Is delevering water to boilers by train feasable?

[CanadianCogs]

I want to have my boiler and engines on opisate ends of the base Im closeing in. Im playing complete vanilla so I dont have access to waterfill and theres only water on one side. Would useing a train to ship water from a pond to each assembly of boilers be feasable or no?

[knighttemplar1960]

It can be done but its not optimal. You'll need far too many trains and a traffic jam can cause a black out.

You are much better off building your boilers by the water and bringing the fuel in by train instead of the other way around.

[shadain597]

It might be feasible for a smaller, secondary power plant, but I wouldn't recommend it for your primary plant. Each fluid wagon can carry enough water for 750 MJ of power, assuming my math is correct, which sounds like a decent amount--until you realize that a single boiler can produce up to 108 MJ in a minute. For anything but a tiny base, that's going to require a LOT of fluid wagon deliveries.

Perhaps even more importantly, it leaves your power grid very vulnerable. If those shipments get delayed for any reason you could very well end up in a "death spiral" scenario. On a related note, you'd need some alternate source of power to even kick-start the power grid, because pumps can't load or unload a train without power.

[Stellar Remnant]

Originally posted by shadain597:

On a related note, you'd need some alternate source of power to even kick-start the power grid, because pumps can't load or unload a train without power.

Solution: have a tiny array of solars and accumulators that only power the pumps and associated infrastructure.

[Stellar Remnant]

Originally posted by Cogs:

I want to have my boiler and engines on opisate ends of the base Im closeing in. Im playing complete vanilla so I dont have access to waterfill and theres only water on one side. Would useing a train to ship water from a pond to each assembly of boilers be feasable or no?

Each regular boiler needs 60 water per second, or 3600 per minute. A full array of 20 would be 1200 water per second, or 72000 per minute, just under 3 fluid cars. So the equation would be: ((boilers * 60 * 60) / 25000) per minute, and that's how many fully loaded water fluid tankers you need per minute. Then double it, to guarantee sufficient supply. You'll want to have pumps feeding tanks at the supply end with direct pumps between the tanks and the train.

[Nero]

Short answer: no

Long answer: even if you build a megabase, its always better to use underground pipes with a pump along the way

Best practice: build your power setup near water and cart in the fuel.
Biters pretty much don‘t care for power poles (unless their pathing leads right through one) and in vanilla you will get to nuclear before the need for excessively huge boiler setups arises

[Shurenai]

Just for the record, you can also deliver steam by train, iirc, which lets you deliever it to generators at a distant outpost to provide power in the short term, ie, for miners or pumpjacks. Saves you from having biters cut the power line to some extent, and from having to lay power lines out to a distant place in the first place.

This is a better option than carrying water by train as well, as you don't have to deliver fuel for boilers on-site.

As MiniHerc describes the fluid needed to power a boiler is the same fluid required to power two steam engines, which is 1800kw/min for power, with both electric miners and pumpjacks taking 90kw/min, and not counting any inserters.

Still isn't really mathematically worthwhile or efficient, though, but it works decently well for pumpjacks particularly as there are generally few pumpjacks needed on-site, you'll use maybe 1-1.5 steam engines worth of pumpjacks, and just have the train set to loop with 3 tankers for steam and some for oil, it'll drop off steam and pick up oil, looping regularly enough to keep your pumpjacks working most of the time.

[brian_va]

I've done it before, mostly as an experiment to see if it could be done. It can, but as mentioned it's probably not the best way to do it. If you do, remember that a fluid wagon has 3 sections, and each can have a pump attach to it. If you go this route, you'll probably want to fill wagons as fast as possible. You'll also likely need many trains hauling water, so it would probably be a great idea to have a decent amount of storage at the loading station so you can fill the trains quickly.

It's not really optimal and sustainability is dependent on your setup.

[Hedning]

Originally posted by Cogs:

I want to have my boiler and engines on opisate ends of the base Im closeing in. Im playing complete vanilla so I dont have access to waterfill and theres only water on one side. Would useing a train to ship water from a pond to each assembly of boilers be feasable or no?

I have used trains to deliver water to my oil refinery area.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2923393562
I had mine on a dedicated track and didn't cross any high traffic tracks. Trains carry a lot of water and with trains you can have very short pipes, meaning very high throughput per pipe without using a million pumps.

The thing with trains though is that you must draw the same amount from each wagon/pipe. You can't have 5 boilers connected to one wagon and then 6 boilers to another.

[Hedning]

Originally posted by brian_va:

You'll also likely need many trains hauling water, so it would probably be a great idea to have a decent amount of storage at the loading station so you can fill the trains quickly.

To fill quickly put the station on landfill in water. One storage tank per wagon and one pump is enough to fill at maximum or close to maximum rate, which is very fast. Fluids fill very fast when you do tank -> pump -> wagon with no pipe segments.

[brian_va]

Originally posted by Hedning:

Originally posted by brian_va:

You'll also likely need many trains hauling water, so it would probably be a great idea to have a decent amount of storage at the loading station so you can fill the trains quickly.

To fill quickly put the station on landfill in water. One storage tank per wagon and one pump is enough to fill at maximum or close to maximum rate, which is very fast. Fluids fill very fast when you do tank -> pump -> wagon with no pipe segments.

That's a good point, hadn't done the landfill bridge station before. I'm sure that would fill it quick

[ナオヤ]

Maybe you could instead place boilers near water and deliver fuel to them? It sounds much more ups friendly and frankly, easier to set up.

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by Shurenai:

Just for the record, you can also deliver steam by train, iirc, which lets you deliever it to generators at a distant outpost to provide power in the short term, ie, for miners or pumpjacks. Saves you from having biters cut the power line to some extent, and from having to lay power lines out to a distant place in the first place.

This is a better option than carrying water by train as well, as you don't have to deliver fuel for boilers on-site.

As MiniHerc describes the fluid needed to power a boiler is the same fluid required to power two steam engines, which is 1800kw/min for power, with both electric miners and pumpjacks taking 90kw/min, and not counting any inserters.

Still isn't really mathematically worthwhile or efficient, though, but it works decently well for pumpjacks particularly as there are generally few pumpjacks needed on-site, you'll use maybe 1-1.5 steam engines worth of pumpjacks, and just have the train set to loop with 3 tankers for steam and some for oil, it'll drop off steam and pick up oil, looping regularly enough to keep your pumpjacks working most of the time.

Water turns into steam at a 1:1 ratio so all of the delivery issues/rates/amounts are the same. You'll still need power to load and unload the steam wagons and even though you save yourself a disconnect from losing a power pole you can still lose power from losing a rail section.

If you want to isolate a subfactory its better to use solar panels and accumulators on site.

[Purpleganja]

Building near the source is better, but if you must, you could pipeline it. It would be much safer to walk around than having trains haul it.
One pump each 17 pipes will bring one shore pump's 1200u/s wherever you want.

[AlexMBrennan]

One pump each 17 pipes will bring one shore pump's 1200u/s wherever you want.

Yes, why use two pumps when you could use hundreds to make a stupidly long pipeline?

[Purpleganja]

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

One pump each 17 pipes will bring one shore pump's 1200u/s wherever you want.

Yes, why use two pumps when you could use hundreds to make a stupidly long pipeline?

I wonder how stupidly long it must be to cross a midgame vanilla base and not reach the next water source.