Automatically Refueling a Locomotive

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ionicbox
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Automatically Refueling a Locomotive

Post by ionicbox »

What's is the best way for regularly refueling a locomotive with Uranium Power Cells, etc.
I have already created a single station connected with a requester crate along with queue areas to accommodate traffic. However the trains are visiting too often for it to be effective over time
astroshak
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Re: Automatically Refueling a Locomotive

Post by astroshak »

I have not tried this with the nuclear rocket fuel. I am doing this with regular rocket fuel.

All of my train station depots are either “pick up” or “drop off” - from the mines, to the smelters, to the science packs, everything has one or both of those types of train depots. I picked the drop off type of depots to have a Train Fuel Drop Off station (so my Green Circuits area would have a Construction Train train station, a couple Iron Plate train stations, a couple Copper Plate train stations, and a Train Fuel Drop Off station, on the drop off side, and the Green Circuits pickup train station on the finished product side). The Train Fuel Drop Off station deposits the rocket fuel to a bunch of chests, and from there, it gets sent to each locomotive that visits the other drop off stations. When the actual unloading chest contents get low on rocket fuel, the Rocket Fuel Drop Off station turns on and another train load of rocket fuel gets delivered.

This should work with nuclear rocket fuel as well. Though as I said, I have not tried it with that fuel. It works quite well with solid fuel and rocket fuel, however.
zOldBulldog
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Re: Automatically Refueling a Locomotive

Post by zOldBulldog »

There are two common ways of doing this:

1) You can deliver fuel to your most frequently used stations, then refuel trains when they go to those stations during regular routes.

2) You ca n use a logistics type of train network, like the vanilla Haphollas or the LTN mod. In those kinds of networks trains sit at depots (similar to central stackers) and only go do a delivery job when needed, resulting in less overall rail traffic. In this case the depot is the perfect place to refuel trains.
hale42
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Re: Automatically Refueling a Locomotive

Post by hale42 »

for me it depends on what station they are going to/coming from and what they are doing.
nuke fuel is pretty hard to get around because of the 1 unit/stack its more efficient (space wise) to cart around a stack of rocket fuel and a stack of uranium and produce it where you need it.

for my wall train I have a central production area for the trains and I devote a slot or 2 for fuel that is taken at each train stop and moved to a requester chest. the energy value is so large with nuke fuel that even one slot will fill every stop eventually until it takes more than one unit to get from one corner of my factory to the next.

I guess it depends on what kind of efficiency you want to achieve.
for time id say every stop gets a refuel section
for cost then a central fuel station
for space then 2 slots one for rocket and one for uranium input/output governed by networks
for cost then either a devoted train station for refueling or a devoted train to disseminate fuel to each station
Ormy
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Re: Automatically Refueling a Locomotive

Post by Ormy »

I use a dedicated train (LCCCC) that carries nuclear fuel cells from main base to each outpost in turn. Logistic bots then deliver fuel to requester chests at every station.
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