Rail Planner: Unable to build a basic track loop

[Zombo]

Hello everybody, right now I'm playing Factorio 0.13.13 and started to play around with trains. I wanted to start with a simple copper outpost, to bring back copper ore to my main factory. After a bit of struggeling I build a one way track with a train and two engines which drives back and forth.
Altough I was very proud of that, I didn't like to use two engines. So I took a look at this guide:
(https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... se_trains/) where it states:

Grab your gun, and run out deep into biter-infested territory to clear yourself a nice, big chunk of ore somewhere. Build a track loop with one train and one wagon, and figure out how to make train stations. As long as you only have one train, you won't run into any deadlock conditions or crashing.

That's were my problems began. I'm sure it's just a very simply problem, but I'm just unable to build a basic track loop with the rail planner. I always end up with the turn around not connecting back to the main track. I didn't even start to mess around with the singals I'm maybe going to need, because I cant connect the rail back to the main road after the train stop.

Can somebody please tell me what I'm doing wrong?

[twepy]

As far as i know its impossible to make loops in one step, make the first half of the loop and then complete the loop and it will connect fine.

loop.png (1.18 MiB) Viewed 5558 times

[timothy_johnson]

Once you've got the rail planner up, you can hit R to rotate it. It takes some finagling to get it right sometimes, but it will loop it around.

Also, if you only have on train on the track, you shouldn't need signals. That being said, I can't remember the last time I had one train, so I could be wrong.

Hope this helps!

[siggboy]

Even if you don't have robots yet, it helps to lay "ghost rails" in order to build larger structures (like loops, or parts of junctions, or stations).

First, lay the ghost rails, then trace the ghost rails with shorter parts. The ghost entities make it a lot easier to see where you have to put the rail planner to complete the entire path.

[Zombo]

Once you've got the rail planner up, you can hit R to rotate it. It takes some finagling to get it right sometimes, but it will loop it around.

Also, if you only have on train on the track, you shouldn't need signals. That being said, I can't remember the last time I had one train, so I could be wrong.

Hope this helps!

This!
I just didn't figure out I have to rotate the ghost track in the rail planning mode! Things just started working out after I found out that I had to rotate the end of the track. Thank you very much!