off with the research, there are
12 different research items related to the train system in the vanilla version of the
game. First is the Railway research. The prerequisites are the Engine and Logistics 2 researches,
which in turn require Steel processing, Logistics Science Pack and Logistics 1 researches. The
research itself costs 75 of both Automation and Logistics science packs, and unlocks three
items: the Rail, the Locomotive, and the cargo wagon. This research will allow you to build
trains that you can drive around and have a bit of fun in, but to have any kind of automatic
system, we need the next research. The next item of research is Automated Rail
Transportation, which requires the Railway as a prerequisite, costs another 75 Automation
and Logistics science packs, and unlocks the Train stop. With this research under your
belt, you'll be able to set up trains to go back and forth on their own, allowing you
to deliver resources around while you take care of other things in your base. Next, Rail signals. This research has Automated
Rail Transportation as its prerequisite, and costs 100 Automation and Logistic science
packs. It unlocks two kinds of rail signal, the Rail Signal and the Rail Chain Signal.
They each have their uses, which I'll explain later in the video, but their use will allow
you to schedule multiple trains on the same network without worrying about your trains
crashing into each other. This way, you don't need to build a separate loop of track for
each train. The next research to look at is the Fluid
Wagon. This one is a little more expensive at 200 Automation and Logistic science packs,
and it requires the basic Railway and Fluid Handling as its prerequisites. As you might
expect, it unlocks the fluid wagon, which allows you to transport fluids along your
rail network, and that can be very useful for retrieving oil from far-away oil deposits,
or deliver sulphuric acid to a uranium mining outpost. I'll next point out the Artillery Research.
Amongst other things, this unlocks the artillery wagon, which is a rail-based artillery gun.
This is more expensive again, and is quite far down the tech tree. Interestingly, The
Rail technology itself is not actually a prerequisite, so it is possible to build an Artillery Wagon
without having any rails to place it on. The last batch of researches to look at is
Braking Force. There are seven tiers of research here, each having the previous tier as a prerequisite
and Braking Force 1 having the Rail and Chemical Science Pack researches as its prerequisites.
Each tier increases in cost, with tiers 1 and 2 costing 100 and 200 of each Automation,
Logistic and Chemical science packs respectively, tiers 3, 4, and 5 costing 250, 350 and 450
of each Automation, Logistic, Chemical and Production science packs respectively, and
tiers 6 and 7 costing 550 and 650 of each Automation, Logistic, Chemical, Production
and Utility science packs respectively. Each research increases the amount of braking force
your trains have, meaning they dont need to brake for as long to come to a stop, thereby
effectively decreasing the time taken to get from A to B. The tier 1 research increases
braking force by 10% and the following tiers each increase the braking force by 15% increments.
The bonuses are additive rather than multiplicative, meaning that if you have tiers 1 and 2 researched,
your total braking force will be 25% greater than normal. So there's a lot to break down here. Let's
start at the beginning. Rails take 1 Stone, 1 Steel Plate and 1 Iron
stick to make, and they are made two at a time. You'll need a lot of rails to get a
train network going, so it's often a good idea to automate the production of rails if
you want to have a network of any appreciable size. Rails are placed down by hand in one
of four rotations, up-down, left-right, and your two diagonals. You can press R to rotate,
as with most other in-game entities. You should also note that the rail is a 2x2 block if
you compare it to another item like a chest, but it can only be placed on a special grid.
This is good, as it means you wont have an awkward off-by-one error when building a long
stretch of track, but it does mean that you need to be careful about placing things like
inserters to empty your trains. In general, it's a good idea to place rails down before
placing anything else next to them. To lay a stretch of track, hold the rail in
your hand and click. That will place down a single rail item. you can continue placing
rails like this if you wish, but there's an easier way, and it's something you'll need
to know when coming to corners or curves. With the rail in your hand, mouseover the
end of a section of already-built rail. You'll see a little arrow indicating the direction
you can build in. Click the mouse, and then move the mouse to where you'd like to build
towards. You'll see a ghost section of track that will turn red if you can't build there.
When you are happy with the new section, click again to place it. You can then continue to
move your mouse and click to place rails until you're done. And then, press Q to deselect
the rail. If you want to build an offshoot from your
main track, hold the rails in your hand as before, and mouseover the track. You can build
out from the middle of a track just like you can from the end. You may notice that sometimes you'll see the
ghost rail turn blue. This just means that you already have a rail in that position and
it won't cost you anything to place another there. Another thing worth mentioning is that curved
sections of rail cost 4 rail items, as they are longer. Lastly, there is a ghost construction available
for longer sections of track. As you mouseover the track you'd like to build
from, press shift while you click to start building. This will show you another ghost
rail, but this time the game will attempt to create a path to your mouse cursor no matter
where it is. You can rotate the direction of the end of the rail with the R key to try
and approach the destination from another direction, but if the game can't figure out
a path, you'll be shown the red X. When you're happy, click and ghost rails will be placed
that you can build later or you can allow your robots to deal with it for you. Once
again, you can press Q to exit the rail building mode. There are a number of different styles you
can employ when constructing a rail network, some of which I will go through a little later
in the video. Now let's actually build some trains! A train in Factorio can be of any length,
but you'll need at least one locomotive to get it moving. A Locomotive costs 30 Steel
Plates, 10 Electronic Circuits and 20 Engine Units. You can only place train components on a rail,
so you'll need to have a rail already built first. Don't forget that if you're going for
the 90-minute train achievement! Once you have a locomotive or another train
component built, you can place other components down next to it, and if the new component
is close enough, it will automatically snap into place and connect to the previous component. Now there are many ways you can set your trains
up, but there are a few common ones. If your trains will only ever go in one direction,
you can get away with just a single locomotive, although adding extra will mean your train
can accelerate faster. The locomotive doesn't have to be at the front of the train, but
I - and most people - think it looks a little nicer if it is. The choice is up to you. If your train will need to run in both directions,
you'll need some locomotives that face the other direction. You can rotate a locomotive
with R, as long as it's not connected to any other train components. If you look on various factorio forums, you
may see people referring to train structures as 1-4 or 3-8-3 etc. A 1-4 train is a train
with 1 locomotive and 4 non-locomotives, usually cargo wagons. A 3-8-3 has 3 locomotives at
the front, 8 wagons, and 3 locomotives at the back facing the other way. Depending on
what you are transporting, you'll need to decide exactly what train setup is best for
your individual situation. Lastly, a quick aesthetic option. Going into
the train menu, which will be covered in greater detail later in the video, there is an option
up here to change the colour of the train. Click the colour dropper icon in the corner
to open a small window with slider bars to set red, green and blue values. You can use
the slider bars or just enter the numbers manually. If you don't know how the red-green-blue
colour scheme works, give it a quick google. Alternatively, there are entire lists of colours
and their RGB values that you can find on the internet. The colour doesn't have any
mechanical influence on the game, bt it can make it easy to see at a glance to see which
train is which, so you might want to colour your plastic train white, your coal train
black, for example. Each locomotive can have a different colour, even when they're in the
same train, so you'll need to set the colour for each locomotive in the train individually.
