Signal gantries

[TriumphSprintST]

My rail network is growing rapidly, it would be nice to lay the track closer apart from at train stops.

This is possible provided signals are not placed. With signals an unnatural looking spacing is required. If signals could be placed on gantries it would solve this problem
and I think, lead to a nicer looking rail network. Gantries could be in different widths to accomodate from perhaps, 1 to 6 adjacent tracks.

[mattj256]

Straight rail in Factorio takes up a 2x2 tile area. (You can turn on "show tiles" in the graphics settings and pause the game with shift-space to see the individual tiles.)
As far as I know the rails have always been 2x2, and the devs are hard at work making better art for the upcoming 0.15 release.

I strongly doubt the devs would be willing to change the size of the rails, as that would involve ripping up a lot of hard work.
As an alternative, can you just have multiple tracks merge into one track? I'm not clear what the problem is here. (A screenshot would be appreciated.)

[TriumphSprintST]

@mattj256,

My comments are not so much outlining a problem as, highlighting a personal (so not very important), wish.

I appreciate the 2x2 track tile size. Tracks can be laid adjacent to each other which I think looks good however,
when I want to merge into a single track the spacing has to be extended so that signals can be placed and the
tracks merged. Just thought it would be nice if that could be avoided by having signals placed on a overhead
gantry. I realise (now I've thought more about it), that it would probably mean a lot more work in order to
allow a crossover from track to track anyway.

Thanks for the reply, perhaps the devs might get excited by the idea and pencil it in for the 0.25 release.

[mattj256]

My comments are not so much outlining a problem as, highlighting a personal (so not very important), wish.

Nothing wrong with asking for what you want. Who knows, maybe the devs will implement this at some point. I'm not saying that all popular requests get implemented, but the devs certainly take popularity into account when deciding what to work on.

I realise (now I've thought more about it), that it would probably mean a lot more work in order to allow a crossover from track to track anyway.

Yes right now you need to leave space between parallel tracks if you want them to be able to merge. (I believe it's four tiles.) That's a function of the way curved tracks work. The devs would have to make a new type of curved track if you wanted to merge two adjacent tracks. (Or this could probably be done as a mod.)

I'm not a dev so who knows. I'm not trying to discourage you, just trying to set (what I think are) reasonable expectations. Welcome to the message board! (And if you're new welcome to the game.)

EDIT: Here's a video that might help:
XTerminator Factorio Workshop - Building A Better Factory :: Train Stacker & Station Setup
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4v_JEKtIJDI

[TriumphSprintST]

@mattj256

thanks again for your reply and for the tutorial link. I'm not new to Factorio, got 100s of hours but still learning, a few
more years and I might know what I'm doing!

The Factorio community is awesome, everyone is so helpful and knowledgeable, going through the various guides is
like being back at school as, there is so much to learn. For me it just makes the game so much more fun and worth
continuing to play, hardly touched any of my other games in months.

Think that concludes this one for now, no doubt I'll soon find something else for my wishlist.

[ssilk]

Added to viewtopic.php?f=80&t=19953 New types of rails (curves, s-curves ...)

We had that discussion already: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=31268 Train Exit Side

My very personal view is, that it doesn't look good, cause see how the reality looks:


I think this is an important aspect that leads me to think, that a good looking distance between the rails is minimum 1 tile (provided tracks can be layed on uneven tiles...)