Trains getting stuck

[Jørgen Oktober]

The management of tracks and trains are pretty poor, the trains choose to run on tracks that are already occupied, and there's nothing I can do about it?

[WINDBAYOU]

In my short experience, i just waited. The train will short itself but you will lose time and lose profit. its best to make several doubletrack (D) to evade this problem.

[ShiningDragon]

It depends on the choosed tracks difficultie, how trains will handle a situation like this.

Because you're NOT able to set the signals by your own and have to trust the "automatic placement" by laying down the tracks, i would only recommend to set the difficulty to EASY or MEDIUM and NOT to HARD.

On easy settings, the trains will pass each other on the same tracks. The train with higher priority will pass and the lower priority one will wait.

On medium settings you have to wait some time, until a train may move.

It's very important to control the placements of the signals. If you're seeing 2 signals behind each other, they won't work right. The first one says: "Oh hello, the track is free, come on train." while the second one says "Haha, got you, track is busy."

The signalling system was thousand times better on transport tycoon deluxe (laying down the tracks, placing signals on every point you want for one way / double direction) - it was able to have a huge amount of trains on one single track with options to wait / pass for other trains on sidetracks.

This is something i do really miss on Sid Meier's Railroads.

[Jesse R]

There is a definite art to managing tracks in this game and it can be frustrating. There are some very good guides and tips in the forums at smrsimple.com.

There are two schools of thought, but the common element is to minimize the number of trains per track and preferably only have one per track. Some people use cross-overs to help traffic, others say cross-overs are the worst thing ever and should be avoided at all costs. :D

In my limited experience so far, once you get the hang of it it's fairly easy to dedicate a track to just one or two trains. Judicious use of cross-overs is also very helpful, in my opinion.

Understanding how signals work is also important to designing tracks. Trains can only "see" what's on the segment ahead of the signal they are behind. A segment is either available or in-use. Whether the segment ahead is a 50 mile segment or a 5 mile segment, the train will wait until the other train has completely cleared the next signal. This means it can be waiting a long time, even when the other segment has lots of clear track, so sometimes it helps to break your segments into smaller portions so there are more signals.

[Jørgen Oktober]

Thanks guys. I've played through it and it's not for me. I'm more a kind of a TTD guy.

[ShiningDragon]

You already know OpenTTD?

[Jørgen Oktober]

Yup.

[FirestormMk3]

Don't give your trains too many choices, set tracks for a purpose. I only play with routing on hard (I hate the unrealistic nature of trains just ghosting through each other and some good planning will get you around it). What was said before about not being able to place signals is wrong though - simply hit lay track and then double click where you want a signal. Be aware that when you build a fork (anytime you lay track from a yellow circle) you WILL make a new signal there and if near a depot you get a mess of double signals your trains will never figure it out.

[Armoredgimp]

the hard part is if a track is in use you can not delete it so you end up destroying trains and cargo so you can remedy routing issues.
if you make your connection in the shape of a "YI" as oposed to "lIII" or "S" you will have better luck.

[Jesse R]

Yes, editing tracks that are in use is a royal PITA. If they are near another track going to the same city I usually build a temporary crossover before the point I need to edit so it becomes non-essential and can be deleted. Once I fix it, I then remove the crossover. Of course, this only works where you have tracks somewhat parallel to each other.

[Master Oogway]

Yup

[Iceira]

best multi tracks i have use is 2 per city and there can only be 4 station with 8 track to a city so i use the other 2 for raw industri and in most case thats 1&4 track and 2&3 is for best gods and mail and passenger, and in most case's i have 2 train at all industri with 1 track only at a city and that work fine by me...but dont make the world in a loop with multichoise so train can go around if to many trains on a track that try get to a station ( that stuck train will try go the other way around the world to get to that station and that can cause CTD in most case )
i use to make that mistake try transport everything because its fun that way to try but game cant handle all those trains and game will CTD sooner or later...so alll in all 1 train per industri only and only make 2 if u can see its a double instri allready there...or even 3 trains depend if u try make death grip / take over ,,, and dont loop such simple industri- station / it dont wotk 1 train will try other way around if a loop connection in a circle has been made = CTD
there is no solution other then dont make a loop circle in the track anywhere , when you should have alot of lesser CTD but then u have allmost all places at map CTD cn happend anyway reason is to many trains and game has reach its maximum some say a 3gb fix can help i have not try it but you have allready won the game if u have allmost all city and industri at the map

[Jogn]

I absolutely spam criss-crossed rails over my busier stations. Seems to work.

[G-Money]

maybe you should not play this game

[Davypi]

Hopefully I'm not hijacking this thread, but it seems to be related to problems that I'm having with the game. I am playing the NW Scenario and cannot get my trains to route properly. I have rails in only two cities, but the natural resources demanded by the northern are to the south and vice versa, so it necessitates a web of rails to get things to the right location. Anyway, the problem I am having is that my grain car will to a switch and then pull a 180 turn. A little bit away down the track it will hit another switch and do the exact same thing, so the train is basically stuck in a loop. Save and reload doesn't help. Deleting the train and restarting the route also does the same thing. What is the fix here?

[TheWizard]

The OP issue...it made me so mad back in the original release of the game that I decided to play on EASY mode for routing always, not really any other option.

To Loop train: Someplace your track is not connected to your end destination...delete some of the track to find the problem. I remember you could have what looked to be a fine switch split but a very small bit of the track never got connected to the main track.