First of all, a little disclaimer, i was heavily inspired by the great junctions seen on this thread viewtopic.php?f=194&t=100614
Now there's a few thing I regret on this topic. They decided to rank the junctions by amount of train that can go through it. That's one way to do it, but i have another way of doing thing one could say an alternative metric. At first it was just a vague idea, very vague, something like " a junctions has ways ".
Now fast forward a little bit and few logical steps in the reflexion, the real question is "how many ways ?"
Because you see people too often restrict themselves into thinking in a box instead of embracing the various unexplored possibilities that are yet to be created. It started growing on me and i thought i really was onto something smart.
It had to begin with something, but i felt i was ready to re-invent the whole junctions thing, my brain was heating up from all that thinking, and as there's no tiny step when it's going in the right direction i decided to try my hand at something pretty basic at first in order to then grow in complexity and size of course : i called it the One-way Junction ! It look like that :
One way Junction
Of course i was pretty happy to come up with a unique original design, i've tried various size and signaling but i kept the version shown above because of the symetry.I notice there was some room for improvement since 1 way is not many way and the previous design was easily tileable. So it didn't took me long to come up with the following improvement, namely the 2-way-Junction.
2 way Junctions
At this point i struck upon the realisation that in order to continue my experiment and improve the number of ways in my junctions i would be required to rethink a bit my designs. The exclusive use of straight rails to create junctions has the disadvantage of preventing any connections with another direction than horizontal or vertical depending which one was first used.
Now to circumvent this problem, i decided to allow myself the use curve rails.
The other problem i soon faced was that all my attempts ending-up looking like unhealthy copy of existing one. I think mainly because of the use of both straight and curve rails.
The first attempt at scaling up the number of ways in my junctions that i felt was semi successful had the drawback of looking like a piece of underwear or a tie knot depending on your maturity i guess but you can judge for yourself ( i didn't give it a name to leave it at the appreciation of the user).
the unamed 3 way
When i say first attempt, it's because the following is much much better :The Sid junction
The smiley aspect of the junction is not the main positive side despite being very present.The total absence of straight rail is a very good aesthetic point but it's also not the main positive side.
The real strengh of the design is it's tileability. I look it up on google to make sure of the spelling, it means it's tileable, which means different things in different context, sometimes it means it can tile the plan, which means it can cover entirely every single piece of a plan. Which is an infinite surface. It's not the case here, since you can see little gap in the middle and you'd need to copy paste it a lot to cover the plan entirely. It just means you can copy paste this design. One next to another one, as long as there is a piece of the plan available. Supposing the plan is not infinite as it's the map size the limit it still means you can copy paste this design a lot but i haven't measured how much, instead i decided to improve again my designs.
From there it was pretty easy to make the following 4 way junction :
4 way Junction
I used a trick called rotation to place the second part upside down, and then move it a bit so that it look like it's only 1 part made of the 2 other part.Contrary to other mainstream 4 way junction, this one doesn't use horizontal rails because they are not necessary when you do it well.
At this point i was on fire: the same night i managed to climb the following step, which i think should be called the 5-way junction. But i wouldn't be mad if you choose another name because the particular shape maybe reminds you of something :
5 way Junction
Now i must say i am not often wrong and when i am there's a very good reason for it, or i just use denial, but after my successful attempt at the 5 way junction i was overconfident into thinking i could just copy paste my design to infinity. I must have not fully grasp the intricate nature of the copy pasting yet but i was unable to make a 6 way-junction using the same method.
On the other side, it's ok because when i attempted to make a 6 way junction using, instead i stumble accross the next step, like a shortcut to progress really, it's called the 7way-junction. ( because there is 7 way in and 7 way out, it could be called the 14 entry or exit point junction but it doesn't sound as good and going from 5 to 7 is already disruptive enough).
The 7 way junction
You see me coming, it's going to take a long to try and find the junctions with the most ways using the method of only copy pasting just the basic Sid junction over and over.
Because the sid junction only has 3 way, when i copy paste, it doesn't improve much the overall number of ways.
I put my brain in action again and went all out for the next attempt. I was decided at this point to create a better base for my following experiment of making the junction with the most many ways possible.
It took a few tries, mostly because every time i had to edit a rail in the center part i had to start over. but i ended up with a creation that i'm really proud to share , i call it the 8 way junction, because it has 8 ways, but it look like a spider web so it's the name i gave it :
The 8 way Junction
Notice i've included the blueprint everytime since the first one, in case someone ask you how many way has your junction, it gives you flexibility.but now come the serious things because as i said the previous version was made with the idea of being a template to reach even greater number of ways in junction.
I am sorry i cannot include the blueprints for the following junctions because they are to handle with too much care. I can only show a pictures that should give some hints on how to proceed next.
the next logical step
Very impressive if you want my opinion. sorry otherwise.I was already pretty sure at this point i had a very powerfull design in my hand, but i still did a last experiment
the following next step
I know the picture is not centered but i think it shows better on the minimap, the rest of the picture is so that the signaling can be displayed but you need good zoom.I am still counting the number of ways, i may update later.
My attempt at copy pasting this design were quite slow at this point so i decided no to pursue.
I know people limit themselves a lot with 3 way junction of 4 way junctions, i just wanted to give my opinion on the subject , i think more ways is better, but at some point it's too many.
Thank you for you time if you read till the end i'm not sure why you would do such a thing unless you have a weird humour.
