Spaghetti Layouts...

[DarkFaceGlow]

Just curious what you guys use as far as planning, theories or rules etc, to avoid messy track layouts. Seems to be the biggest thing for me.

[Dray Prescot]

It is not easy. Try to avoid to much traffic through any one location. Try to keep things local as far as freight is concerned. Try to develope more than one source for key items (which is related to the previous two sentences). Think about adding 2nd Stations/Warehouses to busy spots. Watch out for building signals EVERY time you build new tracks or revise old ones. Think about whether Signal Control Upgrades will help to Stations/Warehouses, they are more expensive, but they can be hard to upgrade to. So maybe in some places you want want to start with them to avoid future hassels to upgrade to them.

Keep an eagle eye on what industries are being built in what cities as they grow. Often the private investors will build the wrong ones for your needs. Develope a general plan for the future about what industries you want where, and be willing to put your own money into building them, or be willing to go back to a saved game when the wrong ones get built so you can build the right industry instead. Location of industries is very important. I wish we could offer suggestions or incentives to the private investors to build the your choice, but we can NOT (at least right now).

A good rule of thumb is that when a City is about to grow large enough to add an Industrial Site, you want to have enough cash or be able to borrow enough cash, to be able to build the Industry that you want built there. (Sometimes you can delay the growth of the City to a better moment). Then as soon as the City does grow, Make a Saved Game that you can go back to. The private investors, i.e. the computer, normally give you a reasonable interval of time in which to act, but they won't wait forever. If you think that they might build the right Industry for your needs and you want to save the money, then let them build it. But be ready to load the saved game if they build the wrong Industry. The wrong industry in the wrong place can really hurt your rail net, and they can charge an arm and a leg to try and buy it from them, just so you can tear it down and replace it with the right Industry.

[chaney]

It will likely get messier than you want. The game scaling ends up with a fairly congested network, so you'll have to do what is efficient rather than something that seems real-world practical or visually pleasing in some cases.

Merging track looks good, but if there is already a traffic jam further up the line, consider what it accomplishes. Crossing tracks is ok in lower traffic areas, but can lead to jams eventually so that a bridge or tunnel might be a better choice. In that case, you can keep grades down by planning ahead, using natural terrain, and splitting the penalty across both paths.

Loading/unloading times are high so more Platforms mean a lot, but they are not cheap.

The most basic thing is to plan ahead. Think of what you will eventually want to bring to a City, and where it will come from. Plan ahead for the track you will need to do that. This will help you plan where to put a new Station and which way it will face. Expanding a Station will add platforms *away* from the Station house. Think where a second Station and Warehouses might go to avoid having track cross, merge, etc. later on.

[Colonel Sanders Lite]

Originally posted by DarkFaceGlow:

Just curious what you guys use as far as planning, theories or rules etc, to avoid messy track layouts. Seems to be the biggest thing for me.

Things are inevitably going to get messy because of the realities of resource distribution and, as chaney points out, the game's scaling leading to congestion.

That being said, here's the framework I have been using to organize city lines. I'm not saying it's "the best" but it has been working for me so far.


This is the backbone of my rail networks.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1623425194

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1623765705

2 double tracked lines linking each city to its neighbors. The first line runs between station As and is able to access both platform 1 and 2. Platform 1 is for express traffic between the city and its immediate neighbors with platform 2 being for express traffic linking the city to more distant neighbors. As traffic gets heavier, a simple bypass will be installed to let long distance express traffic move past the city without going through the station.

The second line runs between station Bs and is for freight traffic moving between the city and its immediate neighbors.

That leaves 5 platforms free.

I tend to dedicate a platform to supplying each of the city's 3 industries.

The last two platforms tend to each go to a warehouse that supplies goods from the surrounding area or long distance freight.

[Dray Prescot]

For some maps and relative postions of Cities, it is possible to create a loop that connects 4 or 5 Cities together so that trains on the loop do not have to reverse direction at Cities. But there are many Cities that do not work well with loop track layouts. The ideal loop would have one doubletrack (one track in each direction) for Express, plus a second doubletrack for freight trains to carry the goods made at the various Cities. This loop would connect one of two Stations in each City. The Second Stations in each City would have tracks linking to all of the various Resource Sites, and any Cities not in the loop. This can work on the right Maps but is costly and time consuming to setup.

