Naming trains, warehouses & city stations ?

[dasaard200]

In the Train List, you are given the A>B destination, but how do you know which WHO is hauling WHAT ?
Having just bought the game [200 hours], I need to know how to label each train is hauling, like :
Dogpatch > Fumbuk
X1 (express) would haul P&M, (with/without the lightning bolt symbol)
R1w (raw goods with letter[s] suffix for type) ...

Choosing a train, and 'tapping' it, lets you see how many CARS are behind an engine; what are the loads IN them ??
This idea would give a better way to identify what you're running on your lines; and when/if to delete obsolete ones .

So how does one name a train ?

[Thineboot]

There was at one lengthy discussion in one of the forums at least a year ago including various detailed suggestions. Probably Feature-request but I really don't recall, could also be here or even in Bugreport. You have to stress the search function a bit but you'll get lots of answers as well.

[Thineboot]

Train and Station/Warehouse Names was just one of them...

[some moron]

Yuck. Looks as though the devs didn't even make the 3-year-old exceedingly simply change of using letters instead of number for second stations. (or a space after name of city means a duplicate train, but no space means the second station)
And it seems really stupid to me to have resource names that don't have to do with what they produce, and sometimes incorrectly, or misleadingly. I can't imagine why anyone would do that besides making the game too confusing to play funly.

[some moron]

They should have at minimum followed the original of this type of game, Sid Meiers. They did it right. All "Manors" or something always did grain.
If players such as myself have to manually rename in order to fix their game, that's a problem.

[28rommel]

Just an FYI.
If you ever need to add another Right/Left Arrow in your description of a train, the keyboard shortcut is ALT+29.

[28rommel]

Recommendation:
Something that will help, is to change the name of the station for all your rural businesses. Do this right after constructing the station, and before creating your very first line with this station.
This is what I do ...

If the default name reads as "Roberts Preserve," change it to "Roberts Grain" (or "Roberts Grn" if you want to use 3-letter abbreviations for all the "goods" names).
"Wright Fattening" becomes "Wright Cattle" or "Ctl"
"Malone Manor" becomes "Malone Veg" ("Vegetables" is way too long. Don't use.)
"Joshua Farm" becomes "Joshua Fruit" or "Frt"
"Robinson Clearing" becomes "Robinson Wood" or "Wod"
Etc, etc.

One I don't like is called "Wood Breeding" (a Cattle producing rural business). This confuses me with the actual resource of "Wood," so I change this name to read as "Would Cattle."

By keeping the first name of the business the same (and not altering it), then you can still use the alphabetic listing to locate the business, if your scanning the entire map and having trouble finding exactly where it is at (could be handy when you share your game/map with someone else, like a friend or the developers, and want to comment about a specific rural business).

I also change the name of a train station that is dropped at all cities, if the name of the city is too long (and again, do it immediately after constructing it). You don't want excessively long names, because they become "semi"-truncated (cut-off) when listed, and makes it harder to quickly read and see.

Easy ones are changing names like "New York" to "NY," or "Kansas City" to "KC."
"Washington" to me, just gets changed to "DC."
Try to stick to 5-to-7 letter maximums for all your city names.
So "Wilmington" becomes "Wlmngtn" (remove the vowels, is usually a good trick, but not always. And never remove the very first letter, of course).
"Knoxville" becomes "Knoxvl"
Just sound your abbreviation out, and if it makes sense to you, use it.

[some moron]

rommel I complete agree with you
I was just saying this is mind-numbing busy-work that is not interesting and is more than easily automated

additionally, i frequently rebuild my stations, when i want to build a second one, to change direction when I realize the curves are too short for a later add-on. So this just adds to the work.

I agree with your ideas complete, it's just we shouldn't have to fixing the developers' short-comings. I'm gonna look for any feature requests around this.

[mbutton15]

Not sure what the latest is, but I read that the Japan DLC update messed up renaming stations. From memory it explicitly mentioned warehouses names were being reset to default names when reloading the map.

As I don't recall there being a patch since the Japan DLC I assume this is still the case. :(
If anyone knows different then it would be good to know. I've not bothered renaming anything since the Japan DLC update.

[Thineboot]

I've tested it then and 1.14.0 hasn't affected the pre-1.14 save game itself while resetting all names on load. I haven't noticed any patch since 7 May but I only ran it for some tests, not played since.

[gussmed]

I rename all my depots with the produced good. Cows, wheat, corn, whatever. I’ll keep the owner name, so it’s Roberts Cows.

City stations I don’t change. Instead I name the trains. Passenger / mail is Express, and freight trains are the good I expect to carry. So it’s Chicago Express <-> Madison or Chicago Meat <-> Madison.