I started a timeline game in 1930 and the date is now January 1941. By 1938 I had connected 3 chains of industry and was making reasonable profit per year. The location of my industries are heavily centered near the town of Oldchester. One of my factories, an iron foundry, has been surrounded by Oldchester as it has grown.
After 1938 growth in the city of Oldchester and the increasing number of cars, coupled with difficulty in maintaining a supply chain led to declining proceeds and operational profit. Profit dropped below zero in 1939 as I struggled to reorganise and resolve supply chain problems. This helped, but showed that the infrastructure I had in place was no longer suitable for the task.
I built a central storage area well outside Oldchester and linked it to the iron foundry by train. I have rerouted the ****orted convoys that used to congregate at the iron refinery and they (should) all now run from the storage area instead. This will help because it should avoid the congested streets within Oldchester.
This leads me to my problems:
1) How do I set rail signals to allow multiple trains to operate down the same stretch of line without them blocking each others way.
2) What else can I do to reduce my running costs?
I've included a cutaway of the railsection. On the left is Central Storage, a station with three platforms (freightyards are offscreen) and on the right is the edge of the platform and some of the corner of Oldchester iron refinery.
I can post the savegame file as well if anyone wants a closer look.
Deadstar.
Please have a look at http://simutrans.com/help.htm (http://simutrans.com/help.htm). There you'll find links to simutrans docs where you can get the starter guide and to simutrans-tips.com and other documentation material.
Hope that helps you. And welcome to the forum.
Hello Deadstar
Thanks for the post.
I suspect you need three or more trains to haul iron. With a stretch of single track that's going to have delays and risk gridlocks. I think I see a few too many signals in that cutout picture.
Could you upload a save please.? I would like to have a go trying signals. Which version is this?