Extended Freight Line

[Didz]

I've been fiddling with my game today to extend the initial food distribution from the local town (Newport) to the next town along the main passenger line (Amersham).
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2643415081
I'd already decided to try and follow the mainline strategy that Colonel Failure used on his video series. So, my mainline is following the UK railway system of having the two up lines on the left and the two down lines on the right, with the outside lines being for freight and slow traffic and the inside tracks used by express passenger services.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2643413558
It's been rather fun trying to get it right and a nice excuse for some fancy cross-over junctions just outside the stations.

One thing that's puzzling me a bit is why the farm is over-producing so heavily. I seem to be delivering plenty of food to both the towns and yet the farm is just creating a huge surplus that I can't hope to deliver and don't really need.

[Mr Felidae]

It's always nice to challenge oneself in obtaining alternate possibilities and devising new strategies. If combined with a certain level of esthetics, the outcome may very well result in a construction marvel. So keep experimenting :)

Now, concerning the hyperproductive farm, I can think of some situations in which an increased production may hold true. First, you mentioned that the freight line has been extended to another town. This means an additional number of consumers is added to the distribution channel of the food items, resulting in higher potential sales of these items. Second, if the line is extended and it connects to other lines (truck, ship, etc.) that are capable of transporting food items, the distribution range of these items increases. Both situations cause a higher production at the food factory and thus an increased demand for grain and/or cattle, which may trigger the surge in farm productivity.

[Didz]

I'm assuming that if the farm production was geared to the demand of the two towns currently link to the freight lines from it then only the goods required to sustain that market would appear on the freight depot platform. I would have expected any extra demand from nearby towns to be delivered by road using the auto-distribution system.

At the moment both Newport and Amersham are being supplied by separate lines from the Newport Pig Farm Depot. So, freight is being accumulated on two separate platforms, one for each town and both now have over 100 stock stacked on the platform.

It's tempting to keep adding trains to try and clear it but I'm not sure the lines could cope or that the towns would want that many pork pies.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2644680572
This is the current situation in the game with the Newport Pig Farm stacked with 338 waiting to be shipped pigs. The total demand for food from Newport and Amersham being 188. I'm not fully meeting the demand, but as you can hopefully see from the screenshot I'm already getting trains backed up waiting to enter the depot and whilst I am making a nice profit on both lines actually reworking the entire set-up it more than i can afford at the moment. My loans are basically maxed,

However, I've been watching some of the Colonel Failure and Skyestorm videos and I'm seriously considering creating some sort of Freight distribution hub between Newport and Amersham that can supply pork pies to all the town along the mainline.

Also looking at the map it seems that whilst Newport is the centre of the universe for food, Higham Ferrers right at the other end is the main area for oil and feul production. So, eventually there may be a similar freight hub at that end shipping fuel back along the line to Newport.

Long way to go yet though, first I need to pay off some of my loan.

[Huperspace]

with only one bidirectional track you will not get the Rate near the demand (livestock, food). you will need to upgrade to 2 track rails and if thats not enough upgrade to more than one loco trains with longer stations.

[Didz]

Yes! I think I need to have a complete rethink of the strategy for the food lines.

The original idea was that trains would travel in a circuit collecting from farms, delivering to the food processing factory and then delivering the out put to the town. The idea being that they would only travel empty on the short return journey to the farm.

But I may need to abandon that idea and go back to dedicated delivery lines.

[Huperspace]

for that, not empty back, you would have to ship the food from farm to town, so the livestock train bring back the food to the farm.

[Didz]

Originally posted by Huperspace:

for that, not empty back, you would have to ship the food from farm to town, so the livestock train bring back the food to the farm.

Not sure I understand.

If I shipped food to a town and then brought it back again wouldn't that mean I hadn't delivered any and that my food train would arrive at the farm full of food with no space for another load of livestock?

[Huperspace]

the stations in TPF1 don't have a space limit or rather your stations terminal going to town will have the food stored.

[Premu]

In general - if I look at your screenshots you don't really run into the "risk" that the capacity of your station is too small in the near future. The towns can't take that much more food, so increasing the transport capacity will just lead to trains running empty and costing money.

