I’m just starting to design my first rail system(LHD), and I’ve encountered some issues while trying to design an intersection.

First, I couldn’t figure out how to make a curve without first attaching to an existing rail which is problematic since nothing in the BP designer can connect with anything outside of it. I got around that by making a BP of just a single curve (after deleting the connecting piece).

The bug where the designer’s bounding box doesn’t visually match was easy to work around once I figured out what was happening. Hopefully the finished blueprint isn’t cut off.

Apparently signals can’t be placed on the ends of tracks. Being unable to attach more rails to these curves inside of the designer means that I have nowhere that the game will allow me to place signals.

Is there a way to make a more complete BP for intersections, or will they be mostly manual each time?

Edit: realized after I posted that the left and bottom curves are going to the wrong side. Glad I noticed before trying to use it.

  • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.techM
    6·
    23 days ago

    I always built temporary tracks at the edge for where I want things to match up. Remember you can always remove items when your done building an intersection.

    The tightest reliable 90 degree curve you can make is a radius of 3.5 full foundations. So count from the edge one two three blocks, then halfway through that one is the closest you can make a reliable curve.

    You can get tighter, but it won’t be uniform, you’ll need to manually put down the curve and then probably have another manually placed one.

    For intersection blue prints I suggest don’t put the blueprint of the intersection, but rather the temporary endpoints that you will connect to. That way you can easily lay down the endpoints you want to have, clicks few buttons to match the tracks up, then blueprint remove the endpoints. (Blueprints notoriously have some stitching issues with trains anyway, so I’d argue it’s better to only use them for temporary train things)

    I have spent WAY too much time building my rail network so please don’t hesitate to ask. I think my last build we topped out at around 200 ten car trains running around at any given time.

    • TheRedSpade@lemmy.worldOP
      3·
      23 days ago

      I read earlier that rails won’t snap between two blueprints, so I already expected to have to lay the majority of the track manually. That coupled with what you’ve said makes it seem as though blueprints are useless for rail networks other than the aesthetics surrounding them. That’s not nothing, but having to manually place all the signals at every intersection will be a chore. I guess I’ll just have to minimize intersections.

      • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.techM
        2·
        23 days ago

        It becomes second nature after a while. I recommend dedicating a whole hotbar just to rail, make 1 rail, 2 block signal, 3 path signal, etc. (if you didn’t know that you could do that it’s Ctrl+scroll). I have a few “rail pylon” schematics that I built that are just some steel pylons that are meant for aesthetics to hold the rail. Then in the blueprint I have 2 (or even 4) tracks that just shoot off into thin air after the pylon. These are purely 100% for snapping the last pylons’ rails to the new one. Then after they are snapped I remove the new floating rails out in front, and I’m ready to repeat the process at the next pylon.

        This makes perfectly straight rails, or perfectly curved ones even if I’m going great distances. I usually zoop some foundations along the base, snap the pylons to that, add the rails, then remove the foundations and extend the pylon into the ground.

        Edit you can see some of it here : https://poptalk.scrubbles.tech/post/515298

  • milkisklim@lemm.ee
    4·
    23 days ago

    In addition to the other tips here, I recommend having a two level rail system with one direction heading on one level and the opposite direction on a level above.

    The pro is this way you don’t have to worry about making intersections that cross over your main rail lines.

    The con is that you have to build enough space to ramp up your track connections on level 2 but that’s mitigated by just having around 2 train lengths of space length of space from the main rail before the train station

    So it looks like this from the side

    ==========> Rails

    ---------------------- One meter foundation

    At least 8 meters of space

    <=========== Rails

    ----------------------- One meter foundation

    • TheRedSpade@lemmy.worldOP
      3·
      22 days ago

      A dual-level system did cross my mind, but the real drawback is that you’d have to remember which level is going e. g. north/east and south/west and place each signal on the correct side or rotate the blueprint the correct direction. Every. Time. Forgetting once will result in a signal being on the wrong side leaving no path for the trains to travel. I would forget frequently.

      • milkisklim@lemm.ee
        3·
        22 days ago

        Yeah that tripped me up for a bit too. I colored my 1 m foundations so the top was Red for towards my home base and Green was for away. So I could follow the IALA region b red right returning guidance

        I also use two blueprints for my rail construction that I alternate with to help make things flow

        1. that has rails and rail signals built in

        2. one that’s just foundation

        • TheRedSpade@lemmy.worldOP
          3·
          22 days ago

          The color coding wouldn’t stop you from rotating the blueprint 180°. Do that one time, and you’re stuck tracking down that one segment of track. If you can avoid that (or don’t mind the troubleshooting) then awesome. I just know it’d frustrate me to no end.

          • milkisklim@lemm.ee
            3·
            21 days ago

            It sounds like you are well on your way! Please feel free to ignore the rest of this post, I’m only writing in case it helps someone else one day.

            I’m sorry that I didn’t explain that my redundancy against that problem which was that I made the blueprints in the shape of an “L” from above where I always knew as I was building away from my base that the _1 m foundation part of the L shape was always to my characters right as I was facing down the | part of the L. I could clearly spot whenever the track was wrong when the spacing between _ foundations was off

            I didn’t care that it made the track look a little funky, and never really had times where the train rails would meet outside of the main hub base.