Since it doesn't matter whether locomotives pull from the back or push from the rear or middle, I figured I could place the engines in the loop and have wagons on both sides to make the station more compact, reducing bot flying times for loading/unloading and halving the size of loop terminus stations:
This works good, all wagons can be loaded with 2x6 inserters, and all locs can be refueled. It's not quite symmetrical (which might bother some
), but it aligns pretty decently.The loc at the front is not really needed, but the first wagon would miss one inserter (because of the station), and the front loc makes it easier to place new trains as it snaps in place. Of course, you can extend this setup to any l-c-4-c-m setup you want.
(You can of course use half the station for a waiting bay, but I generally don't use waiting bays in outposts but set the train to leave when the next train approaches (i.e. red signal > 0 with the signal before the station entrance signal; or when full, of course). I'd rather have a train with some ore at the smelter / storage than two trains at the outpost. So for me the space was simply wasted...)
Inserter placement 'bug':
Now, I'm not sure if this is a bug, a feature, or just way too obscure
But the wagons behind the locs are aligned very strangely:
As you can see, the inserters seem to be placed one tile too low: the gap is where you (visually) expect the first inserter to be, and the last inserter visually seems like it would insert into the next wagon (but it doesn't).
The yellow placement hint is also off:
Now, I'm mostly happy that you can still place 2x6 inserters per wagon, but I thought I would share
(edit: and I figured I might as well report it: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=51753)
