Most efficient depot/rail switch setup?

[GrapplerBot]

I have four different setups for 7-rail-servicing depots/switching yards.

Out of the four pictured here: http://puu.sh/29Eh4
Which is the best setup?

Still new to large freight yards, so I don't really know how best to set up the switches.

[YNM]

Depends... if you want something simple, use the one at top-right.
If you want a realistic one, either the top-left or bottom-right. The first for higher capacity and the second for low capacity.
The one at bottom-left isn't different with the bottom-right, in fact its a bit pointless to have the track that allow u-turn.

[V453000 :)]

all of them are going to cause massive problems mainly simple because 1 depot will not be enough. Why not build 1 depot behind every pickup? For example behind every mine/farm/whatever where stuff is picked up. That way you make sure that every train can get a depot once per trip.

To majorly increase the effectiveness, making all the station terminus (dead end) can cause the depots to be invisible to the pathfinder from the station entrance and thus not disrupt the traffic at all.

http://blog.openttdcoop.org/2012/11/18/ ... -settings/

[kormer]

To majorly increase the effectiveness, making all the station terminus (dead end) can cause the depots to be invisible to the pathfinder from the station entrance and thus not disrupt the traffic at all.

I'm a very visual person, can you show me exactly what you mean by that? Do you mean to put the depots on the dead end side of the terminus station?

[Sylf]

Here's an example.

Fleningley Transport, 8th Feb 20001.png (108.88 KiB) Viewed 322 times

Some stuff to note:
1. All small (primary) stations are terminus.
2. Depots are only accessible by trains leaving from primary stations.

This achieves couple of things.
1. There's less slow down at the big station because there's no depots slowing trains down.
2. By having the depots placed at station exits and not at entrance line, no random trains will come visit some random depots, especially when you replace trains en mass.

DepotExample.sav

(11.69 KiB) Downloaded 58 times

[kormer]

Brilliant! Thanks for this.