You can do this easier by simply copy-pasting the colour of the train from another train
with shift-right-click and shift-left-click, but this will also copy any train scheduling
settings so be careful if you're copying the colour from a locomotive in one train to the
locomotive in another. Before discussing anything else, we should
discuss fuel. Fuelling your trains is not necessarily a trivial topic, as you need to
make sure that each and every one of your trains has enough fuel to get where it's going.
In a complicated network, if a single train runs out of fuel at the wrong moment, it will
just stop, which will block other trains and eventually shut down your entire factory. Trains can run on wood, coal, solid fuel,
rocket fuel or nuclear fuel. Wood and coal are your basic fuel items, and each are suitable
to get things running, though trains can burn through wood extremely quickly as it has half
the fuel value of coal, so bear that in mind when designing your system. Solid fuel is a good step up. it has three
times the fuel value of coal, so it will last a nice long time, and as an added bonus, it
provides a 20% boost to the acceleration of the train, and a 5% boost to the top speed.
So the train can run faster, and reach that top speed faster as well. Rocket fuel is one step better again. It's
fuel value is ten times that of solid fuel, but it only stacks to one fifth as much. Still,
a fully fuelled train should therefore last twice as long before needing refuelling. Rocket
fuel provides a 15% boost to top speed and an 80% boost to acceleration, making things
move even faster. Lastly, nuclear fuel. Nuclear fuel has 12.1
times the fuel value of rocket fuel, but it doesn't stack. Still, a train running on the
stuff will last even longer. It provides the same 15% boost to top speed and a massive
150% boost to vehicle acceleration, meaning that with nuclear fuel and fully upgraded
braking force, your trains will spend most of their time travelling at very high speeds.
Great for moving items around, but less great if you forget to look where you're going. Locomotives can only be automatically refuelled
when they are stopped, most often at a train stop. I'll go through the mechanics of actually
setting up an automatic refueller later, but you want to make sure that every train has
at least one way of getting refuelled, or you'll end up with empty trains blocking your
network whenever they run out. The Cargo Wagon is likely to be your main
method of holding materials as you transport them around your base via rails. It costs
20 Iron Plate, 20 Steel Plate, and 10 Iron Gear Wheels. They work like a mobile chest,
with 40 stacks of available space. A Cargo wagon can be limited, like a chest can, but
has the additional benefit of being able to filter individual slots to only be able to
hold a specific item. This means you can have a single wagon easily hold a specific ratio
of different items without having to worry about setting up some complicated circuit
condition for the inserters filling or emptying it. The Fluid Wagon is to the Cargo Wagon as the
Storage Tank is to the Chest. It costs 16 Steel Plate, 10 Iron Gear Wheels, 1 Storage
Tank and 8 Pipes to construct, and has a capacity of 25,000 fluid. Like a Storage Tank, it can
only hold one kind of fluid at a given time, so if you are transporting several kinds of
fluid on a single train, you will either need to barrel your fluids and place them into
a Cargo Wagon, or use multiple Fluid Wagons. The Artillery Wagon is a late game item that
costs 40 Steel Plate, 10 Iron Gear Wheels, 20 Advanced Circuits, 64 engine units and
16 Pipes. It functions almost identically to the Artillery Turret, except for two major
differences. The first difference is that it can of course be moved, meaning you can
defend a base with fewer wagons than you could turrets. The other main difference is that
an Artillery Wagon can hold up to 100 Artillery Shells, compared to the Turret's meagre 15.
This means that one potential use of an Artillery Wagon is simply as a storage cart to ferry
around shells to stationary artillery turrets. The last thing to note is that the Artillery
Wagon can only fire when the train is stationary, so make sure you give it enough time to make
a difference before moving the train to the next station. Locomotives have two operation modes, manual
and automatic, the latter of which will be covered a little later. To drive a train manually,
stand next to the train and enter it as you would a car or a tank. By default, this is
the enter or the return button on the keyboard. Use the toggle switch to make sure the train
is in manual mode. Each locomotive has such a switch but changing the switch on any locomotive
will also change the settings for the entire train. Make sure the train has at least one
fuelled locomotive and move forward and backward with the W and S keys. Your direction of travel
will depend on the direction of the locomotive in which you are sitting. You can also get
into any of the non-locomotive carriages, but this might give you an unexpected direction,
so be careful when pulling off! Of course, you can only move the train along
a track, but when you come to a split in the track that faces the right way, you can steer
using the A and D keys. You'll have to use the train's perspective, so if the train is
moving southwards, and you want to steer eastwards, you'll actually want to press A, not D. If you don't steer when coming to an intersection,
the train will move straight ahead. If the junction has no rail that goes straight ahead,
for example one rail going left, and one going right, and you don't steer, the train will
turn right if moving forwards, and left if moving backwards. Trains can only drive in
reverse while in manual mode, and do so at a lower efficiency. If you want an automatic
train to move both ways, you will need one or more locomotives facing the other way attached
somewhere along the train. Note that while in manual mode, you are perfectly
able to drive through signals of any colour, so it's possible - or even likely - that you'll
end up crashing into things. Use manual mode at your own risk! If you want to use trains in automatic mode,
you'll need a way of telling them where to stop, and this is where the Train Stop item
comes in. They cost 6 Iron Plates, 3 Steel Plates, 6 Iron Sticks and 5 Electronic Circuits,
and can only be placed down next to a track. If you hold a train stop in your hand, and
move the cursor near some tracks, you'll be shown green squares where the stop may be
placed. Note that you can only place the stop on straight sections of track that are aligned
north-south or east-west, so no curves and no diagonals. Once the stop is placed, you
can move your cursor over it to see where a train pulling up to that stop will actually
be. Each white box signifies a train carriage or a locomotive. By default, you will only
see four white boxes, or as many boxes as will take you back to the end of a track or
the previous signal, but this option can be changed to values between 1 and 12 in the
settings menu, under 'Interface' and 'Train visualisation length'. Clicking on the train stop will open its menu.
