bythelee

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  • in reply to: Please improve performance of double track #18126
    bythelee
    Participant

    @isodoro In theory it should work. But depending on how much faster the new trains are, the length of overtaking track might be prohibitive. It could prove very difficult to get it working in practice, but I am going to experiment, to see if it works. I’d like to better understand the logic behind when a train checks for a clear path, and whether a train can be persuaded to move off the track chosen by the line because the alternative path is clear.

    I agree – having some fast trains is pointless, because they always jam up behind the slower trains. It’s not too bad if the newer trains are only a little faster, but have better capacity, or running costs. But it’s the reason why I prefer to switch all of my trains to the same type as quickly as possible.

    I also agree that the micromanagement of lines to add waypoints feels prohibitively awkward. I already spend far too much time tweaking routes and adjusting vehicle updates. But it is a way to guarantee which trains select which tracks. Whether the layout permits overtaking, remains a speed/distance calculation problem, though.

    Personally, I suspect that the expense of changing all trains to the same type, is less trouble than building a working overtaking track. I use the automatic vehicle replacement tab on the Line window a lot. Select the appropriate vehicle, then switch it to replacing at 25% life. You get about half of the old train’s value refunded when it is sold, the trains update automatically at a station, maintaining the passenger counts and smooth running of the line, without needing the manual intervention of sending trains to depots and buying new trains to replace them. Usually the existing fleet is already old enough for an instant replacement when something appropriate to replace them turns up.

    I do the same trick for trucks, buses and trams. But only when a really interesting / useful new vehicle is released. Like a bus with twice the speed and more passengers, for intercity haulage.

    in reply to: THE PAIN OF ELECTRIFICATION #18092
    bythelee
    Participant

    I hit this the very hard way. A long loop of track, serving eight towns. All was well, until I electrified it, and started running electric trains. The first line was OK, so I switched the trains on the other track/line (running in the opposite direction) to electric as well. Nightmare. Everything backed up and jammed, taking me from +8M profits to -8M losses in a couple of minutes.

    The cause? One tiny sliver of non-elecrified upgraded track, formed when the game automatically chopped the track into a sliver at a level crossing.

    The visual clues are useful, once you realise how they work. The high-speed track upgrade, for example, highlights from station to station indicating a contiguous section of track. I didn’t realise the electrification upgrade does the same thing.

    The other clue would have been the lines themselves. A working line shows colour. If the trains cannot run, the line disappears. The booby trap was that I didn’t spot one of the two lines was showing arrows in both directions after my “upgrade”. Because, the trains had to reverse around the entire loop to get to the next station beyond the break in the line.

    So, there are visual clues to show when things are not happy. But I have to agree, electrification should be a one-click thing to electrify all track between stations.

    And I do like the “view” colouring idea to show electrified versus non-electrified track. The same might be said about high speed and regular speed track.

    in reply to: Please improve performance of double track #18088
    bythelee
    Participant

    @isidoro No, that isn’t what I was doing (or intending). My plan was to have each of the two tracks running trains in opposite directions. All of the trains on one line were confined to a single track, much like cars travelling on a two-way road.

    Thinking like a passenger, I would not want to get on a train that travels all the way around a loop, just to get to the next station “upstream”. That’s why I run trains in the opposite direction too. All of the London Underground trains do that. As do most, if not all, subway systems. And bus routes. And tram tracks. Passengers usually need to make the journey in both directions. I’m not certain if TF simulates this accurately, but seeing passengers waiting at a stop wanting to make a commute from workplace to home, it looks possible. The game might let them use alternative means for each journey, and not require both to use the same mode of transport. I suspect so, because I rarely see even usage of the contra-rotating lines. One is often as little as 1/2 or 2/3 of the other. But I digress.

    So, I typically have full dual track, and do not need to have switches. I often have some, though, because once the first few stations are built and linked, I will set a train or two running, shuttling back and forth along the incomplete loop. I don’t remove those switches, and things got messy much later once both loops were completed, and each line was running five trains. I built a track segment for a new line, not even physically connected to the first ones, and TF decided to swop those two lines over, onto each other’s track. Ten trains now tried to maneouvre onto the other track, using the few bits of switchtrack I had left in the early build. Total chaos and logjam. Much has been written about this random line switching in other threads/posts, and it was here that I first read about “one-way signals”. They are a lifesaver. I have not had a single problem since converting the two-way signals that I had expected to do that job, into one way signals. The lines remain on the tracks they were assigned to, and trains no longer attempt to use the wrong track.

