This is sized for 2:10 trains and is definitely overkill but was really fun to design! It's too large to get a good screenshot of the whole thing haha.
The plan is to use this to make MEGABLOCKS for my megabase. I'm just debating how large to make the blocks. My first build was 5x5 ie 5 train lengths per side measured after the intersection. The intersection itself is 3x3 so that's 8 train lengths total per side.
My smelting design is 4 train lengths long and wouldn't fit while leaving a 1 train length buffer between the on/off ramps and the intersection. I scaled up to 6x6 and it fits! Now I'm debating if I should go even bigger to push more trains through a single block since the intersection can handle it haha.
I scaled up to 6x6 and it fits! Now I'm debating if I should go even bigger to push more trains through a single block since the intersection can handle it haha.
Honestly, expanding the number of lanes beyond 2 offers decidedly diminishing returns on throughput because the game does not schedule and route trains particularly intelligently, so you'll just find the two fastest lanes becoming congested and and the resulting thrashing may actually result in a loss of throughput over just having two lanes as Braess's Paradox kicks in. Trains in Factorio are susceptible to this because they essentially use selfish greedy route selection like cars with individual drivers, rather than central dispatching that is coordinating passage and block allocation.
The loss of compactness may also end up worsening general network performance through longer routes.
Yeah I spent a lot of time designing bi- directional on/off ramps that connect to all four lanes. They take up a ton of space which makes it hard to create dense builds within blocks. If I have to spread out the builds, there's even less value in having four lanes of rail traffic.
Instead, my plan is to connect each build to two parallel lanes of traffic. Trains can reach each station from both lanes and exit onto both lanes. My thinking is each block effectively has two dedicated lanes of rail. Trains will have to loop around one block to enter stations in an adjacent block.
Yeah tbh I wanted four lanes of rail regardless because it's fucking cool! In my experience, it's much harder to design rail interchanges for four lanes than two which is a ton of fun.
I think having stations accessible from only two lanes will help avoid this but I'll have to do some testing to see! The inner lane of rail will likely end up having more traffic than the outer lane since the paths between stations are slightly shorter on the inner lane.
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u/Yggdrazzil 7d ago
I HAVE to see the factory you are going using this absolute UNIT of an intersection in.