Unjamming my train network
I'm struggling a bit with rails. I have twin tracks (one each way) between various outposts and my main factory, using roundabouts for all junctions, with chain signals at stations and bypasses, and on roundabouts. In several places I have extra branches for staging areas, and the stations with more than one train have multiple platforms (each their own segment). All sounds like it should work, right?
Except it constantly jams. From observation it looks like once a path is successfully taken, those segments are all locked and no other train that would use those segments will even start its journey until it passes the competing segments - even if it is miles away and there are available parallel/branch areas.
I was kinda hoping that they'd at least go as far as the nearest parallel point, but: those are basically ignored, with everything waiting on whatever started first. Presumably a pragmatic and simple way of preventing a deadlock.
So: what am I missing? What is the secret sauce for getting my rail network running effectively? At the moment trains spend most of their time waiting at the chain signal to rejoin the line after leaving a station.
I was kinda hoping to get trains in different segments all at once going in the same direction.
Posted Sep 6, 2017, 4:15 PM UTC
Go take a look at the train guide at the right of the reddit.
Basicly, from what I understand of your predicament, you don't have signals at all on the straight line, which means that, for the game, at the moment there is a train on that loooooooong stretch, no other train can go.
As for parallels, do you use chains signals? It's the job of those signal to make it possible to use multiple routes.
Yes, chain signals all around the entrances and exit (so: 3 at each end since it is one way). When you say "signals at all on the straight line" - do you mean chain signals? Or simple signals?
You should really go read the Train guide.
Chains signals at the entrance of crossings, normal signals at the exit. (Chain signal read the next signal, so if you have a bunch of chain one behind the other and one of them go red, then all of them go red)
Lets say that you have 10km of rail. If you put only signal at the beginning and at the end of that 10km, then all of that is a [Block] meaning that only one train can be there at any time. If you put a normal signal at km 1, 2, 3, 4 etc. then you get 10 block of 1km each and 10 trains could go at the same time one behind the other.
But like I said, go read the guide. It's super helpful (even though it never tell you to put signal on a straight line).
Awesome. Sounds like that's exactly what I'm doing wrong, then. Cheers.