    When I said “the train can pass at the far end” I meant that the train can pass by the one-way signal, not a slower train. When a train finds two alternative tracks provided by a switch, then a one-way signal either says “welcome” or “no entry”.

    A two way signal (the default setting) says “welcome” in both directions, but divides up that track into two segments, splitting it at the signal. A train can use that track from either direction, so long as another train is not presently occupying it. It sounds confusing, but it isn’t once you get your head around it. If you have a two way signal at each end of a track segment, then with unfortunate timing, you can get trains entering the switches at both ends, seeing the segment up to the signal as clear, but then jamming as each one tries to use the segment between the signals. They will face off against each other, neither one winning. One of them will have to reverse (requiring manual user intervention) to resolve it. I found it easier to quit and restart from an earlier save than fix my line switching logjam, and sorted out my one way signals instead.

    But I also know, that trains do not have to stick to the track indicated by the coloured line, for them to achieve the route. An early section of dual track loop with no switches, and a reciprocating line running one train, had the train running on the track not indicated by the line. It stopped at stations, and carried passengers regardless. So, trains can choose alternative paths to the ones indicated by the line, which makes your trains refusing to attempt an overtake very interesting indeed. I’d have all sorts of questions about the speed difference between the trains, and relative distances, and how close the chasing train was before it had a chance to pick the alternative track. There is also the dreaded issue of whether the alternative track was suitable for use. Like, a missing sliver of electrification that prevented an electric train from using it. (I’ve hit that nasty “feature” before too – my trains started reversing around the entire loop to get to the next station, jamming against the other trains still advancing normally. Such joy…. lol)

     

    If you want to have high speed trains passing slow ones, then it gets difficult, but not impossible. You would need dual track heading in the same direction. And I suspect it needs to be quite a decent length, depending on the speed difference. The less the difference, the longer the track needed.

    Unlike “clever” signals, whereby a slow train could be held at a signal while the fast one caught up and went by, TF only has a “first come, first served” signal system. Whichever train gets first call, gets to go. So the fast train has to catch and pass the slow train in time for the next track segment.

    The slower train sets off down one of the tracks, letting the faster train take the other track and attempt to overtake it. The doubled track has to be long enough, and the preceding signals and stations and single track segments short enough, that the fast train could get close enough behind to have a go at passing. It will always wait for the slower train to fully clear the segment of single track it is on, before the faster train can enter it.

    If the dual track is long enough, it should catch and pass the slow train, and enter the next single track segment first. But it is not clear at what point the slow train scans ahead for the next clear segment. Trains slow down and stop in time time for signals, so I think they “know” whether the next segment ahead is clear or not. In which case, you would need to add extra signals to break the track up into multiple segments. Otherwise, as soon as the slow train enters the dual track, it already checks ahead and sees the next segment at the joining together switch is clear, and “pre-books” its place. Even if the fast train overhauls it, the joining switch is already commandeered by the slow train, and the fast train will stop and wait. If you add signals just before the switch, then each train merely pre-books the segment between the signal and the switch. So if the fast train can pass its signal first, it will get first call on the segment beyond the signal-switch segment, and happily prebook the switch segment before the slow train gets there. Overtake made, mission complete.

    It’s all about speed. The dual track has to be long enough to let the fast train overhaul and reach the next signal first. The preceding segments have to be short enough (you can add multiple signals every train length to permit this if need be) to let the fast train get close to the back of the slow train. If the fast train is held back a long way because of the long length of the segment approaching the switch, it will have to make up too much ground to get past. If the slow train ever gets to the switch before the fast train, the overtake is a bust. Your situation sounded like the game never even tried to use the other track, so it’s unclear if this can ever be made to work automatically.

    Waypoints can certainly help, especially if the fast train gets to use a high speed track. Consider forcing the slow train onto a slow track, and let the fast train use a high speed track. So if you have upgraded the track to high speed, add a parallel slow speed track, and use waypoints to steer the slow train onto that. You will have to double up the line definition, because all trains using that line will have to pass the waypoint, so if both fast and slow trains are on that line, they will both have to pass the waypoint and use the same track, ignoring the passing track. A second waypoint, and a duplicate line except for the waypoint, is the way to resolve that. But that feels…. messy. And will not fix the fundamental “fast enough to overtake” speed problem, if the segments are not short/long enough.

