Factorio Forums

Hello everyone,

I wanted to share my solution for a Crude Oil loading station (Outposts).

This is how it looks ingame: (attachment because first post)

The Pumps connected to the storage tanks are wired to the train stop.
The train stop is set to "reads train contents"
The pump pushing into the tanks only works on Crude Oil = 0, the pump pushing out of the tanks only works when Crude Oil > 0 - this way the pumps never operate at the same time, thus avoiding unnecessary circulation.

With this setup, as soon as an empty fluid wagon enters the station, the Storage-Tank-Filling-Pump will turn off, the Storage-Tank-Emptying-Pump will turn on and push it's content into the fluid wagon, this happens because the pumps that load the fluid wagon are not connected to the storage tanks directly, but to the main pipe brining the oil to the station, that way some oil will flow into the fluid wagon to trigger the condition "Crude Oil > 0" as soon as the train leaves with full cargo the station will revert to putting Oil into the storage tanks.

Blueprint String: (attachment because first post)

This is setup for a 1-1-1 train, but can easily be expanded to more fluid wagons for example by stacking the storage tanks vertically with a pipe sticking out to one side

Feedback welcome

(dont mind the mess of rail on the mini map, there is currently a big overhaul going on with centralized smelting and so forth)

Suggestion to improve throughput a bit. You want a pump on the output of Each tank and 1 pipe per tank. You are currently pushing 1 pump worth of volume through 3 pumps.

Here is a quick mockup of the idea. You can have up to 18 pipe segments between pumps to keep flow maxed. You can use a manifold (on the right) to split your flow as needed such as into the tanks from your source. There is also no harm in using a manifold at your pump-to-train to balance the flow but it shouldn't be necessary unless something else in your network is causing specific cars to stay partially full. For output from wagon you don't need the extra pumps not withstanding the 18 pipe segment limit.

There are more designs and dicussion in this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=194&t=46376
Inlcuding some that make use of full pump throughput by not limiting it with pipes which is currently fastest way to load/unload tankers.