switching from truck to rail transport

January 18, 2009, 10:40:23 pm

Well I hope I can explain this...we'll see.

I had originally moved plastic and planks from one station/bay combo (let's call it Cody station) to just a loading bay where the plastic and planks were converted to goods. At this second bay (Tacoma station) there is also a tree farm producing logs. It occurred to me (yeah I'm kinda slow sometimes), that a train would work perfectly for this situation - picking up plastic and planks at one, loading goods and logs at the other.

Please note that originally, I had trucks leaving Tacoma with the goods and delivering them to Davo. Actually these trucks also picked up plastic at Cody but that is probably not pertinent.

Anyway after I got my train going, it picked up plastic and planks at Cody, delivered them to Tacoma and picked up logs but would not get the goods, pardon the pun. Now I had already created a truck route from Cody to Davo with a truck enroute.

Any idea why the train refuses to pick up the goods? It occurred to me as I was writing this that it might be because the original routes are still intact and the trucks are running. I hope I do not have to send all those trucks to the depot and delete the truck routes before the train will pick up but if that is the problem...whatever it takes to get the job done.

EDIT: fixed the pun

Re: switching from truck to rail transport

Reply #1 – January 19, 2009, 12:16:22 am

If I understand correctly, it is because for the goods to take the train they would have to go (by train) to Cody and then change onto road vehichles to go to Davo.

I believe that by preference, simutrans always routes traffic on the route with fewest interchanges. Certainly p****enger routes work that way. So it is indeed because the original route is intact - the original route is the one the computer thinks is more efficient.

Just edit the definition of the Tacoma-Davo route to be another Cody-Davo route, and all the trucks will drive to the new positions. No deleting necessary!

Re: switching from truck to rail transport

Reply #2 – January 19, 2009, 01:36:33 am

Excellent! Thank you AP.