Factorio Forums

Did you know that in Real Life later steam locomotives and modern engines can drive in reverse as fast as forwards (minus aerodynamic drag)?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walschaerts_valve_gear
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversing_gear

This would allow Two-Headed trains be as fast as One-Headed trains because the back engines would also add their power to the train during a change in directions.
And it would allow a one-headed train to change directions too. You could now have setups like Wagon-Locomotive-Wagon, a Wagon-Locomotive or a Locomotive Wagon and it would be able to go either direction like a Locomotive-Wagon-Wagon-Locomotive or Locomotive-Wagon-Locomotive nowadays can.
It would make the entire train system more compact and faster and make trains a truly good alternative for medium-to-long distance intra-base travel inside a concentrated massive Gigabase powerful when compared to belts and robots while currently, trains are truly good at Long-to-Very Long distance cargo hauling.

I don't want my 1 headed trains to enter a station backwards tho.

a solution would be that (in automatic mode) only if at least one locomotive points in each direction, the train could drive in both directions, with all locomotives working all the time

dood wrote:I don't want my 1 headed trains to enter a station backwards tho.

What if you could modify WHERE exactly a train would stop at a Train Stop? One wagon after it or two wagons before it or something else?

This is an old suggestion thread on the topic
propulsion power of bidirectional trains
The main idea most agree on reflects

ickputzdirwech wrote:a solution would be that (in automatic mode) only if at least one locomotive points in each direction, the train could drive in both directions, with all locomotives working all the time

So you have control on whenever your train can move both ways by adding locomotives facing those ways. But the total propulsion power of the train is a sum of all locomotives no matter the direction they are facing.

Since I am the one who started the original suggestion thread, I of course agree with the suggestion.

PacifyerGrey wrote:

ickputzdirwech wrote:a solution would be that (in automatic mode) only if at least one locomotive points in each direction, the train could drive in both directions, with all locomotives working all the time

So you have control on whenever your train can move both ways by adding locomotives facing those ways. But the total propulsion power of the train is a sum of all locomotives no matter the direction they are facing.

As I have pointed out in my old suggestion thread, this solution has the disadvantage that it is not possible for a single locomotive to perform shunting maneuvers.

I don't want my 1 headed trains to enter a station backwards tho.

This. It's more important than you might think. If a 1 way train drives in backwards then all of your cargo cars no longer line up with the station. It'd break one way train networks in a very bad way.

One way trains have their own pros and cons over 2-way trains. The current system lets players pick and choose the system that works for them. automatic reversing locomotives would break that and force everyone into a 2-way train network.