Factorio Forums

I'm trying to make a train stop that can process any of the three crude oil outputs into solid fuel.

As you can see from the picture below, I have three pumps. The first is enabled if heavy oil > 0. The second and third are for light oil and petroleum. All three are connected to a circuit which is also connected to the train stop. I know from the power poles that the circuit is reading correctly (the train parked has 75k light oil), and in the picture the light oil pump's circuit is enabled.

But nothing happens! The pump isn't working. It's connected to power. The train is at the station (running on automatic).

I must be missing something, but what?

After all that, I deleted the three pumps, added them again, hooked them back up to the circuit, and set the enable conditions again.

And now...it works!

Bug?

Did the pumps ever move anything else? Perhaps while you were settings things up? I've had issues with pumps unloading rail cars before, where I first used the unloading pumps with one liquid, then changed my mind and had them unload something else instead. Even though the pump was showing completely empty, I had to delete/replace the pump before it would work properly.

At a guess, I suspect it's either a minor bug, or there's a non-zero amount of liquid still sitting in the pump that's too small to show a value to the player, but still enough to lock the pump on one substance?

Nah, it was a brand new stop. Neither the pumps nor the pipes, tanks, and chemical plants had ever consumed any fluid before.

The image you showed does not have the pumps attached to the fluid wagon which would usually indicate that the train was NOT brought to the station automatically because there was a slight misalignment of the train. If you never moved the train but replacing the pumps fixed the problem then I'm not sure what actually happened originally, but it is clear from your screenshot that the pumps had not attached themselves to the wagon and that is why they did not pump anything.

Why you trying to pump light into Heavy and Petro?

He isn't. The circuit network activates the pump leading to the correct tank. In the screeny it's light oil - and only the pump leading to the light oil tank is active. Kind of like a fluid filter inserter.
You say it was a brand new station - was the train already there when the station was built? Or were the rails perhaps layed after the pumps were already built? If the pumps aren't connecting to the train, it's not an issue with the type of fluid...

The train was (in theory) perfectly aligned. It was brought to the station automatically. It should be obvious that the train was in the station correctly, because why else would the light oil pump show an activated (green) light on it? It was activated by reading the 75k light oil on the train.

But fine, just to prove it to you all, I loaded up that game, sent the train back to the light oil pickup station, and watched it come back to this station, and...

...it started pumping.

I could swear it's nothing different from what I did before, but I don't have any other explanation. I even reloaded the game and toggled the train to manual and back to automated. It moved a pixel or two and then started pumping.

Factorio devs, I apologize for doubting you.

Well like I said before, in your image the pumps were not connected to the fluid wagon, so something was off. If you look closely there's actually a very cool animation of little arms that reach to the top of the fluid wagon tank to connect the pump. It's pretty cool and it will show you if things are setup correctly.