How to load trains faster at customs?

[defumak]

Starting from 60's I'm using electric rail to import coal and iron to fabricate steel. The distance from customs to the building is around 500m. I'm using 2 cars with 3 wagons each, one transports only coal, and another only iron (total of 180 tons each). The steel factory supports 150 tons of coal + 150 tons of iron.

However, when loading my trains, it rates is around 1ton/sec. Meanwhile, my steel factory with 50 workers is consuming around the same rate, so there is a little gap during the delivery time. As workaround, I'm using auto-purchase, but it's expensive. I didn't consider an aggregate storage, because the train is not fast enough to load and deliver at time, the buffer would be empty before receiving a new quantity of coal/iron.

I would like to find some way to load my wagons faster, like an aggregate loader on customs. So would be able to deliver coal and steel without gaps. I would prefer not using mods this time.

[melkij]

Steel factory consumes too much resources. Even auto-purchase can not buy resources fast enough. Best way is to produce coal or iron by yourself, near to steel factory and use direct conveyor connections. Better next to a coal mine, because coal is consumed almost twice as much as iron.
Otherwise - use more trains. And more custom houses. Customs are relatively slow, it's right.

PS: I'm afraid that the massive import of coal and iron will raise prices too quickly, and the production of own steel will turn out to be more expensive than import steel.

[defumak]

> Steel factory consumes too much resources. Even auto-purchase can not buy resources fast enough. Best way is to produce coal or iron by yourself, near to steel factory and use direct conveyor connections. Better next to a coal mine, because coal is consumed almost twice as much as iron.

Thank you very, indeed it seems be the best approach. Also, you are right about coal, it ends much faster than iron.

> PS: I'm afraid that the massive import of coal and iron will raise prices too quickly, and the production of own steel will turn out to be more expensive than import steel.

I'm doing small experiments, build a small town with a single factory and check the result. At first year, with 50 workers on steel factory, where the city has 500 people, I was able to finish the month with +11k rubles. Of course, prices change and at some point it won't work.