    I’m thinking the fast train / slow train overtake is sensible only when you have slow goods trains sharing some part of a high speed passenger track, and want to avoid holding up the passenger train while the goods train is passing through. Otherwise, it makes much more sense to have a fleet of the same trains running on any one line.

    While I did have a temporary situation where I ran newer, faster trains on the same lines as older, slower ones, I swopped all of them for one type of train as soon as possible. That way, they all run at similar speeds, and spread themselves out reasonably well, with minimal signals. Signals only become necessary when you want to run more trains than stations, to provide more track segments for the trains to fit on. And sometimes, if you have one or two unusually long runs between stations, it can help to break up that long run into similar lengths as the typical station-to-station distance. Signals are an easy way to do that. Switchtrack is another, whether or not the switches go anywhere. Stations break it up too, but they are not the right tool for that job. From a quick test, waypoints do NOT divide up a track segment – they merely force a line to use that track segment. Trains do NOT wait at a waypoint.
    The simple rule is, that trains will not enter the next track segment ahead, unless the path is clear for them to do so. And trains have foreknowledge about the state of the next segment (whether it is blocked by another train, or clear). So, they know whether to stop or carry on when they reach it. You might have to provide a “dummy” segment between a signal and the switchtrack at the end of an overtaking lane, to make it more likely that the fast train get past the slow one. Merely having a dual track with switchtrack at each end impedes the fast train overtaking the slow one. Because the uncertain point at which the trains pre-book the next available segment almost certainly precedes where you’d place a signal.

    I’d screengrab an example, but my screengrabber merely gets a black screen instead of a jpg. And no, this isn’t a steam version, so F12 doesn’t work. I got mine from GOG.

    in reply to: Train fever on hard, … without trains #18074
    bythelee
    Participant

    Everyone has made interesting points. But I have just achieved the Tycoon achievement (1 Billion profit) on a large European map on Hard difficulty. My trains made at least half of my profit. And I tend to build doubletrack loops like that of the example, linking about six to ten cities. I had three such loops by 2050, with two towns having four track stations, where passengers could switch between loops. One of those loops made a big profit, running in PARALLEL with the original bus service that linked three of the towns in a chain. The bus service was STILL profitable in 2100, although it had waned to 300K (it peaked at about 1.2M before the trains arrived).

    In 2100, my road business costs 12M, and makes 10M profit. My trains cost 50M to run, and achieve 25M profit. The trucks and buses are clearly more profitable as a percentage, and were critical to funding/subsidising the early days of the hideously unprofitable trains. But the trains have by far the bigger growth potential, and while I’ve done all I want to do with that map, it is by no means impossible to make massive profits with trains on Hard level. It is just, well, hard.

    Fundamentally, there was nothing wrong with the original poster’s build or layout. It looks quite close to what I’d do myself. But you have to make sure that at least some towns are supplied with industrial goods, because people need jobs, and strong industry is what provides most of them. Then it takes many years, if not decades, for a train service to become profitable. You have to buy enough trains to make it attractive, but if conditions are favourable, the towns will start to grow near the stations, and people will start to travel on trains. Profits will come, eventually. And when they do, it is deeply satisfying.

    But it is called “hard” difficulty for a reason. None of them unrealistic. All of them solvable with simple logic and common sense. Plus a lot of patience, a decent plan, and a healthy road business to subsidise your huge losses through the early years. Because, there are not enough people to make train services profitable from the get go. Instead, the train option encourages towns to grow, and only in time will there be enough people to use the trains and deliver profits.

    Perhaps the most critical thing to realise, is that in this game there are not hoards of resources and people waiting to use whatever transport options you provide. Instead, it is only when you provide transport options, that the first passenger comes along. You just have to watch an industry that does nothing, slowly starting to produce the first log from the forest, maybe in time for the second trip by your empty delivery truck, to realise how this works. People are the same. Passengers take time to become a viable cargo in decent quantities, just like timber, or oil, or iron ore, or coal, or goods. They are just another commodity for us to ship about.

     

     

    Things that worked for me, in detail:

    – PATIENCE. no profits after a few years is typical. Expect to break even at best, after ten years, with your first line. You need enough profitable road services to carry you through those painful losses, while the towns grow in size and start using your trains.

    – Frequency = attractiveness. You need to have ENOUGH trains to make the lines attractive. I have noticed that 6 minutes is probably NOT frequent enough to attract passengers, but is borderline good enough. Things start to take off when you get down to 4 minutes or less. This is because the train time is only part of the whole journey time. Passengers will not bother making the trip if they cannot get door to door inside 20 minutes. If they use a bus to get to the first station, then take the train, then use another bus, those transit times need to be short enough to encourage them to use the train. They will ignore your services if they are not frequent enough.

