Waiting at Signal = bad
Waiting for Signal at station = good
Not sure if it's true, but it's made me create a stacker that each parking spot has a station the train can idle.
(Click image for larger version)Blueprint book
Blueprint Station Stacker - Command and Control + First station.Blueprint Station Stacker - Repeatable station that is put on top of the last station placed to link to the next.
Blueprints for the stacker station entrance, one for the station counter (Bottom right red wired pole at the C&C) and first stations entrance rail signal + green wired pole and one for adding stations.
Blueprint Example 2-4-2 stacker.
Blueprint full test setup with loading/unloading and stacker stations connected (Require Creative Mode mod for the loader station and that visually challenging rail networks is something you can handle.)
Deciding when to release a train is simple, is any of our destination stations rail signal green, the fun is making sure that the stations rail signal, isn't still green when we move on to check if we should release another train. In this simple mark one version, it's required that the released train can reserve the station by turning the rail signal yellow, so we quickly stop being told the station is open.
Only used stations is used for timing the release of trains, you can have 300 stacker stations with 3 trains and it still release the trains as fast as if it had 300 trains.
The light at each station is turned of if the station is empty, white if nothing is going on, red/yellow/green when the station is being processed. If the light is green it will release the train at that station, as the train starts to move and reserve the station it turns yellow and red when the station i in use.
At the command & control center one light turns green when the unloading station is open and the other turn red when you activate the constant combinator, making sure you have a visual indicator that the stacker is currently blocking releasing trains.
The bottom left big electric pole (Green wire), must be connected to the unloading stations entrance rail signal. The bottom right (red wire) leads to the rail signal at the entrance of the stacker station, it's used to count the number of stations in the stacker.
Each station also use their own rail signal (Green wire pole upper left), to figure out if they are open or closed, allowing them to smartly (...) decide if they should do any work.
If you turn on the constant combinator, the stacker stops releasing trains. Take that rail signal based stacker.
The future of this thing seems beautiful, mostly because it's all based on imagination and why imagine something ugly?
Mark Two Ideas:
Timer based destination station handling, so you can place the stacker anywhere in the world, independent of any destination stations locations. Want to sent 100 trains to a collection of mining outposts, but is worried about sending more than one to a station and risking blocking up important rail estate, no problem, you can have one giganormous stacker they can all wait in.
Multiple types of trains all mixed in the same stacker, but only the type appropriate for the destination station is released, no releasing your iron trains because the copper one is open. This could also lead to priority, we are short on iron, let's release all the iron trains until the iron unloading stations is full.
FIFO aka First In First Out ordering, avoids that trains get stuck in the stacker.
