Train Setup Help

[Warderbrad]

Hello all,

So here is my situation. I have three locations mining coal. I have one drop off point. I have the setup for unloading figured out. What I am wanting now is to get it so I can have multiple trains on the track. So far the route is a loop so it would support the idea.

As I see it there are these conditions to consider.
Station has a train, skip that station.
Station has no train and has coal, go here.
Station has no train and coal below limit, skip.

I am not sure how to set up this part of the setup. I have seen from other posts that it is possible to key off the train's capacity. It is also possible to skip stations based on conditions by naming them all the same and having them turn off when wanted to be skipped.

What I can't figure out is how to get the train that is at the skipped station to keep filling and still have it be skipped.

If anyone has any ideas please help.

[sparr]

If you use circuits on each station to disable the station when a train is parked there, other trains won't go there. You might also disable stations that don't have enough resources to pick up. Trains already parked at a station will stay there even when the station becomes disabled, and will use their normal conditions to decide when to proceed.

[Serenity]

Another way is to simply have a stacker in front of the unloading station where trains can wait. So for three mines you have the station + 2 waiting spots

Disabling mining stations is more for when you want less trains in the system rather than having one train for each mine

[astroshak]

I don’t generally bother with disabling a station that has a train present. I simply have a check that each cargo wagon’s chests have enough for a full load, and when all of the cargo wagons report such, the station is turned on.

I do not have a problem with trains waiting in a stacker, only to have the station they were trying to go to turn itself off. They’ll sort themselves out. And trains hold enough ore that I don’t generally need a resupply before they can go find it. 2000 ore/wagon, 6 stack inserters unloading it, generally have to wait for their chests to have room.

[SoShootMe]

So here is my situation. I have three locations mining coal. I have one drop off point. I have the setup for unloading figured out. What I am wanting now is to get it so I can have multiple trains on the track. So far the route is a loop so it would support the idea.

With a single train, you could name each mining location stop the same and use the circuit network to enable each stop when there is at least a train load in buffer chests. The train's schedule would be "Coal: wait until cargo full; Coal drop-off: wait until cargo empty". After unloading, the train will wait at the drop-off until there is at least one stop enabled, then head to the nearest enabled Coal stop, where it will load quickly and return to the drop-off. But if you introduce additional trains with this kind of setup you will start to see issues, eg if (when) multiple trains head for a single enabled Coal stop.

By far the simplest setup for multiple trains is for each mining location to have one stop with a unique name, and one train. With a loop of track, have the stops at the mining locations just off the loop, using signals to allow other trains to pass, and the drop-off stop on the loop (more generally, you should have a stacker just before the drop-off stop like Serenity described). Each train's schedule is similar to the above: "Coal #n: wait until cargo full; Coal drop-off: wait until cargo empty". The trains will queue to get to the drop off stop if needed, unload and then return to their mining location, load up and head for the drop-off. No need to disable/enable stops.

[Serenity]

By the way, for much of the game you don't really need multiple coal trains. Even when running on some steam power and producing a belt or two of plastic one train should be enough for that. Maybe two if you are mining smaller patches. You can use belt balancers to distribute the coal from four cargo wagons onto three or four belts or whatever you have.

Iron and copper ore you need in much bigger quantities.

[Warderbrad]

What I ended up doing was to set up a circuit for each stop keyed on the signal leading to the stop checking for a second train in line. The circuit turns off the inserters and the trains are set for inactivity.

It acutally works for having multiple things on one track too. On the unload area you have filter inserters and choose what to unload at that point.

So you have one train track and like 5 trains all going to coal, iron, copper, uranium etc. So each train has a jumbled up group of stuff on it. It gets to the coal stop and unloads all the coal then moves to the iron stop ....