In TTD goods and passengers went to a station.  There was no simulation of them going to their required platform because there was no concept of platforms for them in TTD.  Because there was no simulation of platforms for the passengers or goods trains could go to any piece of track at the station and draw their load from everything at the station.

Train Fever however is a touch more detailed and does have a concept of platforms  Passengers and goods need to know which platform to go to to travel.  That means we can’t really have trains changing platforms at the last minute.  If that system is introduced one of two things are probably going to have to happen:

1. Passengers/goods are going to have to change platform as the train arrives.  This will either increase load time or they will miss their train.
OR
2. We will have to lose the simulation of people going to the correct platform entirely and just have a grand pool of people at the station that gets on whatever train arrives.  Personally I would like the keep the current system of assigned platforms.  I like the detail, and it is closer to reality I think.

What are your thoughts?

You click on a station and can set it to only accept fixed platforms for trains, so the system we now have, accept changing platforms and accept changing platforms + a little extra wait time for the train, since the passangers need to change the platform to get their train.

I think especially the last option I suggested would keep us the detailed showing off passangers going for their specific route on their specified platform but allows the flexibility of trains choosing their platform freely, if they need to.
But imho, they still should have their standard platform, because moving to another platform is, in RL, an emergency solution of an unforeseen problem.

That’s fine for trains that actually stop at the platform in question. Express/freight trains should be able to use any platform that they have a path to that is not occupied.

As for things being that way in the real world, come visit the Central station in Warsaw sometime and then we’ll talk 😉

If they would just allow us that if one line visit one platform several times, we could assing different platform for each of these stops (but the train would always arrive to predefined platforms) it would be totally cool. And passangers would know whIch platform to stand on.

I actually have the same issue with busses right now. The game is acting real smart with assigning each line one side of the road. However my lines are linear, so one of the passes the busses require a loop to get to their assigned side…

For the trains I wish there would be a way to declare platforms ‘excess’. So that you can have fixed platforms for lines (that you can choose) but in the case of express lines or freight these can be freely picked by these lines.

Would keep the advantages of both. Additionally you can have rail that is used for through traffic, but in a jam can be used to handle the excess of trains at the station.

I do think adding dynamics would be a good thing, but I think it is more important to be able to assign platforms to a line, because if there is a station with three platforms, I would like to use two platforms for lines going through, and the other platform for a terminating line.

All this discussion is purely academic anyway. It detracts from the key issue at hand and that is that the current system is too limited in its scope and requires, at a minimum two things. Firstly, the ability for the user to choose the exact platform they want a given line to stop at and, secondly, waypoints, so that we can direct express and freight lines through the platforms as we see fit.