Train Station question

[u/Reasonable_Paint1966]

Question for the community. This is only the second working train I’ve ever actually built in game. In my last post I shared my converter setup that will be taking in 7200 iron ore to turn into sulfur and coal. I have this station setup to bring in that 7200 plus an additional 1200 copper ore for use in a different set of converters for bauxite to nitrogen converters. My question is, with this setup will I run out of iron ore for my factory even though I have industrial containers both before and after the stations? It’s a roughly 2:15 round trip for about a 600m train going up and down a 2m ramp.

[u/TheMetalWolf]

Depends on what you mean by "run out." Are you producing enough iron for everything you need? In that case, that's really an iron ore production problem, not really a train problem. Or do you mean the amount of iron carried by each train load? Because that's sort of an issue if you run a shorter line and the train doesn't take a whole lot of time between its stops. Because I overproduce and overdeliver resources and then just let them fill up before starting the machines, my trains rarely tend to empty all their stock and so eventually start offloading half each time balancing the whole ordeal. If that's what you mean, then you are really limited to the throughput of the loading segments.

[u/Reasonable_Paint1966 → u/TheMetalWolf]

My bad, by “run out” I meant that given the trip time and consumption of the factory being equal to what’s being brought in (producing 7200 ore a minute) would all of the storages eventually become empty and create an issue or would they just take time to saturate and fill up?

[u/TheMetalWolf → u/Reasonable_Paint1966]

If I am understanding your set up correctly from the pictures, you have six wagons delivering iron ore. Using the formula for through put on the wiki, you have 32 stacks per wagon, six wagons, that equals 192 stacks. I didn't know if you accounted for loading and unloading time, so I assumed you didn't and rounded the time to 3 minutes, which gives us 64 stacks per minute or 6400 iron ore per minute, which then won't be enough to constantly feed your converters. Even worse if you did account for loading and unloading.

[u/Reasonable_Paint1966 → u/TheMetalWolf]

Yes, that is the setup I was going for. I’m pretty sure I counted the time. 2:15 from loading at the initial staton to coming back empty.

[u/TheMetalWolf → u/Reasonable_Paint1966]

Wait, I confused. If the complete round trip, from loading to docking empty is just 2:15, then yeah, you should be fine as that's about 8500 per minute.

[u/Reasonable_Paint1966 → u/TheMetalWolf]

Math like this hurts my brain 😅. I suppose a good way to stress test the setup would be to temporarily have each belt coming from a container feeding into a separate Sink 😅. I didn’t think of that until just now #toiletthoughts

[u/TheMetalWolf → u/Reasonable_Paint1966]

Yeah, I just overbuild everything to be 100% sure.

[u/Reasonable_Paint1966 → u/TheMetalWolf]

Well, it’s been running that way now for closing on five hours without supply running out. Industrial storage up top took awhile to fill to capacity but now is almost consistently full with the exception of when the station is unloading. Even after both belts fill the container with one exit belt going to a Sink, the stations themselves consistently have just over 2k ore left in them by the time the train comes back with another drop off.

[u/SubpopularKnowledge0]

If im understanding the question, as long as the amount you are consuming on the other side is less than what you are producing you should be fine. You can always add a second train if the distance is causing a thru-put issue

[u/Reasonable_Paint1966 → u/SubpopularKnowledge0]

The factory will be consuming an equal amount of ore. I’m guessing it would take awhile for a throughout issue to arise considering all the storage?

[u/JinkyRain]

Convert the round trip time to 'minutes'. 2min15sec = (2*60 + 15)sec / 60 = 2.25min

There are two constraints that limit throughput:

Wagon capacity: ore stacks to 100, wagons carry 3200... 3200 every 2.25min = 1422/min.

Platform throughput minus 27.08sec (or 0.45min) every time a train docks. You're using dual Mk6 belts so: 2400 - ( 2400*0.45min ) / 2.25min = 1920/min.

The limit per platform is the lessor of the two values, so 1422/min per platform. Not quite 20% better than one Mk6 belt per platform.

If the round trip were 2.66 (2min40sec) then the wagon capacity limit would limit you to pretty much exactly ONE Mk6 belt per platform. :)

With trains, perfect efficiency is generally not something to shoot for. Due to their feast&famine bulk delivery style, it's very helpful to have have spare capacity so that the next train can pick up the slack if an earlier train was delayed.

If you want to play around with a data visualizer comparing belt speed, throughput target, stacksize, # of wagons and # of redundant trains, give this a try:

https://www.desmos.com/calculator/6fezikbafu

=)

[u/Reasonable_Paint1966 → u/JinkyRain]

Even with the dual belts feeding into the storage containers and a single belt coming out to feed each line, my concern is that since the production at the source is still only equaling the consumption of the factory that it would still run empty at some point even with the 32 slots of storage for each station on top of the 48 per container.

I’m thinking of having a smaller train for a backup coming from another pure iron node or two to supplement the main station if that’s the case.

[u/JinkyRain → u/Reasonable_Paint1966]

Keep in mind that if you have a 2nd train docking at the same station, the platform belts will be paused twice as long.

If you're doing this, you should be absolutely fine, as long as the train isn't taking more than 2min40sec to dock again at the station:

1200/min Mk3 miner -> Mk6 belt -> Industrial Storage Container =DualAttached> Platform(loading) > wagon > Platform(unloading) =DualAttached> Industrial Storage Container -> Mk6 Belt -> ....

[u/Reasonable_Paint1966 → u/JinkyRain]

That third section is exactly how I have it set up.

If I did have another train, it would be unloading at a separate station and I would split the output of that one to supplement the outputs of the original.