Firstly, you have a colour selector, as you do with a locomotive. You can set the colour
with RGB values, or copy them from another Train stop or even from a locomotive. Again,
note that if you copy from another Train Stop, you will also copy train stop settings such
as its name, so be careful there. You can also change the Train Stop's name,
which is vital if you want your train network to make any sense. The default name can be
changed by clicking the edit icon, at which point you will be able to select the name
of any other Train Stop on the map, or create a new name of your choice. Click the 'Apply
Change' button to make your choice. You'll be able to see the names of your stations
on the map view along with their position if you enable the 'Train stop names' option.
The angle of the text is configurable in the settings. Lastly, you'll be able to see a list of trains
which currently have this station in their schedule. Clicking on any of the trains in
that list will take you to the settings page for that train. There are also two buttons
in the top corner which will allow you to connect the train stop to a logistics network
or a circuit network. The reasons for why you might want to do that will be covered
later in the video. One more thing to note - when you place the
stop down, trains will only be able to "see" it if it is on the righthand-side of the track
from the train's perspective. So it's important to make sure you keep track of which trains
can get to which places, and in which direction. The same is also true for signals, which we
will come to... now. Signals are how you can let your trains in
automatic mode know where other trains are, and avoid crashing into them. Starting off
with the basics, we have two kinds of signals, a Rail Signal, and a Rail Chain Signal. They
both cost 5 Iron Plates and an Electronic Circuit to make, and are placed alongside
rails in a similar fashion to Train Stops. For now, let's stick with basic rail signals.
If I hold one in hand, you can see that this rail here gets a yellow line drawn on it.
I'll move the cursor over and you can see green boxes saying where I can place it. I'll
place one down on the righthand-side of the track, so a train moving south-to-north will
see it. You can see that the coloured line is now split. This means that we have now
created a second rail block. Another signal will create a third rail block. Each signal
defines the end of one rail block and the beginning of the next. Now you can see that these two signals are
showing a green colour. This means that the rail block ahead of them is empty, so the
rail signal is safe to cross. If I place a train here though, this first signal turns
red. The Rail block ahead of it is occupied, so that block is not safe for another train
to enter. Any trains coming up will stop behind it and wait at this signal until it is safe
to continue. Rail blocks also work at junctions and intersections.
Here we have a cross, but while a train wouldn't be able to turn the corner here, the all the
rails in the middle of the cross are part of the same block, so if a train enters from
the south the signal here also turns red, showing it is no longer safe for trains to
cross from the east to the west. The rail signals also have a third colour,
yellow. If a train is moving too fast to stop before it gets to another block, then it needs
to reserve that block to make sure that other trains won't enter the block before it gets
there. But the signal it uses on its own path can't turn red, or it would be going through
a red signal, so instead, it sets the signal to yellow. Essentially, a yellow signal can
be treated like a green signal for the train that is about to pass it, but a red signal
for everything else. If you see a yellow signal when you're walking along a rail track, look
out, as it means a train is about to come past, and probably at speed. Chain signals have a bit of a bad reputation
for complexity, but this isn't really true. They can be used to make more efficient rail
junctions but their actual function is quite simple. If a train is in the block ahead of a chain
signal, it will be red like a normal signal, or yellow if that signal is about to be passed
by a train. If the block ahead of the signal is clear, instead of just going green, it
will look at the colour of the next signal, and be the same colour, so if the next signal
is green, the chain signal is green. If the next signal is red, the chain signal is red.
If there is a junction after the chain signal, and there is more than one signal to look
ahead to, it will check all of them. If they are all green, then the chain signal is green.
If they are all red, the chain signal is red. If there is at least one green and at least
one red, we have a fourth colour, blue. A Train will treat a blue signal as either green
or red, depending which direction the train is intending to go. Now you may have noticed that I've only placed
signals on one side of a track so far, but you may be in a position that you want to
place signals on both sides of a track as you want to have trains travel in both direction
along it. To do this, you need to have your signals exactly mirror each other by placing
signals on the white boxes that indicate the positions opposite existing signals. A lone
signal on the wrong side of the track tells the train that that piece of track is one-way
and no entry, so you may have trains that don't know where to go. So when should you place signals? Now you
could ask 10 different people this question, and get 20 different answers, but as a general
rule of thumb, on straight, one-way sections of track, you should have a signal about every
train-length to increase the number of trains you can have using that stretch of track.
