Inserter and cargo wagon

[Neemys]

Hello

I began playing factorio some weeks ago. I love playing with train so I use RSO and other mod to make them needed. So far, I only used 2 wagon per train. I decided to go for three on a new playthrough.

When I look on the forum or on the wiki, I understand that train that stop from north-south station are smaller so I use east-west station. I have seen people saying and screenshot showing 7 inserter for the first wagon, 7 for the second and 8 for the third. But For me it does not work as shown on this screenshot :

inserter station.jpg (177.79 KiB) Viewed 4455 times

The locomotive have wood as fuel (the first inserter on the left took one). Then first wagon have tin plate (bob's mod ore), 7 inserter taking from the wagon. Second wagon have stonebrick, 7 inserter can take them, and third wagon have red belt, but only 6 inserter are working. There are inserter which should be able to take from but do nothing. It only happen when the train come to stop using automatic goto station with train stop. If I manually drive it, and stop at the same place 8 inserter take from the last wagon.

I try removing all mod the problem was still here in vanilla. east->west or west->east station doesn't matter and relocating it neither.

Am I doing something wrong ?

I'm on factorio 12.30 (steam). Haven't upgraded to 12.31 yet but nothing on the changelog say something about that.

[Neemys]

This problem does not happen if the train has a fourth wagon or a locomotive connected to the third wagon. I think I will post a bug report later today

[Klonan]

This problem does not happen if the train has a fourth wagon or a locomotive connected to the third wagon. I think I will post a bug report later today

No point, this will be fixed in 0.13

[Neemys]

Yeah that's right, you are redoing train stuff. If it appear in next version, I will post bug report then

But there are no solution for current 0.12 ? I could use a seventh inserter on this third wagon and haven't done the rest of the network for longer train.

[orzelek]

Yeah that's right, you are redoing train stuff. If it appear in next version, I will post bug report then

But there are no solution for current 0.12 ? I could use a seventh inserter on this third wagon and haven't done the rest of the network for longer train.

You can use mods - the 8L Train Project would be most appropriate. One issue is that you would need to rebuild some stations and place trains again to make it work properly.

[Neemys]

Yeah that's right, you are redoing train stuff. If it appear in next version, I will post bug report then

But there are no solution for current 0.12 ? I could use a seventh inserter on this third wagon and haven't done the rest of the network for longer train.

You can use mods - the 8L Train Project would be most appropriate. One issue is that you would need to rebuild some stations and place trains again to make it work properly.

Thanks, this mod will do the trick while waiting for 0.13 Yes I will need to rebuild all my station as I make it for only 7 inserter for the two first wagon. Maybe I will edit it to make for only 7 inserter per wagon.

[brunzenstein]

What is the most efficient e.g. fastest way to load / unload three cargo wagons on a train
horizontally / vertically?
- given one full compressed belt for each wagon is the source/destination?
- and how to ideally place the power poles in between so that the inserters are working properly?

[Neemys]

Taking into account you have full yellow compressed belt in input/output.

As only 6 inserter are needed to have a compressed yellow belt. (it's rounded up), we will only put 6 inserter per side of a wagon.

I will show you how I do it, There is maybe better, or using less belt/splitter, etc.

Load a train.

You only need to split the incoming yellow belt in 6. To do that I split in three, then in two. The following picture show you an 3 wagon loading that I have. You can see three yellow belt full getting loaded.

Load a compressed yellow belt on a wagon

station loader2.jpg (262.93 KiB) Viewed 4239 times

The belt between inserter and splitter is needed because both inserter can't take from splitter equally.

Unload a train.

A bit more difficult, we need to unload on a faster belt because 3 inserter can't unload on same side of a yellow belt (inserter can't compress a belt). We have again 6 inserter, two group of 3 unloading on two different belt then we merge this two belt to have a full compressed yellow belt.

Unload a wagon on full yellow belt

wagon unloader2.jpg (100.01 KiB) Viewed 4239 times

Because you need less than 6 inserter to have a compressed yellow belt. Middle inserter on each wagon will sometime wait less than a second.



In this picture I haven't put chest between wagon and belt but It's better to have some to act as a buffer and inserter moving from chest<->wagon get the inserter stack bonus. So your train need less time at a station and while it's driving on your network, inserter will be moving item in and out of chest (depending a wich type of statiion it is ).

As wagon have two side, you can load a yellow belt from each side of a wagon.

With my design you can see that I put medium electric pole between each group of six inserter.


As you requested help with only 1 compressed belt per wagon, I shown you my design that do it. But is not the fastest way to (un)load a train. As you can put 7 or 8 inserter for one wagon (depend on wagon position) you can load/unload faster and with more than a yellow compressed belt per side of a wagon. But it's convenient to just unload one yellow belt per wagon as with 3 wagon you output a compressed blue belt (two if you use both side). If you want to have max inserter, to get electricity to inserter depending on the design you may use substation instead of medium pole.

In case you don't know, 2 compressed yellow belt = 1 compressed red and 3 compressed yellow belt = 1 compressed blue. With my design if you use both side of a wagon, you can have in input 1 blue belt per side OR 1 red belt per wagon (if you have a train with different item type per wagon)

My design is working for horizontal station. As vertical station are more tiny, my design can be applied here only if you can fit 6 inserter on a wagon. As I don't use vertical station I don't know how many inserter fit per wagon on those station.

[Frightning]

What is the most efficient e.g. fastest way to load / unload three cargo wagons on a train
horizontally / vertically?
- given one full compressed belt for each wagon is the source/destination?
- and how to ideally place the power poles in between so that the inserters are working properly?

The fastest way to load/unload a train is to use chests so that your inserters get stack size bonuses moving to and from the train. This requires a 2nd set of inserters to get them onto the belt, but that can happen even when the train isn't currently in the station. For my rail stations (4, 2 each on two separate networks), I use Fast Inserters for the chest-wagon transfers (Actually, I use Smart Inserters for my Oil network stations because I needed to be sure they wouldn't take out loaded barrels at the loading station and unloaded barrels at the unloading station), which with stacksize bonuses is the fastest way to load a wagon automatically (you can load it faster manually from your inventory ofc). The post above me has a good Medium Pole setup (I use something similar, though I am running only 1 wagon because that's more than enough throughput for me at this point). On the other side of the chests I only use regular (electric) Inserters because they have enough time to fully unload the chests onto the belt before the train is back in the station unloading again, but if you need more throughput at your station, then you could use Fast Inserters there as well.