Factorio Forums

Hey all,

I have two separate rail networks in one area - one is a looping single-direction train for oil collection, and one is a push-me-pull-you for copper. To get to a new oil deposit, it looks like I have to make one of the tracks intersect and cross over the other track. I've had a look into the rail signals, but I haven't found any examples for usage to stop trains colliding on two separate tracks.

Any ideas on how I can stop the trains colliding?

Thanks!

Put two-way signals all around.

Sweet, thanks for the quick reply.

One question: if the signals are too close to the intersection and the trains happen to come at almost same time, there's still a collision risk?

no, one will all way stop.
https://forums.factorio.com/wiki/inde ... ork/Signal

It's a hard concept to explain, but pretty straightforward once you get a grip on it.

SIgnals force trains to acknowledge which direction a section of track can be traveled. One signal, one-way only. Two signals (directly across from one another), two way track. Signals placed next to different tiles of track create a 'segment' or 'branch' between them.

Signals also invoke one additional rule: Only one train can use a segment at a time. To my knowledge, the only definition for a 'segment' of track is that they are all 'touching' one another, so Drury's solution should work. A train using the 'intersection' segment between all of those signals will prevent any other train from using it until the first has cleared the intersection. Because they're all 'double' signalled, both tracks will function in both directions.

The critical problem to avoid is two trains moving at each other on the same track line. For both rail lines, they are broken into 3 segments. A westbound train and an eastbound train will invariably deadlock here, as the signals will prevent them from entering the segment the oncoming train is using. Drury's solution only works if there is only one 'north-south' train and only one 'east-west' train.

There are a lot of ways to go wrong in designing stations, rails, and signals, and not many clear ways to explain what works. Everything depends on the rail configuration and the number of independant trains that are running.

Zourin wrote: SIgnals force trains to acknowledge which direction a section of track can be traveled. One signal, one-way only. Two signals (directly across from one another), two way track. Signals placed next to different tiles of track create a 'segment' or 'branch' between them.

Oh, man! This is a really, really important thing about signals I hadn't realized! Maybe the wiki (and the game, dearest developers!) could make that more obvious.

Yeah I guess at this point your best bet for learning how to use signals would be playing OpenTTD.

It has a more noob-friendly pathfinder that provides better feedback than standing still and yelling "no path" - it will go around the track and stop at signals that are placed wrong, or reach the ends of badly placed lines and go back - if it can't find a path it will just wander aimlessly showing you your network's faults on the way.

Hm. I dunno, how to make that fact more obvious. More text won't bring anything than more obfuscation.

Hm... Of course more pics, especially animations... I hope with 0.10 we have the screenshoot-feature.

ssilk wrote:Hm. I dunno, how to make that fact more obvious. More text won't bring anything than more obfuscation.

Hm... Of course more pics, especially animations... I hope with 0.10 we have the screenshoot-feature.

Put Factorio as a non-Steam game in Steam. F12 makes the screenshot. Win.

Iphrid wrote: Put Factorio as a non-Steam game in Steam. F12 makes the screenshot. Win.

I do this, too. Bonus: I can upload my screenshots to Steam and show off the game to my friends!

As for tracks, really interesting discussion. As of yet I've not done multiple-train-per-track so had yet to toy around with signals. So thanks for the tips!

A little late, but now when I'm on it I moved that also.