Railroad Layouts

[iklarazu]

If only there were bridges or underground tracks like in TTD

[Xenomorph]

If only there were bridges or underground tracks like in TTD

If they are hills or even mountains in the game, tunnels for the railroad are usefull.

But if you want a underground track like the underground belt it's not practicable, because you can't lower the tracklevel in a short way.
Real trains can handle a gradient of 4%, that means 4m up or down needs a distance of 100m. And 4m aren't enought depth, I think you need 12m, that requires two 300m sections for the chance of the tracklevel.

With 600m traintrack you should find a way around the barrier and maybe you don't need all the 600m tracks.


Bridges would be nice.

[katyal]

@xenomorph: devs could also subtly alter the sprites for trains and tracks so that the rails resemble the rails of a rollercoaster...then gradient wouldn't matter. Factorio already asks us to suspend disbelief over much less believable things than underground trains.

[Deadly-Bagel]

I use a three-way junction:

Junction

This design has never deadlocked on me, on over five games. My current game is rather train-heavy too and I've had some pretty poorly designed outposts from the early game with trains queueing over these junctions and they handled it fine. There are some situations a four-way may be necessary but most of the time I'd recommend this layout. It's solid, efficient, and you can whack another one down on the power pole next to it facing the other direction to give you a sort-of four way junction.I generally end up making a big square with various branches off it.

I'll give a shout out to Descryant for the layout of the rails, though I've heavily modified the signals.

As long as I stick to the power poles, using them as a sort of yard stick, I end up with an accurate grid so if I loop the rail around my base or a large body of water or something it will always meet up on the other side.