Factorio Forums

If trains run out of fuel while on the travel, the signals get released after the train stops. This is intended behaviour, as noted at eg. 74647.

This happens mostly, but not always:

First out of fuel event in the video demostrates train signals being released.

Second out of fuel event in the video shows that if the train is stopped just above a rail chain signal, the further (unoccupied) segments kept reserved forever (not released in 25 game minutes).

I would expect that trains running out of fuel at a station (never starting to move) also to clear the signals when the fuel outage is detected, but this does not happen (see third stop out of fuel event in the video).

Loewchen wrote: Wed May 20, 2026 8:54 pm 116636

The referenced duplicate post claims that trains running out of fuel is a player error.
It also references another post about that this was undesired but unsolvable behaviour in 0.15.
However, this has been an official feature since 0.17.

Furthermore, we also have spoiling fuels since the Space Age expansion.
Within a faction of a second, a fully fueled train can become one with only a little spoilage as fuel, that might not be enough to reach the nearest refuel station.

This is not unlikely to happen, eg. all of the initial fuel (loaded just after construction) will spoil simultaneously. This makes running out of spoilable fuel a systematic behaviour, not just a player mistake.

On Gleba and in other environments with spoiling items, a single deadlocked rail section by unreleased rail signals can cause innecessary full factory shutdowns due to ingredient shortage. Restarting it can require manual intervention and can have other fatal consequences (eg. failing defense due to ammo/power shortage).

So this bug likely only affects spoiling environments. But spoiling environments are also the only places, where reserving the unoccupied segments in out of fuel scenarios can have catastrophic consequences.

So, could this report possibly be re-evaluated?

Don’t use spoiling fuel in trains.