Not enough fuel for trains

[mfearby]

Why are my trains not loading coal? I just started my second game, after the first attempt after doing the tutorials ended up with dead trains. So this time I built one rail line between my town and a coal mine. At the coal mine I have 4 coal storages, a warehouse, and a small station with platforms. The input and output storage for the coal mine is set to the warehouse (it would not let me attach them anywhere else). I would have thought trains should be automatically refuelling with coal when they stop at this station to either swap workers or load coal? What gives?

I have been watching some youtube videos of people playing the game (early release) where they have been putting coal storage huts near the stations, but I don't see this option anywhere. Did they get rid of it for the 1.0 release of the game? If we can't add little storage huts for coal at a station, then refuelling must be automatic, except that it's not for me. What am I missing? I tried searching for "storage" and the only result are the coal storages for the coal mine itself (max 4 per mine). There is no other thing called storage for coal that I can find.

This game is apparently unplayable, for me at least. It shouldn't be this hard to refuel trains :-(

[mfearby]

In this video (at 26:30) the guy brings up an expansion menu when he clicks on the station and he builds 10 coal storage huts next to the station. I don't get this menu when I click on my stations: https://youtu.be/79PiCFWhNlg?t=1583

when I click on my station, the panel at the bottom shows the following icons: dirt road, wooden bridge, courier shack, bridge, station platform, rails, wooden bridge again (looks like it's a longer bridge than the other one), rail signal, rail chain signal, small station, distribution center, and a train depot. There is no icon for "coal storage", which makes me wonder if they got rid of it in the final game? If so, how do I get my trains to refuel?!

[mfearby]

I have somehow stumbled on something that works. I didn't have any courier shacks (after doing the tutorial again, I noticed we needed to hook them up). So I added them and now my stations are loading up with fuel and the trains are refuelling from them. I noticed that the coal mine in the tutorial didn't have an input source set whereas I did in my city, so I removed it to nothing. Perhaps that also helped. Seeing a red "input storage" in a popup makes me think I need to connect it to something, but me connecting it to whatever it was may have caused the problem?

I think this may be what is causing my next problem. My sawmill is producing lots of wood, but the menu at the top of the screen says I have 0 wood. My sawmill is currently set to have the Distribution Center as its input storage and the Warehouse as its output storage. This must be causing the problem, but again, I don't know what needs to connect to what, so I think the popup advice panels could make this a lot clearer because I've obviously connected my inputs and my outputs incorrectly and my wood just isn't going anywhere that counts :-(.

[SemtexMan47]

A sawmill doesn't need an input of distribution center. The trees come from the nursery, so leave input storage as nothing.

[mfearby]

I think this is partly my problem. Seeing a red "Input Storage" selector on an item makes me think it is a problem that needs fixing, and I need to select something, but I'm not entirely sure what to select. Why would a sawmill have an input storage if it's supposed to just get the trees from the adjacent tree nursery anyway? It's setting a trap for unsuspecting players to fall into.

[Bwbah]

The 'input storage' is for buffing items, like tools, fertilizer, and books.
To fuel a train, the fuel needs to be in the station's inventory; having fuel in the warehouse, a storage unit, or a distribution center won't do it.