Factorio Forums

I'm working on a train network which has multiple unloading stations. Currently, different trains are set up for different stations, but it could be more efficient if the trains could go to either, and if one was occupied, the train could go to the second station. Is there any way to make this happen? As in make a train skip an occupied station?

Yes, a train will skip an occupied station if another station with the same name is available.

But the train only calculates the route when it leaves the previous station. If it takes a long time to get there, the situation might have changed. So you need to add an intermediate station near the unloading stations to force it to recalculate again.

If you have several stations sharing same name the train will choose which one is free just as Dave said.
As the path may take really long time and with a strong traffic trains may still end up queuing the busy stations.
Thats why you can either do a single station before the intersection to the unloading stations with 0 sec wait time, or build a stacker with each stacker line holding a station, also all sharing same name, right before unloading station, supplying them with chain signals which would prevent trains exiting stacker before they can actually reach the free unloading station. This is recommended for high throughput unloading stations.