    – frequency is more important than capacity. It is useless having one large train that can hold all of the waiting passengers at every stop, if it does not come by regularly enough. And since locomotives are by far the most expensive part, it’s a very tough decision to make, balancing having enough trains with enough capacity. If in doubt, scrimp on capacity, but do not scrimp on frequency. If your service is not regular enough, passengers will not use it, and it will never grow. If it is regular enough, people will use it, and the towns will grow around the stations, resulting in more passengers, and then the profits will come. You can always add more wagons later, to up capacity.

    – people will want to use a good train, but it takes years, if not decades, for them to use it. Typically my towns achieve significant growth around the train station. I build it on the edge of the town, often connected to a “ring road” – an avenue that circles the town (much like the picture in the original post) – but early gains are made by running a bus line through the existing parts of town and connecting it to a bus stop at the station. You then need to run a bus service that takes less than 3 minutes. It probably won’t make a profit. But it is a “feeder” service, that brings more passengers to the train station (in addition to getting them about the town itself, too).
    I made a mistake of building tram systems from the get-go, expecting towns to grow quickly. Instead, by 2150, most of those towns have yet to grow out far enough to use all of the tram stops I built, and most tramlines run at a significant loss. I lose 3M a year on unprofitable trams. But since each train loop makes more than that now, I’m not too worried. In the early days, only one tram line was close to break even. Now about 1/3 are making profits, and most of the others are getting close to break even. I have three towns with close to 2000 residents, so I clearly overestimated the requirement for trams. But it means I have massive capacity still waiting to be tapped as those towns grow bigger.

    – maybe it’s the “hard” difficulty, but I noticed that running costs of trains are brutally important. I started my passenger lines using a cheap diesel train pulling three Ein…2 wagons each (60 passengers). Even with a frequency of 4 mins, with 4 trains on each loop, each of the two lines (one in each direction around a dual track loop) made a 2M loss for the first 10 years. But every year, that loss decreased, as more passengers discovered my lines, and the towns grew around the stations. And when the first green profit appeared, I cheered.
    Then a nice electric train was released, and I added two of each to the existing services, to bring the transit time down to just 3mins. I upgraded all of the other trains quite quickly, and watched my 2M profit on each line turn back into a 2M loss. The trains were just as full, if not fuller. BUT the increased running costs of the new trains were killing it. At best, they just about crawled back to break even, some 15 years later. Heartbreaking.
    Five years before they became obsolete (around 1985) I got rid of those expensive-to-run electric trains, and replaced them with a fleet of the original crappy diesel locomotives, which was STILL the most economical train to run. Four carriages on each (80 passengers), and the huge expense of replacing some 12 trains resulted in a 3M profit instead of a small loss. PER LINE.
    I cannot emphasise how CRITICAL it is to pick the right trains, with low running costs, and appropriate speed and capacity. It is better to have people waiting at the station, unable to get into a crowded small train, than to have a huge train that gives every waiting passenger a choice of luxurious seats. You have to think like the train owner, not the passenger.

    – My first train loop had no competing bus service. But the second loop connected the three towns that had been linked by buses from day one. Each bus line was earning something like 1M with a transit time of about 120seconds. The bigger service had sixteen buses running on it, and each upgrade never needed a reduction in vehicle numbers. The natural passenger growth consumed the increased capacity and speed. There seemed to be some truth that the passenger numbers grew to what the provided service could handle. (In hindsight, I believe this is a truism for this game.)
    The bus line ran from city centre to city centre, whereas the train stations were built on the edge, so direct competition was not an issue. Besides, the existing bus passengers were making journeys specific to the service provided, and the way the towns had grown around the transport option. So the trains would add something new, not take away the old. I watched the bus lines carefully, ready to pull them if they started running at a loss. But there was no noticeable dip for decades, even as the train service began making profits.
    Once again, the new train lines ran at a huge loss for a few years. By now, trains were expensive, but again I opted for the cheapest to run locomotive I could find, ignoring the lovely TGV, although it was a close thing. If I had sparser cities, further apart, then the higher speed would have swung the decision. In about 5 years, the initial 3M loss per line had reached break even.

