Rail Freight. – Train Fever

Rail Freight.

Krist — Tue, 30 Dec 2014 08:52:04 +0000

U have a rail line that links two towns (each with a freight depot) with a oil refinery. On the way there are two oil wells, each with a freight depot as well.

I have two trains on the line. One service stops at both oil wells and goes to the refinery. The frequency here is 2 minutes.

I have another service connecting the oil refinery with both towns, to transport goods away. This has a frequency of 4 minutes.

As far as I can see I have:

– Connected the refinery with towns with sufficient demand.

– Connected the oil wells with the refinery.

And that all so that goods arrive within the time constraints, transit time for all goods is less than 5 minutes!

Why however are none of the industries producing? When I start the line for a short moment production goes to 1, and I see “yes” behind line usage in the industry information box. But that stops quickly. So clearly something is still missing to start the industry.

But what?

Reply To: Rail Freight.

ProXim — Tue, 30 Dec 2014 09:10:11 +0000

Are these cities already receiving goods from another source? (maybe the game AI)

I might have the game mechanics all wrong but if they are already serviced and there is no further demand, there might not be a motivation for the refinery to produce goods and thus it will not require resources (oil).

Hope this is not misleading…

Reply To: Rail Freight.

Krist — Tue, 30 Dec 2014 15:04:19 +0000

No, the cities in question are not receiving goods from anywhere else…

Reply To: Rail Freight.

Train_Maniac — Wed, 04 Mar 2015 10:36:30 +0000

If I understand it wright you have one train to ship out goods to both cities? Maybe there is the problem, try to have seperate services for each city. This might work for feeding the industry but I don’t think is the same for the cities. Also you must have activate the lines to the cities, don’t wait for industry to start producing and then buy the train. After a while playing I find out that industries don’t start up if you only carry away the products, you must have a complete circle of feeding and distributing the goods. Example dilivering oil from well to refinary doesn’t work if you haven’t set up also a line from refinary to town. It only works if the refinary ships out goods to the city on its own (but still you wont get enough yeld from the well). Use the cargo layer to check if the goods are going of the refinary on their own.

Reply To: Rail Freight.

Xcenty — Wed, 04 Mar 2015 14:19:02 +0000

Did you use the right stations ?

Reply To: Rail Freight.

onionjack — Wed, 04 Mar 2015 14:53:18 +0000

The freight system is weird. Sometimes towns stops accepting my service and the game ai starts delivering goods from the same factory. It helps sometimes if I create new depot to another spot and reroute my trucks to it, thats how I get the service running again.

I rarely use trains for freight because I cannot get factories to produce enough cargo to make lines profitable. I dont know if I make something wrong or what that is. But the freightsystem needs some working imo, I’d like to get those long freight trains delivering stuff. Also that makes me wonder if the values how much goods towns accept should be increased? It is quite low and easily maxed with few trucks

Reply To: Rail Freight.

simonmd — Wed, 04 Mar 2015 18:57:35 +0000

The freight system is weird.

Never a truer word hath been spoken.

(also happens to be the best explenation)

Reply To: Rail Freight.

Pasi — Wed, 04 Mar 2015 19:39:30 +0000

USA DLC give a nice Freightliner truck around 2010 which carries 21 items. And the largest train waggon 18… Why on earth same rules don’t apply to road vehicles, meaning dividing the real life load capacity by 4 to get the game capacity? Why would anyone use trains in any case with those trucks available?

And why oh why we can’t have proper long trains with multiple engines? THAT is what USA is all about for trains…

Reply To: Rail Freight.

spill — Fri, 06 Mar 2015 09:41:21 +0000

I agree that the freight system is bit weird but I have had some success at setting up line-haul freight trains- I set up a main trunk line served by frequent mixed freight trains (carriages for all commodities) with truck routes or branch lines feeding each industry to a local freight station on the trunk line.

In my current game, I run the trunk line completely across the entire map with enough trains to maintain a 2-minute frequency. The trains are barely profitable, but when you combine them with the feeder routes, the whole freight system makes good profits. I found that a small number of industries quickly expanded to full production (400 units) but most others chug along (10-25 units) and the result is that trains are full for some parts of the route, empty for some parts and most of the time run with small load of all commodities.

However, the big plus that I found with this model is that every city along the route receives goods and so grows- which makes the passenger service more profitable.

I’ve also made this model work using a central freight yard and running multiple trunk line from it to the different regions on the map. Its the only way that I have found so far to create a destination for goods that can take hundreds of units at a time (a requirement if you want to run long freight trains).