(“blocks”) If you didn’t already know this, you should go check out that presentation I linked earlier.Īll signals always do this, no exceptions. I’ve seen a lot of people try to explain how signals work, but they often make it sound more complicated than it is.Ī signal takes one section of placed rail and splits it into two logical zones. Trains are not that complicated, they are simple machines which follow a very well defined set of rules, most of which are controlled and applied via signals. Rule 2 Think like a train to understand the train. You’re bound to see some of these in almost any modular network of real mid-to-late-game use. (Extremely bad, ran out of fuel, hit a tank, biters broke the rail, etc) Trains stopped somewhere not at a signal.(See show-rail-paths and similar in the F4 debugging menu.) Trains that have plotted a route to their next destination but haven’t left the station.Trains that are stopped right before an intersection, turn, or roundabout.Unlike belts, pipes, inserters, or bots, trains will require your attention every time something goes wrong.Īlways keep an active eye on the minimap, keep a keen eye out for the following: I see a lot of new players who just started to understand signals place some track down somewhat haphazardly, but larger networks require good planning skills, and these initial placements of less organized rails from new players often come back to bite them when they need to expand. Trains are a way of integrating your factories, they need to work with and be tightly integrated into every piece of your train connected factories. One rail line is going to transport a huge variety of items in most cases, a technically ‘perfect’ rail network would be a single loop for one item type with no intersections or crossings, not too useful when you want to expand dynamically or make modular bases. This involves a lot of factors, most notably speed, size, and number, of trains, but in the end stuff gets from A to B.Īlthough it moves the same things as belts, bots, etc, they do so in a very different way. This means we will judge the success of a network on it’s ability to move things between destinations. Here we have to lay some groundwork for future arguments: The purpose of trains is to move things between places. Rule 1: A perfect railway is not practical. This article is not for those inexperienced with trains, if you’re just getting started, check out this presentation.Īlready know that trains are the future and just need the technical advice? Skip to Rule 2. Number of perfect rail networks made: 1.Percent of played worlds with train networks: 100%.Time spent figuring out rail theory in hours: still counting.This post will attempt to show you that trains are not actually as complicated as they are famed to be. Just because a train network never jams, does not mean it’s perfect. (I recommend at least scanning over that post, it’s got useful information.) In this post I will show you the principles behind building rail networks in Factorio, so that you understand what you’re doing before you do it, you understand the problems when they appear, and, if no mistakes occur, you create networks that never jam ever. This article was partially inspired by Korezaan’s post: Post has been updated September 2019! Read on further below, January 2021: Factorio 1.1 introduced stop train limits! Read my take on the feature here.