Note that this does not apply to two-way sections of track, as you don't want to end up with
two trains stuck on the same section of track facing each other! When it comes to junctions and intersections,
a good rule of thumb is "chain signals on the way in and through the intersection, and
normal signals on the way out". You will also want to make sure that there is at least one
train-length of space between the last signal in the junction and the next signal. So for
crossing intersection here, we can replace these signals with chain signals, and that
will mean no train can enter the cross unless there is space enough for them to leave it,
which should prevent trains from queuing through the intersection. There will be examples later
where I work through building various intersections and you'll see this rule in practice there. So you've set up a mining outpost, built the
rails to connect it back to your main base, placed stops at either end and built a train
to carry the ore back to base. Now let's hop into the menu of a train and see how we can
set up an automatic schedule. You can click on any locomotive in the train to open the
menu, and while we're setting up the schedule, you might want to make sure the train is set
to manual mode just to make sure it's not going to run away from you before you're finished
setting everything up. On the left side of the window here, you'll
see a button that says 'Add station'. Click on that and you'll be shown a list of stations
on the map. Depending where your stations are and in what state they are in, you may
see them in white, blue or red. A white station means that your train will be able to find
its way to that station if you select it, a red one means that there is no valid path
for this train to get to that station. A blue name means that you have at least one station
with that name that the train can find its way to, but also at least one that it can't,
because it is possible to have more than one station with a given name. More on that later. Click the desired station name to add it to
the train's schedule. You'll now see the station in the list. You can add other stations along
the train's route in the same way, and remove any unwanted stations by clicking the cross. Now your train knows where to go, but it doesn't
know how long to stay at each station before moving on. If you set the train off now, it
will visit each station in the list in order, but it wont actually stop at any of them,
so it will just go round in circles. Leaving a station in your list without a so-called
"wait condition" can be useful if you want a train to go via specific route, but it isn't
really useful in a simple scenario. Clicking the "Add wait condition" button under
a station gives us this pop-up menu, with different conditions we can use. Time passed will give us a counter we can
set, and means the train will go to that station, stop, and wait for the specified time, and
then continue to the next stop on its schedule. Again there is a cross that we can use to
remove a condition we no longer want. We can click the "Add wait condition" button
again to add another wait condition. Inactivity gives us another time counter, again one that
we can set, and means that a train will stop at the station and wait there until nothing
has happened for the specified length of time. For example, you may want to select this option
to send your train home if no extra materials have been added to the train's Cargo Wagons
for the last 10 seconds. Now that we have two wait conditions, we have
another option here, that currently says 'or'. As it is, the train will wait until either
2 minutes have passed, OR nothing has happened for 10 seconds. If we click the 'or' button,
it changes to 'and'. Now the train will remain at the station until two minutes have passed
AND nothing has happened for 10 seconds. You can also click on the striped bar to change
the order of conditions, as you can with entire stations on the schedule. This will change
the configuration of 'and' and 'or' if you have more than one of them, so be careful
there. Continuing through the other wait conditions,
we have 'full cargo inventory', which means the train will wait at the station until its
inventory is full, that is to say that there is no more space in either its Cargo Wagons,
Fluid Wagons, and Artillery wagons. Next, we have 'empty cargo inventory', which
as you might imagine, means the train will wait at the station until the inventory of
all its carriages have been emptied. Next is 'item count'. This allows us to select
a condition that evaluates over the contents of the train's inventory, and will make the
train wait at the station until that condition is met. For example, we can tell the train
to wait until there are more than 100 yellow belts in the train, or less than a thousand
concrete. Next is 'fluid count'. This works in a similar
way to item count, but is used if your train has fluid wagons. For example, you can tell
the train to wait at an oil outpost until it has more than 20 thousand crude oil on
board. Next is circuit condition. If you connect
that train stop to a circuit network and set the stop to pass the value of the network
to the train, you can use that network to set a condition which will let the train leave
the station. For example, a technique I have used in the past is to measure all of the
available ore at an outpost, and when that number drops to zero, send a signal to the
train just to make sure it delivers the last batch of ore back to the smelting area. You
can click the card to see my circuit network tutorial and learn more about how you can
set up such conditions. Lastly, we have two more conditions, passenger
present and passenger not present. The first of these will allow the train to proceed if
you, or another player, is sitting in the train. The latter will only allow the train
to proceed if no-one is sitting in the train. These can be a useful condition to set if
you have a dedicated passenger train in your base, or you don't want the train to run off
somewhere else before you've gotten on. So now you have your train set up, perhaps
to wait at an outpost until it is full, and then to go back to the base and wait there
until it has been emptied. Now all we need to do is to actually fill and empty it. For Cargo Wagons and Artillery Wagons, we
want to use inserters. In the example here, we can run a belt from the mining drills to
where the train pulls up at the stop, and place an inserter to feed the ore from the
belt into the cargo wagon. We can speed this up significantly, as each wagon has space
for 6 inserters along each side. with a setup like this, we can greatly decrease the amount
of time it will take to fill the train. For an unloading station, we can simply reverse
the direction of the inserters, pulling items out of the wagon and placing it onto a belt.
You can use various techniques to make sure that one or both sides of the belt get filled,
but that would be a topic for another video, so what we have here will do for now. If you
want to use something more advanced, there are many placed you can look at, but I'd recommend
at least trying to solve it yourself first. After all, solving such a puzzle is half the
fun of the game! One thing to consider, however, is balancing
between wagons. Here we have two wagons on our train, but as you can see, the first wagon
is taking all the ore from the belt and the second is getting none. This doesn't have
much effect in the long run if your train has a 'full inventory' condition, but will
do if you use a 'time passed' wait condition, or if you need your train to get back and
forth faster. So it's a good idea to use various combinations of splitters to make sure that
each wagon gets an approximately even distribution of items. Now if you've seen various train station setups
before elsewhere, or if you have played the game and have been screaming at what I have
on the screen here, don't worry. I'm getting to it now. It it almost universally considered a good
idea to use a buffering system when loading or unloading trains. With the setup we have
so far, it's all very well and good while the train is here and loading, but once its
full and has gone on its way, belts will quickly back up and the whole outpost will shut down
until the train returns. Similarly, back at the base, the train will remain at an unloading
station until the base has used up all of its materials before heading back to the outpost,
leaving the base to starve while the train is away refilling. We can mitigate this effect by introducing
a layer of chests between the belt and the cargo wagon. Now, while the train is here,
the inserters will move items from the chest to the wagon as quickly as they can based
on your current stack size, so it might be a good idea to use stack inserters here. This
will fill the train nice and quickly. While the train is away, delivering resources to
the base, the mining outpost will continue to work and will quietly refill the chests
for when they are next needed. Meanwhile, at the base, the train arrives
laden with ore, unloads it quickly into the chests before going off to get more. the chests
