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We need a topic on transferring goods, so here we go. Here’s the example scenario:
You have 1 oil well, and two refineries. One train should be able to move the oil from the well, to a central station in a city, close to the refineries. Two additional separate trains pick up the oil from this cargo station — where is has been transferred to — and take it to the refineries, and bring the goods back to the city on the way to get more oil.
The same thing should work for any other good in any other scenario.
As of right now, this kind of works as-is, but not 100% (I think there are bugs present too). I have tested this with a lot of setups, but for this one we’ll continue with the oil one above. If played out as above, the first train will automatically drop off the oil as the central hub with no manual command (even though there should be one!) because cargo will automatically take the shortest route to where it wants to go — if it takes less time, it works. (Trains work better than buses with this — we’ll get to that)
Here’s where it starts getting iffy. The station will not correctly divide the goods up for the pickup for delivery-to-refinery trains, and will actually drop 99% of it off at whatever platform station the drop-off train happens to stop at (sometimes, 1 will walk across to another track for another line). The final product is one train collecting almost all the oil for its refinery, and none goes to the other. It seems the first one that is “connected” to the well in some way, will always be its favorite in terms of “what line I send goods to”.
In fact, even if TWO wells deliver oil to a station — drop it off — and then send it off to two refineries like before, it will still drop off the raw oil mainly on whatever platform the drop-off train happens to stop and unload at.
I think there needs to be a “Transfer Goods/Passengers” option in the line controls, which will unload all/seleted goods at the designated station — where they will then be seen as “fair game to be collected” by any other transport that come to said holding station for pickup.
So long story short, if anyone out there is wondering if this works, it doesn’t work well enough to use. In the scenario above your better off having one train just go from the well to the refinery, and drop goods off in town on way back to the well. Because the trains only work well in a 1:1 ratio in terms of drop-off and pick-up, it isn’t currently financially feasible to use a transfer goods setup widely.
I have had minimal success placing a truck station next to a train station that has goods dropped off, but isn’t next to industry in the city. About 15% of the unloaded goods will “walk” to the truck station, if there is a line that collects from the stop near the station and drops at another cargo drop near where it wants to go. It will only do this if the line exists, and the vehicles and purchases and moving (and costing you $$$). Again, only about 15-20% of all unloaded cargo will do this (again, no real transfer option) because it seems the rest would rather just walk, even when it’s slower.
Comments, discuss please! The more input we generate for this game the better!
–HolyTwo questions:
1. Do both refineries have equal demand from different cities? If not, it will divide based on this surely.
2. Are you trying to connect two refineries to a single city? If so, this causes issues. A single refinery should be sufficient for a city for a long time, I have not myself got into a situation where a city requires over 400 goods.
I may be misreading though, been a long week, so apologies if I am way off 🙂
I have not tried this with trains, but I have had some really cool networks from vehicles. Central stations and relay stations that transfer materials and good between industries and towns. I’ll upload a ss later if I think of it.
2. Are you trying to connect two refineries to a single city? If so, this causes issues. A single refinery should be sufficient for a city for a long time, I have not myself got into a situation where a city requires over 400 goods.
In this case yes, I was connecting them to a single town — thanks for the heads up on the issues.
So really in this game, transfer networks are mainly for long-distance travel in special circumstances, and really is only feasible from a financial standpoint with busses/etc. Trains upkeep is too high to have too many that aren’t producing positive cashflow, better to have a do-it-all (eventually 2) on a single production line, without transfers, in my experience thus far.
Regardless, I would still like to see a “Transfer Goods/Selected Goods” option in the line management screen; it would help keep track of cargo movement in large companies, and you can ensure stuff is dropped where you want it to go all the time.
Still so many experiments to run…
–HolyI have not myself got into a situation where a city requires over 400 goods.
IMO, that’s one of the main problems with this game. Not enough demand for goods to the town to be able to build up a good looking LARGE cargo rail network with transfer yards and holding tracks near the station for waiting trains and whatever else. Personally, I think the game is too centered around the people and passengers. I’d rather be moving more cargo than passengers.
Also, in Locomotion, they were building transfer yards to switch cargo from one train to another but that use a very wide but short station to do it. That worked good and added more to the game. I’d like to be able to do something like that if they would make it so we could but we would need better track configurations. I also think we should have more than one type of goods.
That’ll be on my wish list.
I agree with Tattoo that goods requirement could be higher and this would make our train networks look much prettier. However I wouldn’t want production to ever exceed demand.
At the moment I prefer running trains the full length of the production cycle. My favourite routes go from raw materials, around an industrial zone to a production facility, then drive back with the goods into the industrial zone on the way back, before returning to the raw goods spot. I use mixed trains (everything except wood/goods combi needs more types of carts), Even though every part of the trip half of my carts are empty, only the final lap (usually aprox. 25% of the line) all my carts are empty. (50% raw -> production, ~15-35% production > delivery, what’s left is completely empty.) Because a set of carts is cheaper in maintenance than a whole new engine, this is in my experience an effective way of reducing the time that all carts are empty. Though this is a tactic that only works when demand is sufficient, I find it to be very profitable and it is so far the only instance where I run trains with more than one cart type. (I find that visually pleasing).
An early train cargo tip is to use signals to space your trains. Literally disect it in the same number of sections as you plan to run trains on it. This optimises spacing, which makes the frequency time more accurate and allows you to run as few trains as possible, with as much carts as needed, to allow for optimal profit.
I think it be cool if we could build marshalling yards. Loco comes in with all you train cars and decouple.
A small loco has prepared a a set of cars it should take with it back. So you big expensive enginees only haul long distance. And you small locos gather the wagons from the area around that city.
In this game though the cities are so tightly placed that when you design you line you only have room to add a few switches and a turn and then it is already the approach to next city. So this is just one wish I have. But there be no room to have a lot of indrustry tracks and sidings.
I guess that is why all the factories are out in mother nature. 😀 To give us some room.
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