Should the towns grow significantly your station might be too small - but that's not such a big problem, just replace it with a longer one. A cargo train which is over 300 meters long can transport a lot of stuff. (You need a powerful locomotive to pull something like that, of course) And if the demand is high enough you can actually fill such trains.

Also, the overall setup to deliver the pigs to the food factory and then take the same train to the town to deliver the produced food, so that only a (hopefully pretty short) return trip is empty is a pretty good idea, and I used similar setups before. They can be highly profitable later on with faster and more powerful trains, especially if you have pretty long tracks which the trains travel both ways with cargo. For example I had a large map with a wood on one corner in the map, a saw mill close to another corner and a wares factory close to the wood. I transported raw wood to the saw mill and the processed wood back to the factory. This line made around 20 Mio. profit a year.

One remark to the overall four-rail setup. In my current game I also used something similar, but with a signifcant difference. I don't let my passenger trains take the middle tracks, but have e.g. the passenger trains using the two right tracks for travelling both directions, and the two left tracks for the cargo trains. This has two advantages:

At terminal stations in which both cargo and passenger trains arrive, these two don't have to cross and wait for each other (something which happens in your screenshot) - so you have a higher throughput of trains.

Also, it's easier to make a short split off for the cargo line to a cargo station to collect the goods between cities. You don't have to build crossing or bridges for that.

In my game I just started to actually set up the cargo lines, and in these two screenshots you can see that. Here no lines are crossing and the trains don't get into each other's way:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2645830903

And here is a cargo station branched off from the main line to go to a cargo station which connects an oil well and a steel mill, and returning to the mainline afterwards. So trains can travel from this station easily to both towns connected on that line:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2645830805

[Didz]

Originally posted by Premu:

In general - if I look at your screenshots you don't really run into the "risk" that the capacity of your station is too small in the near future. The towns can't take that much more food, so increasing the transport capacity will just lead to trains running empty and costing money.

Thanks for taking the time to reply and for your useful observations.

Originally posted by Premu:

Should the towns grow significantly your station might be too small - but that's not such a big problem, just replace it with a longer one. A cargo train which is over 300 meters long can transport a lot of stuff. (You need a powerful locomotive to pull something like that, of course) And if the demand is high enough you can actually fill such trains.

Yes! I had anticipated the need to upgrade the initial stations at some point. It's perhaps not obvious from the screen shots but right from the outset I inserted additional tracks next to the initial single platforms to prevent the towns building too close to the stations so that when the time came I would have the room for more platforms and longer stations.

Originally posted by Premu:

Also, the overall setup to deliver the pigs to the food factory and then take the same train to the town to deliver the produced food, so that only a (hopefully pretty short) return trip is empty is a pretty good idea, and I used similar setups before. They can be highly profitable later on with faster and more powerful trains, especially if you have pretty long tracks which the trains travel both ways with cargo. For example I had a large map with a wood on one corner in the map, a saw mill close to another corner and a wares factory close to the wood. I transported raw wood to the saw mill and the processed wood back to the factory. This line made around 20 Mio. profit a year.

The plan was to minimise the time that my freight trains run empty and so far it seems to be working with both the initial lines producing a nice profit.

Originally posted by Premu:

One remark to the overall four-rail setup. In my current game I also used something similar, but with a significant difference. I don't let my passenger trains take the middle tracks, but have e.g. the passenger trains using the two right tracks for travelling both directions, and the two left tracks for the cargo trains. This has two advantages:

At terminal stations in which both cargo and passenger trains arrive, these two don't have to cross and wait for each other (something which happens in your screenshot) - so you have a higher throughput of trains.

Also, it's easier to make a short split off for the cargo line to a cargo station to collect the goods between cities. You don't have to build crossing or bridges for that.

Yes! I did sort of wonder whether I was making trouble for myself by doing the 2-Up/2-Down configuration. It's a bit of an experiment really just to see if there was any advantage I wasn't aware of for this system being used on real mainline railways.

So, far apart from the the aesthetic appeal of having the trains running on the correct tracks and the nice cross-over junctions the only real advantage is that it does let freight trains join and leave the mainline without crossing over and disturbing the central passenger lines.

Of course, as you point out that is offset when freight trains have to cross the central tracks to switch from Up to Down. So, its a bit of a swings a roundabouts thing.