An exmple of such a loop would be Chicago to Toledo to Pittsburg to Indianapolis to Chicago.

3 City Loops are a little easier to arrange, basicly it is a triangular route system, as long as the Cities are not along one line. Warehouses can easily extend this into a 4 or 5 stop route, which may be in a loop. The Ideal loop has no train reversals but that can be difficult to arrange, more often only some of the Cities/Warehouses can operate without a lot of train reversals.

[Colonel Sanders Lite]

Is there a particular reason you have a problem with reversals?

[chaney]

Note in the Colonel's pictures that the Stations are set so that when they expand, the new Platforms will appear further away from the City center. This will allow new connections from the sides without crossing over or rearranging in general.

I'm not a big fan of loop routes in general. They do have the advantage of the trains always moving in the same direction which allows faster transitions from one train using a Platform to the next train using it. (I call this flow through, others have called it RORO, in my opinion a misapplication for Roll On Roll Off.) The gain comes from the new train not needing to wait for the first train to clear the exit switch before it can start entering the Platform section. The same efficiency can be achieved by looping back, but that is more expensive and takes a lot of space. It uses up lots of precious real estate, too.

There are down sides to a loop. The paths are long so you end up with trains taking much longer paths and time to get to their destinations. This can force you to use a Warehouse because otherwise trains won't START a trip to deliver goods until the destination needs as many as they carry ... incliding those already on the way. The tracks must now carry all the traffic for the trailing Cities adding to conjestion. There will generally not be a balance in the quantities needed for each segment, so there is a loss of efficiency - you need as many trains as the most busy segment to run the entire ring. WIthout time scheduling, the trains will bunch up due to any delay. A three City ring won't suffer so much because the imbalance demands will still be a cost in a simple point to point/reversal setup, but the trains bunching up can still be a problem. I generally like point to point for simplicity and the ability to scale each segment up as needed. Some time ago I posted a picture of a Station with flow through loops coming from both directions that worked, but with the new feature of Warehouses connecting with Cities, I haven't though through how sensible that might be anymore.

[DarkFaceGlow]

Appreciate the feedback, guys. A lot to think about. I’m thinking somewhat ugly layouts may be something to deal with.

[gardlt]

While I think of myself as a competitive player I will take minor setbacks for better looking layouts. This is one of the facets of gameplay that is most interesting to me. However, my regular playstyle is probably not typical with maximum difficulties and also Trainiac (no pause) with Normal(AI) track setting and one station per city which gives 3 Very Hard AI a fighting chance.

One of the main things I do for a better looking layout is that it's very rare for me to cross my own track with a bridge or tunnel, if the competitor forces me well that's a different story. I also rarely use warehouses. Those carry logistical/mess overhead from what I can tell. Also, rarely split express from freight except when necessary. That carries a lot of logistical/mess overhead as well.

I played a fair bit of Railroads! in the past. That game has a lot of spaghetti problems. More so than this game. My planning strategies have evolved from that experience and with some new ideas over time. As the others have stated planning is the biggest thing and because resource locations are fixed, finding the best way to use them doesn't have to happen the first time out.

I could try to put some logistical illustrations in a guide. I've thought of doing it before, but then I remember that as far as I can tell not many others play in the same style as I do. Probably most points in my first two paragraphs, in addition my setups are simple enough to span the whole map, not just some special cluster of cities. Also rare use of signal-controlled facilities in ciites as they are definitely lower volume than the original varieties. There is too much impact on local delivery trip length. A final note is that I have a strange relationship with maintenance. It's more economical to replace rather than repair trains. There's a big delta here especially with 20th century trains. If money is tight, obviously I don't repair trains early on. Even if I force myself to never replace-to-repair them, it's not uncommon to never have enough time in the late game to redesign their routes to allow for huge repair delays.

