Busy city stations help

[destroyon]

Just wondering how people cope with a city station that has a lot of traffic?
Do you tend to tell every train what platform it should arrive at? And if so is there any way to see how many trains are using each platform? Coz my problem with that is I cannot remember anything like that.

Sation info tool when it comes to platform management would be cool to have. (mod?)

I tend to have dedicated 2 way tracks between cities with farms added to them along the way. but when they reach a station some trains can wait forever while many others overtake the long waiting trains. (hope im making sense).

Should i be building a second station at some point?

Thanks for your time. Video guides anyone?

[Doc Savage]

Yes, I tell every train where to go... (in so many, many ways...)

Yes, you can hover over a line/platform and see it's % usage. Low # bad, high # better.

You have info tools already. You can see what lines use what platform, what % and use bypasses or waypoints to influence trains that don't need to be there to go somewhere else. There are windows inside the stations that will tell you what's demanded and what you're actually doing to fill that demand.

If you're going to use dedicated lines, make some separate dedicated Freight lines. Like using the center 2 of a 4 platform station for the mains and using the 2 outside platforms for freight or small town tie ins. If you're only going to use the one station, you have to spread the work out.

Yes. 2nd station. I like to use the big one and then a 2 platform off to one side as a Freight hub. It looks better than two gargantuan stations to me. But yes, even if I just use a a single track station, I will use it. (even use 2 and 1 platform station set ups for small towns)

Videos all over YT, Adyken and djpufferfish have some good stuff. (forgive the spelling) There's a sticky for YT feeds above that have others, it's called "Lets' Play..."

You are most welcome.

Cheers..!

[gardlt]

Originally posted by destroyon:

I tend to have dedicated 2 way tracks between cities with farms added to them along the way. but when they reach a station some trains can wait forever while many others overtake the long waiting trains. (hope im making sense).

It's up to you to tie things in far enough away from the station to be out of the "queue" zone: where trains start waiting for the platform. If a queue is too long, that's a sign that you need to double up the line and divide the load.

The major time I tell the trains which platform to use is when I am splitting a city-city line for maintenance purposes, especially long distance. In a mid-game application, resource trains receive rural maintenance. This means that I want to run two lanes into the same city station that has the mainentance shed instead of splitting between the two stations in that city, which would involve less clicking.

Caveat to this is that I don't build maintenance early game and the game actually plays so fast on Trainiac that I don't always bother to build it. So while the idea is there, the execution doesn't always happen.

[destroyon]

Originally posted by Doc Savage:

Yes, I tell every train where to go... (in so many, many ways...)

Cheers..!

Thanks Doc! Great advice. The 2 dedicated lines in the middle is something i just am mucking around with actually. Hopefully I dont stuff it up too much.

Could I ask if you ever have trains that travel multiple sations?
I recently played using trains that only go between 2 destinations because i read thats easier. But dunno

[Doc Savage]

Always point to point for me. That doesn't mean a train won't pass through another station, there are times when a bypass is expensive and traffic is light. Many times I can have inbound trains unload on A and have through trains pass by on platform B. Some scenarios it just isn't worth it to invest in a lot of bypass work, just bite the bullet and live with the pass through for the one task.

I have done loop trains a few times. The oil to Kansas City (hope I'm remembering this right) scenario I did a 5 city loop in the south. I ran the inner loop one direction and the outer loop the other. They traveled A>B>C>D>E and A<B<C<D<E.

It wasn't a bad way to do business as long as the cities complimented each other in the Beer-Beef battle. They have to alternate to keep cities growing and stable. At the end of the day, it was a wash. A lot of work and track outlay for something I could do point to point. I can see why some people would like to run a train that way though.

Long lines are good for Passenger traffic. Running A>C skipping B can make a nice chunk of change with an Express. Don't do it with Freight though, it pays the same to C as it does to B. I do trains like this between major cities when the opportunity arrises, especially earlier in a scenario, it's good money for minimal bypass track cost.

The caveat is you can actually take passenger money away from A>B and B>C doing this. Passengers will take any train that will get them closer to their destination, so they will take A>B and then B>C. If you bypass it, you only get the people wanting to go to from A to B and from B to C. If there's a ton of people, this can be a good thing. If there's not, well there's dining cars and mail cars...

You can't stuff it up too much. Can't tell you how many derp moments I've had. It's a learning curve. A very fun learning curve, but it's still a learning curve.

Cheers..!