Monk's Guide For A Proper Train System

I struggled at first with making my trains operate in an optimal manner. All they seemed to do is cause traffic jams on my streets, fail to deliver enough of the citizenry and cargo to the various destinations, and generaly provide a giant pit to throw money into and burn. Eventualy the entire rail system would come to a grinding halt, as a myriad of cargo and passenger trains would block each other's path. This guide is meant to help solve these problems. I learned all of the following through observations and much Trial/Errors. I hope this helps many of you out there.

Station Placement

Passenger stations should be placed first near residential areas and then near any possible destinations like the places of work or commercial centers. (So everywhere, really)

Cargo stations should be placed in industrial areas including the specialized forrestry, ore, agriculter, and oil areas of your city. This will greatly reduce heavy vehicle traffic coming into the city from outside and even reduce heavy vehicle traffic from one area to another. Heavy vehicles will still be present as they still need to travel between the industrial buildings and the cargo station.

Rail Placement

Rail placement is key to avoiding uneccessary vehicle traffic on the streets and to avoiding the backups on the rails that can bring all trains to a grinding halt. Heed the following for much better results.
1. Place two sets of rails! One rail is for your passenger trains and one is for the cargo trains. I know what you are thinking. "That's going to take up a lot of space and cost double the money!" Well, yes. But its worth it. When you inevidably need to connect the two lines to pre-existing track (to connect to the outside world) place the intersection as far from your city as possible as this will be a choke point. In the photo below- The track on the right is exclusivley passenger trains (meaning the track only connects to passenger train stations in the city and only joins the main line as far away as possible) The track on the left is exclusively cargo trains and also only connects to the main line far from the city.


2. When you construct intersecting rails, make the track long enough in the intersection to hold at least an entire train length. One train may have to wait while another passes in front of it before it can move again. If there is enough space in the intersection, then the train behind the waiting train would not be blocked from continueing on it's way. (assuming it's not going to the same location) Also, when placing the passenger and cargo lines to the main line, make the two intersctions far from eachother so that there is no back up on the main line. If there were more than a momentary back up on any line, it will cascade to backup the entire system.


3. Elevate the rail lines in the city! (Or elevate the roads over the rails, which I found far more difficult.) Trains have the right of way when rail meets the road. This means that your vehicles have to wait for the train to pass through before the vehicles can cross the tracks. Also, if a train is stopped and blocking a crossing, then no vehicles are going anywhere. So to avoid that mess all together, just construct your track off the ground. (page up and page down keys) One elevation is enough to freely pass over ground level roads and other rail. Altough you may go much higher if you wish. Just leave enough space to drop the elevation of the track as it approaches the stations in order to make the connections. This will cost a bit more money per section of elevated track. The higher you go the more it will cost. But again, it's well worth it.


4. All of this may seem to be overkill and a bit paranoid, however, all this work will pay off for your city. It should also be stated that nothing I have done has ever completly worked 100%. Given enough stations and a high enough population, your rails will evenually clog and become useless. This just delays the armageddon that awaits.

Example City

Here are some photos of a city I constructed to test these concepts. ( Early photos before I allowed it to develope so its easier to see the lines and stations.) It is a bit complex and way overkill, but it worked really well. I made about 7 million, then leveled everything and made this which costs about 5 1/2 million. Although an easier way would be to do this to your favorite city, section by section so that it isn't a money pit and a big risk of utter failure for going bankrupt. I had to restart several times from this save to jumpstart this city into existance and I had 1.5 million in the bank. I didn't help that the weekly road maitanence was 11,000+.

















Please feel free to leave any tips or corrections on this subject in the comments. I may include them, time and testing permitting. Thanks.

[Paranoidmonk]

I place all rail under ground now. It only pops up to connect to the sations. I find this to be better for my cities. This way there is no slow down for traffic crossings and it looks far better. Now if you want our rails to look better while being on the surface, then I would look through the mods. I'm sure someone has made improvements at some point. Good Luck!

[Chreign]

Do you have any tips on how to make your rail architecture look nice? I really struggle with that, lol.

[Paranoidmonk]

This is VERY outdated. I haven't tested any of this in over a year and a half. Please take this as general info at this point as the many updates and patches should have fixed many issues. Maybe.

[SamTDS]

Don't connect your local lines to the regional lines. Have stations coming of the mainline as a transfer and another station by it on your local lines.

[MaxDoomSWE]

Trains clog up OUTSIDE of city borders so these tips works for local traffic. For regional traffic...well we have to wait for the devs to fix it. Until then i recommend cutting off regional trains altogether and just make a good rail network to several cargo ship harbours. That way you get your export and import to work. As it stands now. This will surely be fixed by the devs soon.

[FxNin9]

gridlocked metro lines lol that's really trouble someto view over

[Paranoidmonk]

@apd1004- Thanks for that. I just started to seriously use buses last week and metro yesterday. Still fumbling around with those systems, of course.

[apd1004]

Some of the railroad tips above also apply to Metro lines as well. I noticed purely by chance in one city that all of my Metro trains were gridlocked. It was because I had a Wye that wasn't long enough to hold an entire Metro train, and it caused the entire system to jam.

[FxNin9]

Hi guys ill go straight to the point so my city build type is an isolated commercial area support by 2 cargo station from industrial area yes i m making so that 2 cargo lane didnt cross each other making them work perfectly but stil what happen is some of my commercial area got not enough good to sell bcoz u guys now only 1 lane spawn from cargo train or ship and i dont really thing could make it well unlest they decided to make a 2 insde/out spawn lane from the cargo terminal

[Paranoidmonk]

@RM1985: I hope it works. I am also trying to boost my population way higher than just 100k to really test my system. The highest I got in any city so far is around 110k. The game seems to plateu around 100k for some reason. Still not sure if I am not trying hard enough or I am doing something wonky. It's probably because I've had to spend most of my time fixing on/off ramps and adding large roundabouts to high traffic sections instead of adding more zones.