Factorio Forums

TL;DR Allow train stations to have their color set automatically via circuit network item signals or RGB signals, completing the automation of the train color system.

What?
Currently train stations can only be colored manually. I'd like to suggest allowing a circuit network connection to drive a station's color automatically in one of two ways.

The first option is using an item signal. Connecting an iron plate signal to a station would set its color to match the iron plate icon color. Connecting a copper plate signal would turn it orange, coal would turn it black, and so on. This is the simpler of the two options and covers most practical use cases without any extra setup. which I assume would require some sort of baked in color code for every item in the game.

Which is why I have a second option, using RGB signals/packed RGB, exactly like lamps already work in the game. The player would wire up appropriate signals to set any arbitrary color, giving full control for cases where item colors don't match what is needed.

Why?
Version 2.0.7 introduced the "Use destination train stop color" setting for locomotives, allowing trains to automatically match the color of the station they are heading to. This was a clear step toward making train identification more automated and visual tracking effortless. However it only solved half the problem. Trains can now set their color automatically, but the station colors they are matching still have to be set by hand — every single one, every time you place one down. In a large factory with dozens or hundreds of train stations this remains one of the most tedious parts of blueprinting, and it stands out as an odd omission given how much of the surrounding system has already been automated.

Lamps already support circuit-driven color via RGB signals, so the logic for changing an entity's color through the circuit network already exists in the game. Extending something similar to train stations would complete the automation loop that destination color matching started, and eliminate what is arguably the last major piece of manual busywork left in setting up a train network.

I found a wonderful mod today that tackles this from a related angle — Train Stop Item Color by RiskyKen. It automatically colors a train stop based on the [item=...] tag in its name, using a pre-calculated average color for that item, and it updates the color if the name is changed to reference a different item or fluid. It's basically proof that option one from my post — deriving a station's color from an item signal — is both wanted and workable, since someone's already built a color-per-item lookup table to do it. If Wube implemented this natively, they could offer one or both trigger methods as options: a circuit signal like I originally suggested, or simply reading the icon already present in the station's name, the way this mod does.