Long routes or several short routes?

[Oddible]

Should I be adjusting my routes so that I have long routes that touch several cities & production facilities or should I be building short routes that all connect to each other at major city hubs?

[Wenzel]

I tend to set up my railnetwork like this (no guarantee that this is efficient ^^). I usually combine two systems:

• An "intercity system" that connects all cities, but does not touch any farms. This system is supposed to transport freight and express goods between cities. Transport on the intercity system needs to be as fast as possible. At least two tracks are needed for the intercity connection - I usually go for directional tracks + passing lanes).
  
• In significant cities (where I want to boost industry or population), I set up supply systems. A supply system exclusively transports freight from farms to the city. It is always seperated from the intercity system (no platforms are shared). My supply-design has evolved quite a lot - it would take too long to describe it in detail here. One important aspect is that each train only services one single farm (so the trains go from the farm, wait to load 8 wagons, drive to town, unload fully and head back to farm; the farther away the farm from the city, the more trains need to be assigned to it). This will make only single locomotives come back from town to farm, which in turn has some advantages. Speed is not that important on the supply system. There will always be trains waiting to enter town. The crucial part is to get those trains/goods pass into town first that are currently in need. Also, this system is quite overseeable - by renaming my trains to "City Good Nr.", it's quite easy to keep track of what's going on.

Seperated systems also have the advantage that they're easier to manage. By clicking on a track, you can get a list of all trains that use the track. So, for example, if you click on a track of the supply system of city X, you will only see supply trains of city X on your list. :)

I'm sometimes tempted to also cut my intercity system into several seperate intercity systems. But I'm not sure if this would have a negative effect on passanger transport (if I set up two seperate intercity systems, then passangers would need to change train in the city in which the two systems converge...).

[Oddible]

Love it. The first Scenario mission was so hap hazzard and so much money was available that I have spaghetti vomited all over the map. This trunk / spur system sounds excellent. I'm still in the first scenario - question then - do you get your trunk pushed quite wide early then or do you expand it slowly?

[Dray Prescot]

The resource sites by types are so scattered on the map that to supply all the types of goods needed by a very large City will require freight trains coming from a significant fraction of the map away.

For really large cities, Baltimore in 1830/Chapter 2, it is a good idea to build and use a 2nd Station, since one station just can not handle all the trains, and it makes it easier to keep the fast trains separated from the slow trains.

[Tennyson]

I started by running complicated routes but I found that I was then adding multiple trains to those routes to keep goods flowing. So now I've started running most trains as single-task and money flows in faster. I can even clone those routes for more money without having to worry about track efficiency across a wide area.

[Wenzel]

Here is a screenshot of my prefered supply line design at the moment.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1291271359
It's the southern route, the northern one is by a competitor. My route runs from Louisville to Corn, Iron, Coal, Wood.

The route is only connected to a single platform in Louisville.

All trains operating on the line only have two stations: a farm and Louisville.

For the main line, I use a single track with very short passing loops every here and there. The passing loops can be very short as they only need to accomodate single locomotives (0 wagons). Nothing but single locomotives will be going from west to the east on the line.

In Louisville, the maintrack splits into two "enter"-tracks that can hold 1 train each. There is one exit track leading out of the platform which can hold 3-4 single locomotives.

The tributary tracks (from the main line to the farms) also offer a waiting space-passing loop for 1-2 locomotives each (or more, depending on the number of trains that service that particular farm). This is because I always let my trains wait at the farms until they have a full cargo of 8 wagons. So while train 1 is being loaded or waits to be fully loaded, trains 2+ need to have a place to wait offside of the main line where they would block all main-line traffic.

As for maintainance, I have erected maintainance sheds at all farms, but not in Louisville. While this is expensive, it helps to reduce the time that trains block the platform in Louisville.

In this particular case, I only have 4-5 trains on the line as Louisville's demand is not that high yet. But once the industry levels up, I will need to add many more trains.

[Oddible]

Nice, spurs on spurs. I see how this can start out as a single line out to the resources then split the small feeder spurs off as you add more trains to those resources.

I don't get what your logic is behind:
"In Louisville, the maintrack splits into two "enter"-tracks that can hold 1 train each. There is one exit track leading out of the platform which can hold 3-4 single locomotives. "

I have also been trying to get a sense of how to use warehouses more effectively. I see you have one plopped in the middle of that trunk line - I'm gonna have to see how I could make that work.

Lastly... hire some of those Engineers and Stokers man!

[Wenzel]

The warehouse line belongs to my competitor. It's not mine. I haven't used warehouses very often yet. In my system they could be usefull for intercity freight transports. As I want to keep my supply and intercity lines seperated, the warehouse could be the important (but overly expensive...) link where freight exits a city's supply system and enters the intercity system.

"In Louisville, the maintrack splits into two "enter"-tracks that can hold 1 train each. There is one exit track leading out of the platform which can hold 3-4 single locomotives. "

No greater logic here. It's just nice that the exit track can hold several of the short single locomotives. If I had trains with wagons exiting the station, the exit track would only offer place for one train. But then again it has become my fetish to use single tracks. It's much more efficient to use double tracks everywhere.

As for the personal. I know :). It's just so fiddly. For my freight trains I often don't really care. I do look after my express trains though.

[BetonToni]

i give every freighttrain a guardsmen for that extra money they give starting around 6%.
Thats always more than their weekly payment.

[Dray Prescot]

Complicated interlocked networks just lead to random breakdowns affecting the whole network. Keep thing simple and separate so that random breakdowns only affect things locally, i.e. only a few other trains. Although major express routes between two Large Cities might have 10 or more trains running between them.

It also makes it easier to add and make changes locally without having to check and change a lot of trains.

[dsdomestic]

In manual pause mode.

You could 4 track with regular switches and use waypoints around any broken trains.

Micromanagement at its finest 🤗