Goods routing when a city produces and consumes the same

[markofjohnson]

Goods routing when a city produces and consumes.

I just noticed an odd behavoir that took a while to figure out, but now I use it as an economic strategy. Railroads has a rule that you can't deliver goods to the same city that you picked them up from. Of course without this rule, you could just cheap and keep shipping food to from the same city. However, it can a problem if you are not careful with routing. Here was my route:

coal---------cityA(makes steal)--------------cityB(makes steal,uses steal)


I had a freight train pick up coal, deliver it to cityA, pick up steal, deliver steal to city B, then head back to cityA for more steal. That route will not work...

When the train arrives at B, it sells all the steal from A, then it automatically loads up with steal made in cityB, because it still has steal cars. It heads back to cityA with B's steal. City A doesn't use the steal, so it doesn't get unloaded. All of the cars are still full, so the train doesn't pick up any more steal from city A. It heads back to B, still full of B's steal, which it can't sell at B. Finally it goes back for coal, at which point the steal is lost unsold and the cycle repeats. The result is that all the precious steal overstocks and you don't make all the money you should.

However, if you are luck with the location of the resources and you invest in a new steal mill, you can get very high income route without sending trains all over the map...

coal-------cityA(makes+uses steal)=============cityB(makes+uses steal)---------coal.

Run coal in to both cities to get high flow of steal. Run a train bwteen A and B with steal cars. The cities will keep exchanging steal. You will The steal will flow quickly because there is no need to change cars or send the train to a distant city. Probably in due time the steal mills will grow, and the cities will grow to both demand autos. Help get to this point by doing a lot of passenger exchange between the cities too. Then you can keep exchanging autos. If you don't have enough coal to keep the whole system running at full capacity, just have the steal train do a couple of back and fourth runs with steal, and then a couple back and fourth with cars. If you see that you can set this up but you will need to build a steal mill or auto plant to do it, then plan ahead and be delivering lots of passengers and other goods to the village/town you want to use early on in order to grow it quickly.

This approach work great with food, because there are more sources of food its easier to set up, and every city needs food, so the 'food exchange' trains should be possible on all maps.

[McSchaff]

You just have to remove all cars at town B to make it work like it should.

Greats
McSchaff

[Oddible]

Yep, in your first example:


coal---------cityA(makes steal)--------------cityB(makes steal,uses steal)


Ship coal to A, remove half of the coal cars, add steel cars
Ship steel and some coal to B, remove all steel cars.
Go back to coal.

[johnb10000]

Yep, in your first example:


coal---------cityA(makes steal)--------------cityB(makes steal,uses steal)


Ship coal to A, remove half of the coal cars, add steel cars
Ship steel and some coal to B, remove all steel cars.
Go back to coal.

I would ship all the coal to city A and take 8 loads of steel to city B. Then try to get city A to grow large enough so there is an empty lot to build an automobile plant to use the steel when the train is on the way back. This assumes that eight loads of coal will make the city A grow faster than four loads of coal.

[markofjohnson]

All good tips, thanks. Generally my plan is to have as many trains doing something as possible with as little waiting as possible. I'm willing to make lots of tracks to get little waiting, but no matter how many routes there are you still need trains to go to stations, so I generally try _not_ to have too many changes of load in stations. Thats why I like 'passenger exchanges' and 'goods exchanges' - where the same commodity can be picked up and dropped off in the same city. Get a train going productivly back and fouth between two cities without changing its load. It means no wait time to change the wagons. Note, the turn around time seems to be free or at least very short, despite what the manual says.

I tried adding loops sometimes, but everything goes to pieces when there is a loop - trains choose the wrong direction, and if the loop has multiple ways between two stations you see the train going back and fourth between junctions and sometimes it never reaches the station!

[jopsuk]

There is another way- if you take over a competitor with a station in the same city, you can run a train between the two stations if you link them. Highlight the actual stations themselves if you need to upgrade either.