Factorio Forums

I thought the trains were supposed to select unblocked path if one is blocked. I have a station on one path (red arrow in picture) and a main line on the other (green arrow). Some of my trains are selecting the blocked path (red arrow), but not always. Usually they select the green arrow path. I suppose I could recajigger the exit of that station to make that path undesirable, but I'm open for other suggestions.

In summary: Train should go down green arrow, but it goes down red arrow, which is blocked.

Thanks.

Where is the train trying to go?

It certainly isn't trying to go to the disabled trainstop, but that doesn't help me figure out where it is going.

It's trying to go to a station to the east. I added a yellow arrow to the picture to show the desired path. I also took a screen shot showing the desired path from the map. I can't see any reason why it picks that path, instead of the desired yellow arrow path.

Use chain signals to prevent the train from going into rail section where they are not allowed to stop.
If you look at your image you can see that your train has no other option at this point than going through the blocked path. Put a chain signal in front of the junction that the train has already entered and use chain signals up to the station to block this path if there is a train at the steel loading station.
Also note that your inserter train can not leave while there is a steel loading train, you might want to fix that.

I'll try the chained signals. I don't ever use those, but I'll try it. The picker train can leave. I think I took out a signal trying to figure out what is going on when I took the screen shot.

Tried a chain signal, but the train still chose the wrong path. I made a cheesy fix, see below, but it a lot my stuff here is cheesy, lol. Still would like to know why the train does this. If I pick other stations to the east, it still follows the same general path, but skips the blocked one, so I don't know...

I don't see anything obvious, then. Please post a save from before the train leaves the previous station.

It's on that path, so at some point it must have looked like the shortest path — and in particular, when its braking point hit the red signal it's stopped at now, it still looked like the shortest path.

I notice there's a stop on the other path too. Pretty sure when this train arrived there was a train at both stops. I don't see a lot of steel on those belts, how long has that train been there?

It takes some experience to get chain signals right - the chain signal tutorial is a good way to start.

Because the southern route contains two unscheduled train stops while the northern one contains only one. Place train stops on a parallel track instead of putting them directly on track you expect other trains to pass through.

Yeah, the extra steps that trains take to avoid train stops can be a bit of a trap, especially when starting out with train network !

There ARE circumstances where you will want to put multiple train stations on the same line, but generally speaking, you only want one train station per line, and you do not want train stations on through-ways.

This is so that regardless of whether or not a train needs to sit there (go to this station and remain until FULL, go to that station and remain until EMPTY) other trains need to get by. Having stations in the through-ways creates the situation where the train that you need to get to this station so that train can move, is blocked by that train waiting for something.

And TC, learn chain signals. They are what allow you to easily make branching paths for trains to go through, while allowing for the blockages of one or more of those paths. A train parking lot (also known as a stacker) is an excellent example of this branching paths concept - all trains looking to go to a given station must pass through the stacker, but with chain signals, multiple trains stack up in parallel (one per line in the stacker) and leave to go onto the station one at a time once the way ahead is clear (usually, one or more station has opened up).

You may find though, that you need more space for your rail system ...