    – there comes a point where things stagnate. Where you have passengers waiting at a station, and the trains are mostly full or close to full. The game seems to self balance that way, growing towns to match the transport capacity provided, so long as growth conditions are favourable.
    I gambled with my most profitable train lines (the original loop, now making 6M per loop), by buying more trains for it. By now I was running the awesome Dualstox, a fast train (on an upgraded high speed line) that can carry 162 passengers. They were not quite full, and most waiting passengers could get on the next train. There seemed to be no need for more trains, except that profits had flatlined at about 6M per annum, for a decade or more.
    The upgrade from the old diesel meant that the service increased not just in doubled capacity per train, but also by the faster trains providing that capacity more frequently. But I still upped each service from 6 to 8 trains, just about one per station. Imagine my surprise, when profits grew from 6M to 10M in about 5 years, after an instant dip to 4M because of the increased running costs.
    The important point here is that growth is a boot strapping process. Provide an attractive enough service in the beginning to attract passengers, then watch for when the service flatlines. Then add more capacity / frequency, and watch until that reaches a balanced state too. Continue ad infinitum.

    – Balance. Towns can’t be just residents with nothing to do. People need jobs too. So you need to help industry by freighting raw materials and goods, providing at least some towns with strong industrial growth, demanding workers. It is quite possible that a healthy industry in one town will spring up near the railway station, drawing in passengers from a nearby town, where the people commute via your train. That should be a highly viable strategy, although I haven’t tried it deliberately. I just happened to notice that one town with the best supply of steel goods on the map grew a huge industrial sector near the new train station, and the neighbouring town, that was one of the few with no industry, saw huge residential growth near the new station. Those two train stations had double the number of waiting passengers as the other stations on the loop.

    – do not be afraid of early upgrading, if a more suitable vehicle is released. Use the “25%” lifetime tab, to switch to a newly released vehicle early. The important thing is, you get significant refunds by selling the not-so-old hardware, so it is not as expensive as you think. Plus, the running costs of older vehicles starts increasing as soon as it ages, so the penalty is again not as painful as it might seem. I was still running fairly youthful yet obsolete diesels when the Dualstox train became available. But when I checked its speed, the doubled capacity, the 25% greater running costs, and saw the hoards of passengers itching to get on my trains, I didn’t hang about. But I tested it by upgrading just one of my (then) four lines. Upgrading each old train cost a net outlay of only about 500K, but increased profits paid for itself within the first year. I upgraded the rest the next year, and my income jumped overnight.

    – people want to be near the station. Any station provides incentive for the town to grow, on both sides of it. Make sure that potential is not halved, by building access across the lines. I typically added a road bridge or tunnel near each end of the station. How powerful is that attraction? In one of my bigger cities, where I had so many lines and two rivers nearby making access to the other side of the station difficult, the town used the national road to grow from, far beyond the city boundary, to get back to as close as it could on the far side of the obstacles. That was still almost half the town size away, yet homes and industry sprang up like wildfire, despite having no transport services at all. I went back to re-engineer some tricky bridges and tunnels to make the huge island of isolated land in the middle accessible, and the town leapt from 1300 residents to 1800 in about ten years.
    So, do not ignore the “other” side of a new railway station. Add bridges and tunnels to avoid level crossings, but even level crossings will suffice. Don’t cripple your growth potential by 50% by neglecting to build crossings. The game does NOT build them by default.

    – beware of the traffic jams. I got caught out, when an intercity bus service went from 500M profit to 400M loss, in a year or two. The problem? A traffic jam near the train station, where trams and cars and buses and some freight trucks all got in each other’s way, causing a permanent obstruction. All of the intercity buses were stuck in the queue of traffic. Luckily, I had built the ring road system using Avenues, and was able to upgrade them to the bigger dual carriageway (with a bus lane) with no problem. The traffic jam vanished, and all went back to normal. If money is no problem, it might make sense to build the biggest roads you can from the get go, because those narrow streets are non-upgradeable. Most avenues can expand into the bigger dual carriageway by sacrificing some sidewalk, even if the road itself cannot expand in width because of nearby buildings. So build avenues as a minimum for future town upgrades and traffic resolution.

     

    After all of that, I need to point out: I was also aiming for the Penny-pinching achievement (and got it) in that Hard game too. That meant no additional loans. The ONLY way I managed that, was to have freight trucks and a few intercity bus services that made awesome profits in the early years, that funded the train track building and rolling stock purchase, then subsidised the unprofitable trains while the towns grew big enough to make the trains worthwhile.

