Factorio Forums

TLDR: Placeable and nameable rail object, that the train must go through if it is in the train's schedule, but doesn't have to stop there.
What:
An object similar to railway signal, that can be put to a train's schedule. The train then must go through this point.
If you ever played Cities in Motion, you have probably encountered something like this.
Why:
This feature would allow you to build train expressways. If you, for example, have a busy factory with trains coming through it, you can build a railway around it and force trains, which are just passing through, to use it. It can also be useful to prevent long-distance trains from wasting time at junctions.

I'm still mostly positive to this idea (it's come up before). Even though this would increase the level of micromanagement required by the player I think it's hard to make path-finding smart enough to not have something like this. Another option could be to have a railroad switch.

This can already be accomplished in vanilla.

Just place a train station where you want the train to go, and just set the wait condition to anything that will make it leave instantly.

Sure it'll have to stop and then go...but it is better than nothing.

Another tip that may be useful is that any train station placed on a track incurs a 1000 tile pathing penalty. So if you had two tracks one of length 200 with a train station in the middle and another of just 800 tracks long, it'll read the track with 800 tiles as shorter than the one with the train station on it.

Terukio wrote:This can already be accomplished in vanilla.

Just place a train station where you want the train to go, and just set the wait condition to anything that will make it leave instantly.

Sure it'll have to stop and then go...but it is better than nothing.

You notice by yourself, that the suggestion is not identical to your solution and your solution is far away from "optimal" to get what OP wants, sure?

Another tip that may be useful is that any train station placed on a track incurs a 1000 tile pathing penalty. So if you had two tracks one of length 200 with a train station in the middle and another of just 800 tracks long, it'll read the track with 800 tiles as shorter than the one with the train station on it.

This could be the better option: place two or three train stops on the shorter route, give them some name (like "routingagent") and activate/deactivate them as needed to route your train to the longer track.

But even then this is a complex task, because you can't read the id while it is moving and therefore you don't know if you route the correct train to the long track.

Greetings Ronny

rldml wrote:This could be the better option: place two or three train stops on the shorter route, give them some name (like "routingagent") and activate/deactivate them as needed to route your train to the longer track.

But even then this is a complex task, because you can't read the id while it is moving and therefore you don't know if you route the correct train to the long track.

Assuming you only wanted trains stopping at the factory to enter it, this wouldn't be a problem, this idea would actually be easier than what the OP originally suggested!
All you would need to do would be to place a station in every entrance to the factory. This way, any trains just passing through would automatically get a penalty for routing into the factory, making them take the outer route without any extra entries in the trains schedule, and any train stopping at the factory would get the penalty whichever entrance they took, so they would just take the fastest route as normal.

Yes this is still a bit messy though, and it isn't very obvious to new players, so maybe a rail with this functionality would be better, but for now this still does exactly what it's needed to do in a very simple way.

I agree with the OP's suggestion. However, it has been suggested before in the following threads:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=21831 Train waypoints
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=37562 Train waypoint/(no)stop feature request

In the game OpenTTD, waypoints are already implemented. Internally, they are just a special type of station with different graphics. However, trains never stop at them, they just drive through them.

Here is a link to the OpenTTD wiki page on waypoints:
http://wiki.openttd.org/Waypoint

I would like an option to that checkpoint so a train can go that way only if the checkpoint is explicitly on it's schedule.

<NO_NAME> wrote:I would like an option to that checkpoint so a train can go that way only if the checkpoint is explicitly on it's schedule.

I disgree. In my opinion, routing restrictions would be a better solution to that problem. See the following suggestion thread on routing restrictions for more information:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=58395 Block rail section based on train condition

+1
I already wondered that there are no checkpoints especially since the railroad concept is adapted from transport tycoon or openTTD.

Simple workaround:

1) place train station (duh)
2) place rail signal before station
3) connect station and signal with wire
4) set station enabled state to green signal

this way train will pathfind to that station, but when get close enough for rail signal to detect it (change to yellow) train station gets disabled and train move to next one without stoping ...

CzBuCHi wrote:Simple workaround:

1) place train station (duh)
2) place rail signal before station
3) connect station and signal with wire
4) set station enabled state to green signal

this way train will pathfind to that station, but when get close enough for rail signal to detect it (change to yellow) train station gets disabled and train move to next one without stoping ...

That will disable the train station for all trains, not just the nearby train. This will cause all trains to stop using the waypoint, until it gets re-enabled.

Tekky wrote:

CzBuCHi wrote:Simple workaround:

1) place train station (duh)
2) place rail signal before station
3) connect station and signal with wire
4) set station enabled state to green signal

this way train will pathfind to that station, but when get close enough for rail signal to detect it (change to yellow) train station gets disabled and train move to next one without stoping ...

That will disable the train station for all trains, not just the nearby train. This will cause all trains to stop using the waypoint, until it gets re-enabled.

okay ... so place 3 signals then: first one to prevent second one yellowing too soon, second one to read signal from and third one to reset second back to green ASAP

Going ax-crazy with disabling stations is probably not a good idea if you use roundabout junctions.
Trains can re-path into themselves if a station becomes unavailable while mid-junction, causing a deadlock.