can slowly deplete, allowing the furnaces to keep working until the train gets back. Fluid wagons work a little differently, but
the principle as the same. Instead of using inserters, we want to use pumps. Each fluid
wagon has three spots to which a pump can connect, and will pump fluid to or from a
connected fluid container, whether that be a pipe, a storage tank, or chemical plant,
etc. It's worth implementing a buffer system here
as well. Also worth taking note of is that a pump has a much higher throughput than a
pipe. So instead of pumping to a pipe, I would pumping directly from the fluid wagon to a
storage tank for maximum loading or unloading speed. Before moving onto examples, let's have a
quick discussion about rail layouts. Most commonly, you'll see a system like this, with
two sets of tracks like this, one for trains going in each direction. Your system might
be righthand-drive or lefthand-drive, and there are slight pros and cons to each but
what matters most is to pick one, stick with it, and don't change it on any given map,
or you'll most likely just end up confusing yourself. Having separate rails for each direction
means that your tracks can have many more trains on them without gridlocking, and it's
much easier to see which trains are going where. In addition, while I wouldn't describe
it as a trivial task, it's possible to upgrade a system like this to a system where you have
two rails going in each direction, or three or more, if you have a really big base. Another system that is commonly used, especially
for extremely long-distance rails, is a single line of two-way traffic. The main advantage
of this system is that it will require far less rails to build, and is therefore much
cheaper. However, for each train past the first that you want to have running on it
at any given time, you'll need to have a passing place where trains can pass each other. This
is essentially a short section of one-way traffic on two lines as before. These will
need to be at least as long as your trains, and they can slow traffic down significantly,
so I would definitely not recommend using a system like this in areas of high throughput. So now we move onto the example portion of
the tutorial. As this is a bit easier to explain white it's being done, I'll now cut to RealTimeBetrayal
to take it from here. Okay, so I have loaded up a new world. I'm
using the creative mode mod so I don't have to worry about doing researches or building
the actual materials; I just got free access to them. The first example we're going to
do is some simple cross intersections. Strictly speaking, these aren't junctions, because
the trains can't turn, but we're just going to work through the signalling here. So, trains are going to come in on that way
and that way, I've decided. Okay, so they're just there as markers so I know which way
the trains are going. Okay, now, if you remember from earlier, as we come to the intersection,
we want a chain signal on the way in, and a normal signal on the way out. Similarly,
coming up from the south here, we want a chain signal on the way in, and a normal signal
on the way out. And then that will now work! I also mentioned earlier, but didn't properly
explain, that between this outward signal here, and the next signal - however far that
is - we need to have at least one train-length there. Let me see if I can show you why that
is the case. So I'll just make this train a bit longer. Now, let's say that - for whatever reason
- that signal is red. Now at the moment, we can still cross this. This signal here is
green because this block here - the one with this yellow line is empty, so that signal
is green, therefore the chain signal is green. So this train will quite happily go through
the intersection, and stop at that red signal. And then if that one has run out of fuel,
as it has done, that's just gonna stop there. Or if for whatever reason this train is delayed
by something, we've completely blocked off the intersection here. So this train, which
doesn't have any fuel... will, whoops, will just stop at this red signal here and not
be able to go any further. However, if the train is shorter than the
gap between these two signals, then while no trains can enter the intersection because
this one is red, because this one is red, or the other way around, trains are still
happily able to go through the intersection that way. Okay, now let's expand this a bit more. I'll
put that back over there, okay. Now let's say we have another rail coming
in from this way. Okay. Put some fuel in that so it stops flashing at me. So, this train
coming in from... actually I'll come back to that one. So this train coming in from
the East, that's fine. The train coming in from the west, we want to do exactly the same,
a chain signal in and a normal rail signal out. And then this one coming up from the
south, we've already got the chain signal in, we want a normal rail signal on the way
out, and then this one in the middle, we just need to swap that out for a chain signal.
Easy as that. We can extend this further, so if we've got
two crossing two, then this one is coming down from the north, so we just need a chain
signal there, chain signal there, that should be a normal rail signal, and then this one
coming in from the east, we want a chain signal there, it's already got the chain and normal
signals there. And then, coming in from the west, we've got a chain signal, that one needs
to be swapped for a chain signal, and then a normal signal on the way out. So this is
just a very basic example of "chain signals on the way into and through the junction,
and normal signals on the way out of the junction, and then at least one train-length of gap
before the next signal." After that, you could have signals wherever
you like really, but this one here is important otherwise you might end up blocking your intersection. Okay, now let's do some simple actual junctions.
So we'll start off with a simple across like this, with trains coming in from the east
and the south as before. Except this time, we'll give trains a way to turn onto the other
line. Okay, a bit further along. So they're the only lines we need, because this train
can't turn south, otherwise it would be going against the flow of traffic; similarly this
one can't turn right. Now, where do we wan't signals here? So remember
the rule is "chain signals on the way into and through the junction, normal signals on
the way out." And within the junction, where do we need those signals? So it can be optimised,
but again - general rule of thumb (and signals are cheap anyway) - whenever you have lines
splitting, or meeting, or crossing, you want to have a signal just before it. Okay, so
let's start with this train and follow its path turning right. So we've got a split here, so we want a signal.
We've got a join here, so we want a signal just before it, which is there, that's the
closest we can get just before it. And then we have a join here, so we want a signal there,
and that's the last one in the junction so that can be a normal signal. Then we'll follow
through, so straight through. We've already got a chain signal there. We've got these
two red lines crossing there so we want a chain signal just before that. And we've got
two lines meeting here so we want a chain signal there, and then on the way out of the
junction we want our normal signal. Okay, then for the south train, coming up
we've got lines splitting, we've got the cross, we've got lines joining, and then we've already
got our signal on the way out. Then turning left, we've already got our signal there,
we've got the lines joining there so we want a signal just before it. And then we've already
got the one on the way out. And then that is adequately signalled. A couple of these are strictly speaking not
necessary, so I could get rid of those two without any major problems, but just as a...
I'll stick with the sort of 'overdoing it' on the signals just so I can follow that rule
of "whenever those lines meet, split, or cross, that's when we want a signal" Okay, next we'll do a slightly different one,
so this one will have two running that way, and I'm going to have a single line running
down, and we're gonna join these two, except this one is two-way traffic. So, the places
that I've used this kind of system in the past is where I've had a station like that,
that might have a double-headed train, something like that. So my normal system is the usual
two lanes of one-way traffic, just like a two-way street, and then the train will pull
into the station, unload or load, and then pull out the way it came and join back to
the network. Now you do have to be a bit careful about
rail placement here, because if you just pack the rails in as tightly as they go, you don't
have enough space for the signals to fit where you need them. So, let's... I think... That
should be fine. Might even have a bit too much space there. Well, not too much space,
but more space than we need. So essentially, this line here needs to be attached to both
ways on this bottom line that drives from east to west. Because it can pull in from
the east, or pull out to the west. And this triangle here is what limits the size, so
I could make this a bit smaller and still fit signals in there, but not that much smaller.