Simplicity is the biggest thing. I only make as many long distance hauls as are necessary for town growth. Growth rate is the same at 61% satisfaction as at 99%. This is actually the right strategy for profit as well: freight pays the same no matter the distance it is hauled. That means that these sort of more complex lines will remain low volume and therefore the crossings/junctions etc. involved will have a lot less risk of overloading.

[Dray Prescot]

The problem with train reversal at stations is that it makes the time the train spends from entering the station to the time it leaves the station longer, compared to the time it would spend if it unloaded and loaded and then continued on in the same direction.

So if a LOT or ALL of your trains are turning around and going back in the direction they came from, you will get fewer trains using the Station in a given period of time. At your major and busiest Stations this can lead to more trains waiting (and waiting longer) to use that station on the tracks near to the station.

This is one of the reasons you see so many strange layouts of tracks around major stations in many screenshots that get posted for RE. The authors of those screenshots are trying to reduce/elinimate train reversals to get more trains using that Station.

This is the reason that I was trying to create Loops of tracks (and Stations) that curved back on themselves such as Chicago (leaving to it's East side) to Toledo to Pittsburg to Indianapolis to St Louis and finally back to Chicago (entering on it's West side). Where the trains NEVER turn around to leave a Station, they just continue on in the same direction at the Station. They circle around forming the Loop between the Stations/Cities.

The new Signal Control Versions of Stations and Warehouses MAY make train reversal time loses less important.

A simple example of avoiding lost time due to time reverals: Stations A and C are rural Resource Stations/Warehouses that send resources to B. Instead of having routes that go A to B and Back to A, plus another Route that goes from C to B and back to C, you have Train Routes that go from A to B to C and then back to B to A. The train reversals happen at the rural Resource stations (A and C) and the trains do not reverse direction at B (which is VERY Busy) they just keep going in the same direction at B. So the train spends less time at Station B, leaving more time for another train to use B. (Actually you have two trains using the A to B to C to B to A route versus two trains, one using each of the separate routes).

A major disadvantage to Signal Control stations is the longer amount of tracks on both sides of the Station. This means a particular train spends more time on the tracks of that Station, which means more time until the next train can use that Station (actually you have up to 4 trains using it at the same time, but it is still taking those 4 trains longer to use that station because of the longer amount of track associated with the Station). The advantage of Signal Control is that a train does NOT have to wait to use a particular track at the Station and can use the next available free track.

A carefully designed network of tracks, trains and old fashioned stations (i.e. NOT Signal Controlled) "MIGHT" actually be faster than the same track and trains with Signal Control Stations (and then again it might not be faster). Signal Control Stations/Warehouses are more flexible, but they cost more and take more space, and are hard to upgrade to.

For Express Trains where SPEED is critical to income earned and there are a lot of such trains on a particular route, avoiding Signal Control Stations on their dedicated Express tracks "might" earn you more money. (I often have separate tracks for Express trains once the Cities grow enough).

So you MAY see some busy large population Cities with one large 4 Track NON Signal Control Station (for Express Trains) plus a 2nd Signal Control 4 Track Station (for freight trains). It is worth considering and trying to see which works better, i.e. earns more money.

[DarkFaceGlow]

Originally posted by gardlt:

While I think of myself as a competitive player I will take minor setbacks for better looking layouts. This is one of the facets of gameplay that is most interesting to me. However, my regular playstyle is probably not typical with maximum difficulties and also Trainiac (no pause) with Normal(AI) track setting and one station per city which gives 3 Very Hard AI a fighting chance.

One of the main things I do for a better looking layout is that it's very rare for me to cross my own track with a bridge or tunnel, if the competitor forces me well that's a different story. I also rarely use warehouses. Those carry logistical/mess overhead from what I can tell. Also, rarely split express from freight except when necessary. That carries a lot of logistical/mess overhead as well.

I played a fair bit of Railroads! in the past. That game has a lot of spaghetti problems. More so than this game. My planning strategies have evolved from that experience and with some new ideas over time. As the others have stated planning is the biggest thing and because resource locations are fixed, finding the best way to use them doesn't have to happen the first time out.

