How does the interchange work?

[Walta Gaming]

For the first part of my playthrough going from the starting area to Bryson the interchange seemed simple: Cars get cycled at 6am every day. However when I bought track to Slvia I can't figure out what it's going. At 6am it only filled 2 tracks (coal hopper was in 1 track so maybe that blocked it?) but at 10am a whole other batch of cars appeared. The issue is the cars came from random areas across the map so it became impossible to organize the daily routes. Even worse, the interchanged filled for a 3rd time later and the same thing happened where the cars were from all over the map.

I cannot switch every industry every 2 hours so how do I deal with this? Does the interchange only cycle when it's overfilled or does it cycle every 2 hours? If I leave cars in the interchange do they get rearanged into blocks or are they still messed up? If I can't fix this I am going to give up and look for an online server to play on. The IRL time required for each day spiked from 2-3 hours to 5-7+ hours instantly when I bought the interchange in Slvia.

[Lemon Friend]

If you know you have more cars coming (I believe that there will be a message to that effect), take the cars from the interchange to the Dillsboro yard. When all the cars have been left at the interchange, then sort the cars and deliver them all at once (or however you want to do it).

[Walta Gaming]

Hmmm I think I see now. So if there is a message saying the interchange is at capacity then that means more cars will spawn in 2 hours? I also completely forgot about the Dillsboro yard I forgot to buy it.

[thebear05]

It sounds like you have too many high tier contracts. This has caused your contract cars to be delivered in three batches and is overwhelming you. You have at least three days to deliver the cars while still collecting a bonus 6%,4%,2%. After three days no bonus, however I am not sure when the late delivery reputation loss occurs. One solution to your being overwhelmed is to reduce some of your contact tiers or cancel them all together. You will suffer a reputation hit but at least you should be able to manage less traffic.

[Lemon Friend]

If the interchange fills up (only two of the three tracks are used - one track is left free so that the Class 1 can return), then additional deliveries are made every four hours.

[Walta Gaming]

Originally posted by thebear05:

It sounds like you have too many high tier contracts. This has caused your contract cars to be delivered in three batches and is overwhelming you. You have at least three days to deliver the cars while still collecting a bonus 6%,4%,2%. After three days no bonus, however I am not sure when the late delivery reputation loss occurs. One solution to your being overwhelmed is to reduce some of your contact tiers or cancel them all together. You will suffer a reputation hit but at least you should be able to manage less traffic.

Yea this is the big issue. I know there is enough time in the day to complete everything but I think until I get the map complete I will disable the smaller locations since they are clogging everything up. I want to do a challenge of doing a full day with everything a tier 5 but with how the interchange works I don't know if that's feasable anymore.

[thebear05]

The best way to mange this is as you said cancel the smaller contracts and concentrate on the larger ones. Performing the larger contracts will give you more money for less time spent as you are only going to the one customer with that load and not several little ones. I am still at Bryson and the only large contract is the Whittier sawmill. When I get to Alaka Junction the next top tier will be Robinson Coal.

[Rudolf Jan]

You should be careful in adding contracts. In advance it is not very clear how much work each contract will be, so I always start at tier 1 and increase it after a few days. Most mof my contracts are at tier 2 now.

[JJ2078]

For clarification, the interchange is served every 4 hours until all cars have been delivered, not every 2. If your interchange is serviced at 6am, the next batch will arrive at 10am, provided the interchange has been cleared of incoming freight.

The bonus is though that if you have any outbound interchange freight it will also take those away at 10am as well...

If you want your second servicing of the interchange at 8am, you'll need to set the service time from 6am to 4am.

[coenvijge]

Take in account that delivering 'ASAP' gives you a (small) bonus. A 'normal' delivery gives you more time and the 'normal' payment. The 'normal' delivery must be your goal. Doing it faster is nice, but doesn't make you a rich (wo)man especially if you have to do a lot of extra movements, or even run an extra train for that delivery.

Don't panic if you can't do all your work ASAP. Combining deliveries for one (or a few) destination also originating from different days can save a lot of work.

(edit:typo)

[thebear05]

Originally posted by Rudolf Jan:

You should be careful in adding contracts. In advance it is not very clear how much work each contract will be, so I always start at tier 1 and increase it after a few days. Most of my contracts are at tier 2 now.

That seems the main issue with the tier contracts. There is no information given at the moment regarding your obligations to meet the different tiers. So you have to be very careful when signing for a higher tier.

[Walta Gaming]

Learning all this I am going to restart my save game. My current save is way too much of a mess so I am going to start over only doing coal, lumber and pulpwood industries which should make it more managable. Going to do diesel only as a challenge as well. Seems like tier 5 contracts are more for multiplayer servers or if you want to do a marathon game. Might still be fun in sandbox mode doing it solo but in company mode it's too much to do for more then a day.