Okay. Then we also need lines coming in that way, because it can pull in from the west,
and similarly it can pull out to the east. Okay, so there's all the rails, so how do
we signal this? Alright, let's start with a train coming from the east, and we'll just
go straight ahead. So theres a split in the lines there, so we'll have a signal. There's
a join in the lines there so we'll have a signal, and then we'll have a normal signal
on the way out. Then let's do trains coming in from the west. So chain signals, there's
a split in the line so we'll have a signal. There's a cross, so we'll have a signal there,
there's another cross, so we'll have a signal there, there's a join so we'll have a signal,
and then a normal rail signal to cap it off. Then let's do trains from the east coming
into the station. So we've got a chain signal, there's a cross so we need a signal before
that. There's a join, so we need a signal before that. Now, we could space this out
because there's actually two joins here, but because of the way I've got this system, in fact because
of the way this system works altogether, there can only be one train here anyway, so no matter
which of these four lines it wants to take, we don't want a second train coming in this
far, so in this case it's okay. But we do want a signal there, just to cap it all off. So this chain signal here, is actually catering
for both this join of that line and that line, and this three-way join here of this line,
this line and that line. Okay, then we'll do the train coming from
the west going into the station, so we've already got a signal before that split, and
this join up here wants a signal there, and it's already got the output signal. Okay, now if the train in the station wants
to leave and go west, it wants to come down this way. So remember the signal on this line
here needs to be directly opposite that one, otherwise it won't work. And in fact, that's
the only place it'll let us put it at the moment, so we'll put that there. Then it comes
down, so that signal takes care of again both of these splits, the one to three split and
the one to two split. Coming down here there's a cross so we'll put a signal there. There's
a join, so we'll put a signal there, and it's already got the output signal. Then we want
the train coming from the north going eastwards. So we've got a signal there, that caters for
the split, and then the join, we want a signal there, and it's already got the output signal. So that is now correctly signalled, you can
see that this signal here is blue. That means there is at least one way it can't go, which
turns out to be into the station. Which is good, because the station is occupied at the
moment. And at least one way it can go, because there's nothing stopping it from going straight
ahead. This one is exactly the same. This train up here can... this is the signal
it's actually looking at; it looks to its right, which is our left, because it's coming
down. That one is just green because there's nothing stopping it from coming down this
way and joining the network, and there's nothing stopping it from coming down this way and
joining the network. If I just put a train randomly in the middle there, then this signal
turns red. So yeah, that is a two-way to a bidirectional
line. Okay, the next one we want to do is a two-way
to a two-way. We're just gonna do this as a T-junction. There are ways you can do this
as a Y-Junciton as well. I'll leave that as an exercise for the viewer, but again the
principals are the same. So again, we need to be careful about putting the rails too
close together on this one, otherwise we won't have space for the signals. Now I'm doing
a lefthand-drive, so we've got trains coming in that way, and trains coming up that way
and down that way. So this line can turn to join this way, or
it can go a bit further and turn to join that way. So let's just put some rails down and
see what kind of space we've got. So there and... whoops, that's the wrong way... there. Okay, and that will join with the correct
direction. This one is essentially the same, but mirrored. Let's get me some more rails.
So that one can either come from that way, or up there. Now that one's a little bit off-centre,
and it does go to show that this time, it's this triangle here that limits us for size,
and you can see, yeah, I can't fit any signals in the middle there. So let's change that.
I think it was wrong anyway, because it didn't look as symmetrical as it should have. So
I think if we go up there... how much space do we have in that triangle there. Okay, there
is enough for a couple of signals there, you can see the two green boxes. And I think that's
enough for us to get away with, because, let's see... Yeah, in fact I don't think we actually
need to use those signals. I think I'll come back to this and I'll probably prove myself
wrong, but in a lefthand-drive system, you don't need that central triangle. In a righthand
system, you would. Anyway, let's signal it and see where it goes
wrong. Okay, so we'll just go through all of the
possible inputs and outputs and we'll line them with signals. We'll start with this train
here, going straight ahead. We've got a split, a cross, a cross, a join, and then the output. And this one can also turn. So we've got the
split which is covered, a join, and then the output. And that's that train done, let's
do this train. So we've got coming along this way, a split, a join, and then an output.
And then turning, we've got a split which is covered, a cross, a cross, a... ahh... Okay, so theoretically we want a signal on
here, otherwise trains on this line and trains on this line can block each other. Let me give you an example. So let's say theres
a train coming down here and turning this way. At the say time, there's a train coming
up here that way round, turning that way. Now they don't ever get in each other's way,
so they should be able to go through this junction at full speed, assuming that there's
nothing over here. However, because I can't put a signal between
these two, that means this bit here is sharing a block with this bit here, which means that
this whole system is no good. So let's try it again and spread things out a bit further. Yeah, okay, so it's a little bit wonky, and
with enough time you could work it out that you'd make a nice symmetric junction, but
it's the principals that we're going through here. So we've got a split, a cross, a cross, a
join and the way out. And then turning we've got the split, and a join and the way out.
This one going straight ahead has a split, and a join, and the way out. And then turning,
its got the split, a join, a join, no, it has a split, a cross, a cross and a join...
now I can put that signal there... and the way out. And then these trains, or this trains, it's
the only one coming in, we've got a split there, we've got a cross, a cross and a join
and the way out. And then a split, a join, and the way out. So that is now properly signalled. So Looking at the trains and where they can
go, this one coming up is green because there's nothing stopping it from going east or west.
This one can only go straight ahead so it's blue. If you try to turn left, this train
is in the way because it's occupying this block. Similarly this one can only go straight
ahead because this train is occupying the block. So see if you can come up with a better system,
or I guess you can look online, people put blueprint books of such systems online that
you can copy and paste into your world. Okay, now let's do a bit of a beast. A two-way
X-junction. So we've got this kind of setup that we did before, but this time we also
want trains to be able to turn. Now again, there are many places you can find that will
do nice symmetric ones for you. There's a couple I particularly like, like there's a
windmill-style one that I like the look of. Anyway. We've got our trains so we know where they're
coming in; again I'm doing lefthand drive. Okay, so this train wants to be able to turn
left onto this line, but it also wants to be able to turn right onto that line. So I'm
going to spread this out probably much more than I need to, but it is better to have too
much space than too little. Okay, so that can turn that way and that way.
This train coming up wants to be able to turn left onto that way, or right onto that way.