I could try to put some logistical illustrations in a guide. I've thought of doing it before, but then I remember that as far as I can tell not many others play in the same style as I do. Probably most points in my first two paragraphs, in addition my setups are simple enough to span the whole map, not just some special cluster of cities. Also rare use of signal-controlled facilities in ciites as they are definitely lower volume than the original varieties. There is too much impact on local delivery trip length. A final note is that I have a strange relationship with maintenance. It's more economical to replace rather than repair trains. There's a big delta here especially with 20th century trains. If money is tight, obviously I don't repair trains early on. Even if I force myself to never replace-to-repair them, it's not uncommon to never have enough time in the late game to redesign their routes to allow for huge repair delays.

Simplicity is the biggest thing. I only make as many long distance hauls as are necessary for town growth. Growth rate is the same at 61% satisfaction as at 99%. This is actually the right strategy for profit as well: freight pays the same no matter the distance it is hauled. That means that these sort of more complex lines will remain low volume and therefore the crossings/junctions etc. involved will have a lot less risk of overloading.

I don’t use warehouses either. They seem to be an unnecessary middleman for me. I think I may start taking setbacks, too. Money isn’t ever an issue once things are rolling(pun). Once that cash starts coming in, I’m really not concerned with occasional breakdowns or trains waiting a couple seconds. I’m not into points or achievements, so....

[Colonel Sanders Lite]

Originally posted by DarkFaceGlow:

I don’t use warehouses either. They seem to be an unnecessary middleman for me.

You would be correct to say that they're not *strictly necessary*. That being said, they are incredibly useful for organizational purposes. Especially when supplying a variety of relatively low volume items.

As a quick and dirty example:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1624953119

Here we have two cities connected by the same 2X2 rail backbone I showed earlier. Additionally, they are both getting a double rail from a wheat farm to supply their beer industries. They are also both getting 5 more food items from a warehouse on another double line. All you need to do to make it work is connect the resources in the area to the warehouse like so:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1624953148

Notes:
First it's fairly tidy.

Second, since you can put a maintenance shed on the warehouse, it will save $320,000 on maintenance sheds, enough money to actually pay for the warehouse.

Third, it has advantages when you stop to think about breakdowns and what traffic gets stopped depending on where the breakdown is. For example - when a train hauling fruit to the warehouse breaks down, it will block the fruit line and maybe the sugar line, but all the other goods are still flowing freely. Since the warehouse acts as a buffer, even fruit and sugar are still flowing both cities.

If these weren't both beer producers, you could easily plug in wheat as well, but I really cannot recommend attempting to supply a heavy use industry with a warehouse in this manner. What inevitably happens is that the trains going from the warehouse to the city just end up being filled with the industry's goods, wheat in this case, and will be unable to supply the other goods. Mixing a low volume industry's goods into a warehouse can be made to work though.

[DarkFaceGlow]

Originally posted by Colonel Sanders Lite:

Originally posted by DarkFaceGlow:

I don’t use warehouses either. They seem to be an unnecessary middleman for me.

You would be correct to say that they're not *strictly necessary*. That being said, they are incredibly useful for organizational purposes. Especially when supplying a variety of relatively low volume items.

As a quick and dirty example:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1624953119

Here we have two cities connected by the same 2X2 rail backbone I showed earlier. Additionally, they are both getting a double rail from a wheat farm to supply their beer industries. They are also both getting 5 more food items from a warehouse on another double line. All you need to do to make it work is connect the resources in the area to the warehouse like so:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1624953148

Notes:
First it's fairly tidy.

Second, since you can put a maintenance shed on the warehouse, it will save $320,000 on maintenance sheds, enough money to actually pay for the warehouse.

Third, it has advantages when you stop to think about breakdowns and what traffic gets stopped depending on where the breakdown is. For example - when a train hauling fruit to the warehouse breaks down, it will block the fruit line and maybe the sugar line, but all the other goods are still flowing freely. Since the warehouse acts as a buffer, even fruit and sugar are still flowing both cities.

If these weren't both beer producers, you could easily plug in wheat as well, but I really cannot recommend attempting to supply a heavy use industry with a warehouse in this manner. What inevitably happens is that the trains going from the warehouse to the city just end up being filled with the industry's goods, wheat in this case, and will be unable to supply the other goods. Mixing a low volume industry's goods into a warehouse can be made to work though.

