help with freight trains

[notableboyscouts]

How do I get a Freight Train up and running? Does my rail ray need to be connected to 2 Freight Train Stations? And how do I know if it's connected?

[Cahos Rahne Veloza]

Freight trains need goods (Industry helps a lot here) and neighbor connections. They only take out your cities' goods and sends them off into simnation.

You'll know they're working when your Freight station sends out the freight train automata on its merry way :)

[M4SKUER4IDER]

First you have to understand how game works. While your population is growing, you would need jobs for them and Commercial capacities will not be enough to give them enough jobs plus commercials need freight to pay money their workers to grow up.Growing mean is not about higher buildings ,its mean is about rich wealth.You may zone Higher commercial building with low wealth from menues but it will increase traffic problems for this streets and they wont be rich(high wealth).when you build more zones for Industries to give jobs and freights ,they will cause some air and water polution problems, mostly people who live near Industries so you may want them move out other far away from polutions. when you move them away from polutions ,theiir time in traffic will be increased to accses their job and they may be late to work cause of traffic congestion and most of them will be jobless because they are far away from industries.and industries will be affacted because their worker always are late and ındustries will be late too to deliver freights and this will affect commercials too, at this point you will need traffic staff to build and to make this time shorter. First you may try build bus for workers later you may build freight train if your far away commercials is not getting freights otherwise Ftrain will not work if sims are finding enough resource near thier commercials.
BTW.
Commercials (which are med. or high zoned specially high buildings ( not about their wealth) ) need more Freights and your maps need high demand for Commercials if you want freight train in your city to be worked.plus they must be far away than Insustries. i hope you understand.Freigh train only decreases delivery time for far away commercial.

[Stracci909]

Also, any industrial zone that lies against a rail line will not need a freight station - since it has direct access to the network, a station is not needed to convert freight from road to rail. As mentioned before, freight only goes outside of your city. No intercity freight transport is simulated. You can check functionality with the route query. As long as you see freight traffic, everything is good.

[NetPCDoc]

Originally posted by Stracci909:

Also, any industrial zone that lies against a rail line will not need a freight station - since it has direct access to the network, a station is not needed to convert freight from road to rail. As mentioned before, freight only goes outside of your city. No intercity freight transport is simulated. You can check functionality with the route query. As long as you see freight traffic, everything is good.

This is not quite correct ... you DO need a freight station to convert road freight to rail freight; but station needs to be between source (Industry - Agriculture or other industrial zones) and one or more destinations (neighbor or sim-nation RAIL connection, or seaport).

Please Note: In SimCity 4 "rail" is not the same as "elevated rail", "monorail", or "subway"; these latter three are only for passengers (not for freight), while the former ("rail") may carry passengers, freight or both. A passenger station, between your freight rail and a road, might provide some workers to otherwise unaccessable agricultural and other industrial zones; but due to the possibility of traffic congestion on said rail, this is not recommended.

If a rail tile is next to an agriculture or other industrial zone tile (or a freight station tile), freight will tend to find a way onto a freight-train; else a (freight enabled) road will be required. If a road connection to either a neighbor or sim-nation (or a seaport) is closer - freight will go by road rather than rail. Also, if said freight road or rail get to a seaport (on an out of city water route) before it reaches either a neighbor or sim-nation connection, the freight will go by sea; which is just another way of saying that a seaport may be considered to be a freight destination.

[notableboyscouts]

But how do i know if a rail is connected to a freight station?

[NetPCDoc]

First, prior to actual placement, both the passenger rail station and the freight rail station have an arrow that points to the road side of the lot.

For mostly aesthetic reasons I recommend placing the rail along the opposite side of these station's lots; a rail running past either station on the other two sides, while a road runs past the road side, would require a grade-level intersection of rail and road - of course, either the road or rail could start right next to the other (and run away from it), without an intersection.

As rail stations are "transfer-points" between road and rail, both whatever non-highway-road tile(s) and rail tile(s) DO need to be next to the station, without any intervening tiles.

As long as there are no intervening tiles between the connecting road/rail tile(s) and the station, for non-modded lots, the only way I can think of to disrupt the road-rail-transfer is to place the rail tile(s) where road tile(s) are expected to be.

Originally posted by Stracci909:

You can check functionality with the route query. As long as you see freight traffic, everything is good.

Once you actually do have freight being generated, a transit query of the station will show whether or not there is any freight going through your freight station; alternatively transit queries of your freight sources will show where the freight from them is going.