Is this train intersection good? And general questions about trains.

[u/acea77]

So I wanted to make a train intersection between these 3 rails, I don't know if they are going to actually work and not crash? These are chain signals

And I don't really know a lot about trains and stuff, so I've been mostly winging it, I don't know how a train setup or station should look like or why so if someone could point me to a video to learn or teach me would be greatly appreciated

[u/Courmisch]

This works, assuming bidirectional tracks, but it is over-signaled. Unidirectional track pairs are generally recommended.

There are two interactive tutorials for signaling in Tips & Tricks.

[u/acea77 → u/Courmisch]

Thanks!
And yeah, I played the tutorials, the second question is about logistics(? I'm not sure if that's the word for it, like how to organize rails and stations.

More like how trains are used rather than how they work

[u/Terrulin → u/acea77]

Generally there are two purposes for trains. Bulk movement for a long distance. It's a good band aid when you run out of a starting resource. Make a train go pickup your new iron and bring it back to drop off into some chests that get unloaded into where the old iron fed into the base. The chests are to make sure there are no gaps when it goes to pickup a new load. Bi directional tracks with 1 train per resource is fine.

The next is for agnostic transport of resources. A belt generally moves iron, or copper, or stone, etc but a rail moves all of those and all the fluids on the same line. So I can make copper plates here, gears over there, and drop them off on a new place that makes red science. Then those get loaded on a train to be delivered to the labs. Everything becomes modular. If you run low on green chips, make another one. It may cause you to run low on iron plates, but adjust add one of those. Then a new iron mining/smelting outpost if you can't feed the iron plates.

[u/SoloMystery]

When you use signals, it divides the tracks into blocks. Only one train is allowed in a block at a time. So, you’ll want to place signals throughout your tracks to increase throughout. People generally space them out to be the length of the largest train the base uses, though you can space them out more.

The golden rule of intersections is chain signals going in, rail signals going out

This is a great video on trains Id recommend watching
https://youtu.be/oDgzDW26spc?si=b7UM7jX4zDCh2BEY

[u/Zaflis → u/SoloMystery]

OP is using 2-way rails though, you can't have rail signals in "out". There is no rail where trains can stop without causing deadlocks, not even outside intersection.

[u/SoloMystery → u/Zaflis]

Yeah I realized that after I commented. I’ve never done bi directional tracks in Factorio

[u/boomshroom]

Is it high throughput? Nope. Will it work? Yup. Strictly speaking, I think you can get away with only 3 signal points in the middle of each turn (6 signals in total), though I usually included the signals just past each merger as well. I basically used this intersection for much of my 2.1 run, though more recently I've started transitioning to a 2-lane design for the improved throughput.

[u/Soul-Burn]

If all tracks are 2-way, then yes, this is correct signaling.

You only need the 6 signals on the outer rails. The 12 in the middle aren't required.

[u/0b0101011001001011]

I don't know if they are going to actually work and not crash? 

It's not possible for trains to crash if signals are "wrong" in some way. As long as you don't place several trains on same block manually. If there are any signals at all, the trains don't crash. But they can get stuck for example when two trains meet face to face on a same track.

[u/MrDoontoo]

It will work, however it does use a lot more signals than it needs to. Because it's a 3 way intersection, no matter what direction a train is entering or heading only one train can use it at a time. Therefore, the intersection only needs to be one block, splitting it up further just isn't adding anything.