is it normal for this to happen?(underground belt)

[miuv]

2025-05-14 10-34-04.mp4

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[Kyralessa]

It's been this way for ages.

See, e.g.:

viewtopic.php?p=323365&hilit=side+loading#p323365

[Tertius]

It's always difficult to guess what you mean with "this" as only description. Videos may be obvious for the creator, but not necessarily for the watcher. I don't look into videos without description, since it's usually like a search picture game and just wasting time in the end.

[DaveMcW]

Yes, underground belts blocking half a sidebelt has existed since the very first version of Factorio.

It was originally caused by item collision boxes. When item collision boxes were optimized away, they still kept the behavior.

[jdrexler75]

It's not just normal, it's a vital part of the game. It's very useful for belt lane changes (for the lane that continues), and for stopping one lane while the other continues. (With much less material than splitters, in particular no electronics needed, just iron, and less performance impact.)

[mrkev]

Yes, it's normal and ofthen used for side separation. Here are three examples where I've used it.
From left to right, the first one is a simple side balancer, the second is belt for the pentapod eggs for biolab production (they go one time around on the left, one time on the right and then the leftover is fed into heater tower). The third one is on Fulgora and shows how you can get quite a lot of items on a belt in a tight space.

[miuv]

thanks for the replies.