So let's say you can turn left there, you also want to be able to turn right... I'm
not liking the look of that, 'cause we've got a triangle up there. Yeah, so that's not
gonna work, 'cause this train coming from the right want's to have a signal in there. So I think what I'll actually do, I will find
a system that works, or I'll design a system that works, ugly as it might be, and then
I will come back and show you the signalling for it. Okay, I think this works. And it's even quite
symmetrical. It does have a couple of places where you've got three lines crossing like
that, but I believe that that's okay in this case. Essentially, whether or not you can
have lots of stuff together like this is, if you take two lines that are parallel, so
this line and this line, and follow them through the junction, so they can go straight like
that, or they can both turn like that, or they can both turn this way. Or in fact, they
can diverge as well, if they diverge, that's okay. Essentially, two lines that never cross,
should never be part of the same block. So every line that joins them, such as this one
here and this one there, you need to be able to fit a signal along that joining line to
be able to separate them. So turning that way I can fit signals along
this bit of track and that bit of track. Turning this way, I can fit signals along that bit
of track, this bit of track, that bit of track, and that bit of track, and going straight
ahead, i can fit signals along there, along there, along there, along there, along there
and along there. Hopefully you can follow that? If I'm feeling
brave, I might edit it a bit to show some graphics of animation that show what I mean
a little bit clearer. [Note from SubtitlingBetrayal: this whole
section is a shambles, and can be summarised as: "Train lines that never cross should never
be part of the same rail block". If you hold a signal in hand, the coloured lines will
show you the train blocks and you can figure out if you have a problem.] Anyway, once you've got a system that allows
you to turn, let's signal it. So we'll start with this train, coming in, we'll start by
turning left. So we've got a split there, so a signal before that, a join there, so
a signal before that, and the way out. then going straight ahead, we've got a split which
is covered, we've got a cross which is actually a split then a cross, but they're both covered
by that signal. We've then got a cross, two crosses in a row there, and then a join over
here, and then a join over there, and then the way out. Okay, then we'll turn right, so we've got
a split, a split and a cross, then over here we've got two crosses in a row, then up there
we've got a cross and then a join, we'll put that signal there, then a join, and then the
way out, and that's this train done. So let's go clockwise, so coming up we've
got a split, a split, a join, and then we've already done the rest of those signals. Going
straight ahead, split, split, crosses, cross, cross and a join and then we've done the rest.
Turning right, we've got that one which we've done, we've got a cross on that line, there
we go, crosses and then a join and then the way out, and then that's that train done. This train, we've got the way in, turning
left, we want one up there. Going straight ahead we want them there, there, there and
there. Oh actually, we've got two along there. So we want one there for this join and there
for that join. Yes, you can see if you take the rotational symmetry of it, we've got two
along there, we've also got two along there. Okay. And then turning right, we've got one there,
one there, one before that heap of crosses, one before this cross, and one in there before
that join, then just the train at the top to do. So we've got the way in, turning this way,
we've got one before that split there, one before this join here, and we've done the
rest. Going straight ahead, one before all these crosses, one before this cross, one
before this cross, and then we've got the rest, and then turning off this way, we've
got one before those crosses, one before those crosses, one before this join, and we are
signalled. And you can see at the moment that actually
everything is green, because these four trains are all on separate lines at the moment. There's
actually no way that one of these trains moving forward could crash into another train. If
I put a train over there we'll see some things change colour so we'll test it. This one still has all three of its outputs
available. This one can still turn to its left, or go straight ahead, but it can't go
along here, so we've got red signal, red signal, red, red. This one can turn to the right or
to the left, so blue is fine, green is fine. Turning to the right it goes blue and then
blue again, and then green all the rest of the way, or it goes blue, blue and then reds.
So it can't go through the junction if it's trying to go straight ahead. Okay, so that is how you can do a two-way
crossing intersection [junction]. There is another way, which is somewhat divisive, but
it's a simple way, it is much less complicated than this one however it does have its own
downfalls. So now let's move onto the roundabout. If you have shorter trains, and ideally not
that many of them, yu can do intersections in a more simple way, both crosses and t-junctions
as well. In fact you can even do a straight-up corner with this, and that is by doing a roundabout. It has the advantage of looking quite nice,
I think, and being very simple to make, it allows your trains to turn around if they
need to. The downsides are that it can cause backups and it will slow down your network,
particularly if you have a lot of trains, and especially if you have long trains. So, the way to do it, first, obviously you
need to know where your roundabout is going to go. It can take a little bit of work to
get it in the right place. I think here is where I want it. Whoops, that's not right.
So essentially you just want a circle like that, ad you want the circle to be lined up
so these two curved rails, the join between them is directly between these two straight
rails, and similarly coming up as well. And then, you just want to join things up onto
it. So those ones come in like that. These ones come down like that, and that. Whoops,
that's wrong. There we go. There and there. And this one comes up to there, and up to
there. Okay. Now, signalling this one is... well...
the reasoning behind it is exactly the same but it's a little bit more difficult to follow.
That said, it's very easy to remember how to signal this, because we want chain signals
on the way in... and on the way through, so we also want chain signals there, there, there,
and there on the diagonals, and also there, there, there and there. And then normal signals
on the way out. So, again, that is properly signalled now,
and if you follow it through it is exactly the same. So let's say we want to follow this
train turning to the right, so it'll come in this way, turn around, and it'll go up
there. So, we've got a join, so we want a signal
before the join, we've got a split, we want a signal before the split. We've got a join,
so a signal before the join, a split, so a signal before the split, a join and its signal,
a split and its signal, and then the way out. So it's exactly the same reasoning, but yes,
you can see that because of its rotational symmetry, its just much easier. Another advantage to this is if I... let's
just come over here for a bit, and I'll pop down a roundabout just on its own, and I will
signal it exactly the same. Is that right? No. There. You can see here that it is exactly symmetric.
Which means, if I do this... with a normal signal there and a chain signal there, I can
this as a blueprint. So I'll just put it in the clipboard for now. And then, let's say
I have an end of my rail, that I just want to tidy up a a bit, I can put that, just on
the end of it. And there's a bit too many signals there for what it's being used for
at the moment, but if there's any trains facing the wrong way, they're more than happy just
to come up here and use this as a loop to turn around. And then, let's say later on, I want to extend
this. Now I could just get rid of it and extend it, or I can bring back exactly the same blueprint,
and just copy and paste directly on top of it. I can then turn that into a T-junction.
Or a X-junction. So I have seen, and I have built as well,
systems where the entire world is basically based on a grid of rail intersections like
this. Whether or not you want to do this is up to you. Generally speaking, people argue
against it but if you're a beginner to rails, it's a good way of getting your feet wet with
more complicated rail systems I think. Moving onto some more advanced examples, let's
have a look at what is called a train stacker. So here's our example. We have a completely
broken train line, let's try that again. So over here, let's say we've got an unloading
station, so we've got things coming out, let's just stop that flashing, there we go. Trains
will pull into here, and they'll unload and they'll go off to an outpost to grab some
more. But we've got a lot of trains. Let's say we could have 10 trains, all delivering
iron ore to our base. Now I suppose the naive way of doing this would be to have 10 trains
going to 10 different outposts, coming back delivering to 10 different train stations
at the base. But you could simplify that a bit by instead of having 10 stations at the
base, just have one station at the base, with all 10 trains going to it. Now this has problems. For example, let's
say... okay, if this is our main system up here, so we've got our two lines going in
each direction, there we go. And I could just have the same sort of pull-in, pull-out train
station that we covered before, but for simplicity's sake let's say that this loops round and joins
the network again. Now if I've got... so at the moment I've just set up two unloaders
there. So we can have a train there, and then a signal, and then a train with two more,
and a signal, and I think if we have another one it will start overlapping into the junction.
