How to start a rail line in realistic mode?

[Geronomofo]

Ive run into a snag trying to start laying rail in my current play through. I have the rail construction building down and the rails planned out, but im not sure how to get my first construction rail set from customs to the depot. any advice would be welcome

[joeball123]

You need to buy a disassembled track layer, which you can then transport via truck.

[Greybeard]

- build rail construction office
- buy disassembled track builder at customs house directly (it's in the disassembled category; it's cheap and slow)
- send truck to pick it up from customs and bring it to rail construction office (select the vehicle/container load on both ends or it won't be picked up)
- build you tracks
- ideally you'd want the track from rail construction office to customs built first, because then you can buy more powerful track builders directly at your rail CO and they will drive there from the customs; that'll greatly improve track building speed

[Geronomofo]

thanks both, I dont remember that being a thing last I played!

[Beast of War]

Originally posted by Greybeard:

- build rail construction office
- buy disassembled track builder at customs house directly (it's in the disassembled category; it's cheap and slow)
- send truck to pick it up from customs and bring it to rail construction office (select the vehicle/container load on both ends or it won't be picked up)
- build you tracks
- ideally you'd want the track from rail construction office to customs built first, because then you can buy more powerful track builders directly at your rail CO and they will drive there from the customs; that'll greatly improve track building speed

This is it.

And while we are at it : you cannot demolish rails unless your rail construction building is connected to waste depots to handle mixed waste, metal scraps and construction waste, and it's construction material and gravel stores are not full. ( it recycles some materials and wants to store them there )

I say this because i usually make some mistakes laying tracks and want to delete those, but in realistic mode that means demolish them with the construction train. Which will refuse to do so when above mentioned conditions are not met.

I usually build 2 rail construction buildings : one with factory connection external depots for materials and a conveyor for gravel to build tracks, and one with waste depots connected to it for deconstruction/demolishing tracks.

You can do it all with 1 building though. But then you need to have these external waste depots connected and only have a partially filled internal material stores.

[Titule]

Also: you can buy all sizes (that is also the big, fast ones) of track builder only at the large customs office!

Advice: when setting up a distribution office to provide material for the rail construction building, also set it to take material at a high % of stock utilisation so they keep the fill level between 70%-90% or so. Otherwise, demolition wil stop ON THE TRACK (and cause rail traffic complications) when the RDO's storage is full. And you don't even know it...