train stackers not recognized by trains

[aridmango]

My trains are not going to my train stackers to wait and instead are skipping its destination altogether. I don't think theres anything wrong with the stackers themselves. Its a really frustrating error because i can't figure out whats wrong. My trains all have the same wait conditions: wait at Load station until full cargo, then wait at unload station until 15 seconds of inactivity have passed. What is causing this?

thanks

[wobbycarly]

Can you add screenshots and/or blueprints of stations/stackers?

[Premu]

What do you mean with "skipping the destination"? Do trains don't drive towards their target destination where they should load/unload at all?

If the trains skip the stations completely: Are these stations actually active, or are they disabled? Are there other stations with the same name somewhere else. Normally a train should try to drive to a station in its schedule if its active. It may drive to any station with that name, though.

Or do they simply bypass the stacker itself, driving via an alternate way to their actual destiny? If that's the case you must force the trains to use this path. You can either make sure that the only access to your station goes through the stacker, or by setting a "waypoint" station in front of the stacker without waiting condition which every train needs to pass.

[aridmango]

@Premu I recently added circuit network enable/disable to my train stations and renamed some of them with the same name. So the stations are disabled when a train is loading ore at it and trains should go to the next available loading station.

The trains will not recognize the stacker when all 4 stations are full and instead will try to go to the location from which they just came (unloading station) via some unexpected route.

[Nosferatu]

When all unloading stations are disabled trains will skip that destination and drive to the next one directly. In your case the loading stations.

[astroshak]

When all stations on a train’s schedule are disabled, the train skips that station. I personally tend to use that for loading stations, I will disable a loading station if there is insufficient material to fully load a train.

If you are turning stations off when there is a train present, then you do not need a stacker before those stations. The stacker is there to allow trains a place to wait while the stations are occupied, but they must want to go there in the first place. Turning the station off makes a train not want to go there.

You can always bypass this behavior (and the behavior that parks a train at a station if there are no enabled stations on its schedule for it to go to) by including a dummy station right before the always-enabled stations’ stacker. Just be careful about fuel, trains with two stations in their schedules that do not call for full stops will run out.

[aridmango]

im so confused, i do need a stacker though because I need my excess trains to wait until a station opens up like in the screenshot I provided. And for whatever reason the stackers that I place are not recognized by my trains. In my previous factory my stackers worked just fine, but all of a sudden they are not working.

[Loewchen]

im so confused, i do need a stacker though because I need my excess trains to wait until a station opens up like in the screenshot I provided. And for whatever reason the stackers that I place are not recognized by my trains. In my previous factory my stackers worked just fine, but all of a sudden they are not working.

You seem to be building in logic without knowing why you are doing it or what even the point of that logic is.
You build a stacker to hold more arriving trains than you have stations for... and then you deactivate stations that are occupied, meaning you can never have more trains arriving once all stations are full.

[astroshak]

You need a stacker when you are leaving the stations always on.

IF and ONLY IF you are disabling ALL the stations then you can forego the stacker. If all the stations are turned off, no train will try to go there.

In your SS, if at least one of those stations is always on, then trains will move into the stacker.
If, on the other hand, there is no station on, because you’ve disabled them all *for whatever reason*, then no trains will even try, they’ll just skip that station on their schedule.

A train with two stops on its schedule (Iron Mines, Iron Smelting, as an example) will only move from Iron Smelting when there is an Iron Mines station that is on. If there are no Iron Mine stations on, then the train will sit at the Iron Smelting station, preventing any other trains from making use of that station. This may, or it may not, be good behavior for you.

Similarly, that same train will sit at an Iron Mine station if all of the Iron Smelting stations are turned off.

A train with three stops on its schedule will cycle between the two that are left on if one of them is turned off.

I routinely abuse this. I will make a Train Fuel train. This train has two stations on its schedule : Train Fuel Pickup (where it does just that) and a number of Train Fuel Drop Off stations. Those Train Fuel Drop Off stations are only turned on when the fuel I’m using falls below a certain amount in the offloading chests. In other words, they are off most of the time. That Train Fuel train thus sits at the Train Fuel Pickup fully loaded (and fueled!) until any Train Fuel Drop Off station activates. I do this for a number of other specific functions as well. The ONLY reason I have stackers associated with those Train Fuel Drop Off stations is those stations are not the only stations serving that area; I have other trains bringing materials and removing products that need the fuel, and may need to park until their desired station opens up.

[Trebor]

I routinely abuse this. I will make a Train Fuel train. This train has two stations on its schedule : Train Fuel Pickup (where it does just that) and a number of Train Fuel Drop Off stations. Those Train Fuel Drop Off stations are only turned on when the fuel I’m using falls below a certain amount in the offloading chests. In other words, they are off most of the time. That Train Fuel train thus sits at the Train Fuel Pickup fully loaded (and fueled!) until any Train Fuel Drop Off station activates. I do this for a number of other specific functions as well. The ONLY reason I have stackers associated with those Train Fuel Drop Off stations is those stations are not the only stations serving that area; I have other trains bringing materials and removing products that need the fuel, and may need to park until their desired station opens up.

I’ve never seen a need for a stacker, but I like this design.

[astroshak]

Two reasons I have stackers :

I have multiple trains per station for some stations. Stations for offloading raw materials, such as Iron Ore or Copper Ore, I tend to have at least two trains serving them, more if needed. This way I have at least one train waiting to offload as soon as the offloading train is done. A stacker serves as a waiting lot for those extra trains.

Some smaller trains dont need a whole station line. I can double up some lines, putting two completely different stations on them, such as the Robot Delivery train station and the Module Delivery train station. Or the Train Fuel train station and the Garbage train station. This depends upon the mods I’m using, but I like Concreep, and that mod calls for both some delivery of Stone Brick or Concrete or Refined Concrete, as well as a station for the removal of excess Coal, Rock, and Wood. Having a stacker allows a train for a later station on one of those lines wait safely out of the way for the earlier station’s train to leave, if necessary.

Usually I have the stacker there for the extra trains, if needed. Mines tend not to have stackers at first, but when I move from belt-delivery to bot-delivery, and start to module the miners, then yes, they get a stacker for the various stations that I deem necessary in my game.

Stations that only ever have one train going there, and no other train stops servicing the area, do not need stackers. My Defense Firebase stations (where I set up artillery and defenses for said Artillery, and the Artillery Resupply station) don’t need a stacker because after the construction is done, there is only one train visiting, and that’s the train with the reload.

[disentius]

Astroshak gave you the cause.

One way to solve this is to add a dummy station of the same name on a split after the stations. guard it with a signal set red by the circuit network (connect it to the station and set close signal to T=0)
Now the trains will wait at the stacker, because there always is an enabled station, but the won't go there as long as the signal is red.