So that means with a setup like this we can only have two trains delivering to the station
before we might end up with a situation where all the trains arrive back in the base at
once and they get in the way of everything else. In fact, it could even be worse than
that. Let's say this train comes from up there, and that one wants to go up that way. That's...
very bad. But we could have trains queuing up there
and there and there and so on, and we might end up with a situation where this train actually
can't get out 'cause everything's blocked up. Now it shouldn't be the case if you've
signalled everything correctly. Anyway, that's the problems with it. The first way we can mitigate that kind of
problem is with a train stacker. So, what that is, is something along... let's do it
over here... these lines. Okay, so I'm using probably way more space
than I need to here, as you build this in your own world you'll know exactly how much
space you've got and you'll know how many trains you've got as well. So this is our
main line. We'll have a simple junction here that the
trains will come off and come down. This is quite long, so at the moment, I could
probably fit a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth train on that. So I could
probably - just with this - service 6 trains from one station. However, we can greatly
in crease that. If I grab some more rails first up. If I split off the line there, come
up and then join back up again, and then do exactly the same. And then the same and the
same and so on, so I'll just... I don't think I can fit another one on there
before it gets confused with the curves. I'll just finish off that and get rid of this spare.
There we go. Okay, so you may have seen something like
this before. This is a train stacker. So what we do, is if we put a line of signals along
like that so they're all coming down, and then i think it's this one that wants to be
a chain signal. No. that's wrong, never mind, ignore me. It's up here that we want a chain signal.
So if I have a chain signal there and then up here we'll have another row of signals. So now a train that wants to go to this station,
it'll come in up here. At the moment, we've got a green signal, so it'll continue, it'll
take one of these paths, its difficult to say which one, but it'll come down one of
them, green signal, green signal, and it'll end up waiting there. Now these ones are red, but up here we've
still got greens, so the next train that comes in, we've got a green signal. It'll take one
of these paths, let's just say it takes this one on the end. Green, it'll go in, but it'll
wait there. The next one will come in. This one is blue, which means there's at least
one path it can't go to, but there's still many others it can, and the way train pathing
works, it will get as close to the station as it can, so let's say it comes down this
line here, and that will wait up there. The next one will come in and wait up there,
and then there, and then there, and then there, and then there, and there, and there, and
there, and there, and then finally if we have another train, that one will wait up there.
Now this is just a short station, so these trains are that long, which means I could
probably squeeze in another row of signals there and double the amount of trains we can
have. So how many trains is that? Thats 23, and then this one down here, that is 24, and
then that one down there, that is 25 trains now services by one station. Though we probably
don't want that one because would interfere with the junction. But still that is a lot
of trains. And when this train moves on, this train can
move forwards, and then all of these turn green, but only one of them will actually
have the chance to move forward, and as soon as it moves forwards, all of the rest of them
turn red. So that will then queue up there, and this one will move down to there, and
then if that train goes off to the outpost and comes back before anything else is done,
it will end up queuing in there. So yeah, that is a train stacker. The concept
is pretty simple really, one important thing - that when I first made a train stacker I
missed - is that this here needs to be a chain signal. If it is a normal signal, then if
another train comes in, you could end up with it queuing, say, there. Because it will just
choose one of these, possibly even at random to go down. Then if these trains move on,
we've got space in our stacker for new trains, but this train can't go there because it's
already turned, and any trains behind it are blocked by this train. So this signal there
on the way into the stacker must be a chain signal. There is another way that you can increase
throughput to your base as well, this is more about increasing the number of trains you
have serviced per station, you can also increase the number of stations you can have per resource. Okay, so this concept is very similar to a
stacker, and it can be incorporated with a stacker as well. You can see here that we've
got two train stations. Now at the moment, they's got different names, but what I could
do is give them both the same name. So let's say this is an iron unloading station.
If I just copy the settings from that station to the other with shift right-click, shift-left-click,
these are now both called iron unloading. If we have a number of trains, so at the moment
Ive got three trains here, let's say they all want to go to iron unloading. So copy,
paste, paste, paste, so now they all go to iron unloading, and we send them off to do
their jobs, which in this case is probably going to an iron outpost and then picking
it up. So if I turn this one to automatic...
these signals are on the wrong side of the tracks. There we go. ...It will stop there. So we've got a similar kind of signalling
setup where we have a chain signal before the split and then normal signals just to
say whether or not the station is available. Now if I say this train unloads, and then
goes off on its way, and I'll actually need some signals over here quickly, for reasons.
Okay, it goes off on its way, that train, might take a moment, yes, but then it will
re-path, and it will go to the available station. If I have another train over here, let me
just fuel that and copy the settings so that one also want to go to iron unloading, then
if this train then goes away, and it helps if I turn it to automatic, it will come into
there. So I can have multiple trains just set to
go to 'iron unloading', and it will go to a station that is available. If they're all
available, let's see what happens. Please go to iron unloading, automatic, I'm not standing
on the tracks, it will just go to the closest one. Due to how trains work out their paths,
it will go to the closest available station with the name that it wants. Another good thing about the system is that
it's kind of... I don't know if modular is the right word, but it is certainly expandable.
So If I copy that, whoops, I've copied a bit too much. If I copy that, and paste. Too close
to..? Ahh. These signals are in slightly different positions. There we go. Got there in the end.
Copy that, paste! And now I've got myself another station which
is also called iron unloading. And I can just keep doing that, so if I need more and more
iron coming into my base, I get more and more trains, but if they're still only being serviced
by a single station, it's not going to increase the input of iron to my base, so if I get
more stations, then I can do this. So yeah, it's a relatively simple way, and
if I've got lots of trains, I would probably have a stacker down here somewhere, so as
stations become available, a train will come out of the stacker and go into the system
over here. I'm fully aware I have left a lot out of this
video, but this was designed just to be an introduction to the basics, to get you moving
in the wonderful world of Factorio's trains. Explore, experiment and create, and if you
have any questions, leave a comment below and I'll do my best to answer them. In the
mean time, I will say thank you very much for watching, and I will see you again soon.