    Industry was critical. 90% of my road vehicles are freight. I have very few buses, and those are mostly intercity services. (But I have loss making trams ferrying people around the towns themselves) The towns that grew best, always had some industry feeding them goods. Mostly just forests to sawmills to cargo depots near the town’s industrial sector. But the biggest profit ones were steel. Iron plus coal to the steel mill, and goods to the town. Most of those lines make about 1M each. In the early days, I had 12 to 20 Opel trucks servicing them. Post 2000, typically just 3 or 4  40 ton trucks is sufficient. It’s hard work “pruning” excess capacity from modernised lines on the roads.

    You might argue that road fever is the right way to go. Even in 2050, the road haulage costs about 12M to run, while bringing in 10M profit. Almost a 50% return, and “highly profitable”. Contrast that with my six train lines costing 50M to run, and also bringing in “only” 10M profit. Barely a 20% return. Not worth it, compared with those road vehicles, but far more satisfying, and a 20% return is still very good business. However, since about 2050, as the towns have grown, and the tram services are finally paying off, flooding passengers into the railway stations, the train profits have grown to almost 30M for very little extra cost, and it isn’t so clear cut anymore.

    The growth potential for the passenger service feels like it can easily triple, whereas the road haulage business is already supplying as many goods as each town can take. The road haulage figures have been stable since 1950. All of my attempts to add new goods businesses have failed, racking up huge losses as the towns already have all the goods they can use.

    in reply to: Please improve performance of double track #18072
    bythelee
    Participant

    When trains jam up (“waiting for free path”), they will randomly switch tracks if the other track is empty, and convenient track switching is available. Each train dynamically searches for a clear path to the next stop, and does not care which platform it uses when it arrives. This is what you need to consider, whenever adding switches and multiple track alternatives that a train can use to reach its next stop.

    I typically prefer to build a double track loops, and run trains in both directions (clockwise and anticlockwise). But even this was not enough, as the Lines would randomly switch track (random changing from left hand drive to right hand drive) and the trains would get into horrible messes trying to change over. I tried using signals, and waypoints, all to no avail. I did not know that all signals were bi-directional by default, and merely divide a length of track into two sections.

    But using One Way signals, specifically setting each signal to “one way” (select “yes” in the dialogue box that pops up when you click on a traffic light signal) sorted that problem entirely. The lines now remain fixed on each track, and the trains run perfectly. Note that just one signal is adequate to force the direction of each track (and the line that runs on it), if there are no points/switches linking the two. I’m also now in the habit of building a depot on each side of the doubletrack, one for each direction, to avoid the need for trains to ever cross tracks, but that is unnecessary with correct signals.

     

    To force the exclusive use of longer stretches of double track, add a single signal to the outside of each track, just before the points (switch) at each end. Trains will need to stop while on the double track if the single track ahead is blocked by another train. TF prefers the “left hand drive” track usage, so place your signals accordingly, but it really doesn’t matter for the “passing loop” situation. I’d stick with convention, in case of an eventual upgrade to full doubletrack.

    Once built, click on each of the two signals and select the “yes” option to the “One way” question. Any train approaching from a single track section will examine the two tracks ahead, and discover the left hand track is obstructed by the one way signal close by, while the right hand track is permitted by the one way signal that allows it to pass at the far end of the double track. The train will always smoothly choose the only track available.

    You can add more signals along the length of the double track to “stack” waiting trains. Just make sure that you always build signals on the outside of the double track.

    Note that it is only necessary to set ONE signal on each track to “one way” to force the exclusive selection by each train. Setting them all to one way is not a problem, except that if you make a mistake with signal placement, you might end up blocking the track by making it one way in both directions (ie unpassable) with conflicting signals.

    One way signals have given me all of the control I need. Waypoints should also work, but they are not direction dependent, and can be passed / ignored by trains that are not required to pass through them. They will force trains on that line to use that track, but they do not stop other trains from using it too, nor do they control direction, and that’s how the jams can still happen. Forcing all lines to use the correct waypoints at the correct moment is much, much harder than controlling the track usage with one-way signals. Waypoints also caused problems when trains advanced on the wrong track because it was free, only to have to reverse to one of the rare switches I had, to get onto the other track for the required waypoint.

    In a nutshell, careful placement of one-way signals, will always guarantee which trains use which section of double track. Whenever you have switches that allow trains to change tracks, you need to consider whether one-way signals are needed to control which track a train will choose.

    While I agree that double track performance is lacking (especially the line planning randomly changing the track it prefers), the trivial effort to build one-way signals to sort all of that out, is effortless compared with building the track itself.

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