Makes sense to use them for the lower demand things. This way you don’t have a sugar train taking up lanes that a beer train could be using.

[gardlt]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1625051800

For a comparison here's an idea of how I might conceptually connect these resources without a warehouse with a level-ground layout.

No repairs are done in the city stations. the signal-controlled one on the mainline takes care of that. Plus one on the Fruit, Salt, and Milk stations.

The weak link here is the signal-controlled Grain/Corn repair station. When the cities reach a large size the city-city traffic would be switched to a dedicated line on the southern side with a new maintenance station. City stations will be expanded and the current line would be moved to platform #3 on both ends, with the new one linking to #2. At the moment there is a southern single bypass line for eastbound trains. Repair stop is on the westbound journey.

The idea with the Sugar connection is that the empty trains will visit the Grain/Corn repair station on their outbound trip so the return is the inside of the "triangle". The spur for Nashville drives on the left.

[chaney]

Good discussion.

I'm in the infrequent use of (non-City) Warehouses camp, and like gardlt would usually put the constraint on myself to not use City Warehouses. This is probably a vestige of learning the game early and wanting an added challenge.

There is a case where the Warehouse is quite valuable. When you need a good that is only available far away, the game mechanics leave you wanting that good some of the time. Trains won't leave until their cargo will fit at their destination - including cargo already on the way. The long time it takes to travel from far away means a City can run out of a good before an efficient train load can make the trip. The Warehouse can be delivered to ahead of time to smooth this out.

[Colonel Sanders Lite]

Originally posted by Dray Prescot:

The problem with train reversal at stations is that it makes the time the train spends from entering the station to the time it leaves the station longer, compared to the time it would be spend if it unloaded and loaded and then continued on in the same direction.

I was thinking about this and I thought I smelled a rat so I did some testing. Train reversals are instantaneous and don't directly add time. The problem is the switch before the platform.



Two trains hauling goods from one warehouse to another. They departed warehouse A at the same time and arrived at warehouse B at nearly the same time. The small difference in arrival time is due to subtle differences track grading/geometry.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1625151804

Both trains depart from warehouse B at the same time as well. Still slightly offset because of the slight difference in arrival time.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1625151832

Things change with the second pair of arriving trains. This is because the top train had to wait for the outgoing train to clear both the platform and the switch before it could start moving, whereas the bottom train only had to wait for the outgoing train to clear the platform.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1625151852

This switch is the whole problem.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1625151871


Now, how big of a problem is it? I sat observing this for a while and I can say for sure that with this setup, the difference is less that 1 train per 15 trains. My test runs out of goods after that and I don't care to fix it, but I can say with a reasonable degree of confidence that the pass through line gets about 21 trains into the station per 20 trains that the reversing line gets into the station. Throw in a margin of error and the difference is probably somewhere between 2% and 8%.

This is going to vary though. If the switch is big, it's going to take the outgoing train more time to clear it. If the outgoing train leaves empty, it will clear the switch faster because it's shorter and will accelerate faster. If you don't consistently have a train waiting at the signal to enter the station, it actually makes no difference whatsoever.

Personally, I don't think such a small difference is worth the extra complexity unless you're going out of your way to make a super large city with absurd levels of demand.

Originally posted by Dray Prescot:

The new Signal Control Versions of Stations and Warehouses MAY make train reversal time loses less important.

It's actually going to be the opposite, at least for the 4 track versions. Those switches at the end of the station are very large and will take the outgoing trains much longer clear than the simple system in the screenshots above.

Originally posted by Dray Prescot:

A carefully designed network of tracks, trains and old fashioned stations (i.e. NOT Signal Controlled) "MIGHT" actually be faster than the same track and trains with Signal Control Stations (and then again it might not be faster).

From my testing, I'm pretty positive that manually controlled stations are definitely faster if set up properly. The biggest advantage that the signal controlled stations have is convenience. How important that is depends on the pause mode you're playing the game in and your personal level of tolerance for micromanagement.