Your favorite junction/station layouts? Pros and cons!

[ChrisHuebsch]

Most 4 way junctions suffer from some kind of steep-angel-tracks, where trains are slowed down.

I tried it too and got the result you see at the image.

I ses no cons at this layout. Please tell me, if you do

But I see the following pros:

* Not too much space consumed.
* Trains going straight or to the right stay at the same level.
* Lots of trains at the same time at the junction
* Tains going left, have only one climb-up-ramp
* No steep turns at all

My concern was a congestion on the lower level. I tried to avoid it with a special pre-signal-layout.
Signals at point A are entry-signals to the lower level.
Signals at point C are exit signals to the normal level
Signals at point B are entry+exit-signals.

This signal placement gave the lower level a kind of priority, stopping more trains from going in, before the trains on the lower level go out.

What do you think

[TheCondor]

I've made the station below because I didn't have enough station lanes.
And I didn't have the space space too build the station wider.

Maby it is not the most efficient way but it works .

------

Edit, I think this one is better , it looks also a bit cleaner

[GolezTrol]

I've made this junction to join two parallel tracks. In my situation, most of the trains just went straight through, which is very possible here without even slowing down for a slope or corner. Also, the trains can turn around on the same track, or choose any of both directions on the other track, thus allowing it to exit this crossing on any of the 4 exits.

Joining Parallel Tracks

Parallel Tracks junction.png (247.78 KiB) Viewed 2116 times

Although I've never found many junctions for joining parallel tracks, I'm sure there are better ones. This one is especially good when most trains need to go straight ahead, and only few need to swap. It would need some stress testing to see how many swapping trains it can handle.

It is quite easy to improve it, by make it slightly larger (probably only a square or two) and take some shortcuts to prevent too many corners. I mainly made this becaus I think it look cool, thought.

[LordAzamath]

I've made this junction to join two parallel tracks. In my situation, most of the trains just went straight through, which is very possible here without even slowing down for a slope or corner. Also, the trains can turn around on the same track, or choose any of both directions on the other track, thus allowing it to exit this crossing on any of the 4 exits.

Parallel Tracks junction.png

Although I've never found many junctions for joining parallel tracks, I'm sure there are better ones. This one is especially good when most trains need to go straight ahead, and only few need to swap. It would need some stress testing to see how many swapping trains it can handle.

It is quite easy to improve it, by make it slightly larger (probably only a square or two) and take some shortcuts to prevent too many corners. I mainly made this becaus I think it look cool, thought.

The problem with this junction is that in time you need two parallel tracks to run..
1. You have so many trains, that the long tunnels guarantee you big jams
2. This doesn't suit for LL___RR type, which lot's of people are using

[wleader]

Since this thread is alive again, I thought I would throw this out, I like using this junction. It has radial symmetry so no direction is any faster than any other. Its small compared to most 4 way junctions I've seen. It follows the Branch-Merge rule meaning all branching happens before all merging in any direction. Following the Branch Merge rule means that this junction can never cause a traffic jam. Turns are fairly gentle so there are no severe slow downs. However all routes require turns and elevation change so nothing will go through it at top speed.

Comments?

[GolezTrol]

The problem with this junction is that in time you need two parallel tracks to run..
1. You have so many trains, that the long tunnels guarantee you big jams
2. This doesn't suit for LL___RR type, which lot's of people are using

I usually have at least 8 squares between the lights, allowing a regular 14 unit train to occupy about one track segment. This usually works very good for me, even with many trains. When I have a tunnel (or bridge for that matter) that is longer than about 10 squares, or a rising slope, I double the tracks so that trains can run parallel to each other without being slowed down by each other. This also usually does the trick.

This junction also doesn't cause me problems with the two mainlines. I actually made this junction just for fun. In my original game I had no swapping trains at all, just two quite busy mainlines. My primary goal was to create a junction that allowed the possibility to swap, without slowing down my mainlines when no train was swapping. It achieved that goal. I'll see if I can find that game and post it, so you can see my junction actively doing nothing

Swapping trains are a problem and I'm aware of that. This junction probably won't be used much because it is complicated for what it does. It is one of the few junctions I've seen on the internet that actually join parallel tracks though.

2. Yeah, you're probably right. I hardly ever use that, so I couldn't create a junction for this scenario based on experience.

[LordAzamath]

I usually have at least 8 squares between the lights, allowing a regular 14 unit train to occupy about one track segment. This usually works very good for me, even with many trains. When I have a tunnel (or bridge for that matter) that is longer than about 10 squares, or a rising slope, I double the tracks so that trains can run parallel to each other without being slowed down by each other. This also usually does the trick.

How many trains do you have then? I use signals every second tile (thanks for learning and wathing #coop guys ). Your trains must have atleast 8 squares between them in your case...
Anyway, the station I use the most:
It usually is near a huge mainline, and trains want to enter it from both directions.

[GolezTrol]

Well, it usually seems to go alright. It also depends if you play with vehicle breakdowns on or off (I usually play 'off' ). But I'll give it a shot using shorter distances between the lights and see what happens. (Never to late to learn )

About your station. I see the advantages of having the combi signs before your station, but won't the slope cause any delays? Maybe it's better to reserve one half of the station for trains from one side, and the other half for trains from the other side.

But ok, here is my station too. If you need to serve trains from the other side as well, you can just can build the same station, rotated 180 degrees next to it.

[LordAzamath]

About your station. I see the advantages of having the combi signs before your station, but won't the slope cause any delays? Maybe it's better to reserve one half of the station for trains from one side, and the other half for trains from the other side.

Without the combo-signals I would have only two trains entering at once (one from each direction) andBTW the speed penalty for going uphilll is nothing compared to a 2*45 curve it has to take

Without combo signals a train has to wait for another train to finish 2*45 turning, with combo, no problem.

[xfxdoom]

Ro-Ro experiment.

[DJ Nekkid]

what terrain grf is that? i have a new terraoin, but it foobars up some maglev tracks...

[xfxdoom]

what terrain grf is that? i have a new terraoin, but it foobars up some maglev tracks...

Japanese landscape.

[AussieNightcrawler]

From a game that I have running right now...

Will have to go back to this game one day and finish it off, when I stop playing Crysis...

[cullyn]

Long time TTD player here, first post though

Any way after seeing all these junctions I thought I would share my latest creation, I got the idea from the load balancers being used in many multi player games.

First off comes my 2x4 way mainline junction.

2x4 no bridges large

2x4nobridgesLA.png (401.54 KiB) Viewed 1727 times

Pros:
No bridges.
Reduced sharp corners.
Low interference.
Split before merge.
Only one hill climb for each direction.

Cons:
Long tunnels(only 2 of them, right hand turns).
Large size.
Could be difficult to build straight up due to separated tracks, might need to rebuild a few times to get it right.

My next is a nice 2x3way heart, I think the screen shot should speak for it self.

2x3 no clover heart

2x3wayHeart.png (159.44 KiB) Viewed 6753 times

[Tijs]

I've been lurking these forums for a while... well at least a year now. I hardly ever post, however. A few weeks ago I started playing again and found out about the new version of OpenTTD, which run a lot smoother than the one I was using before (4.3 I think it was). So my transport became bigger and bigger and I've been looking for good junctions, I found a lot of them, the ones I tried all worked out, but I have the feeling the 'ugly' ones I make work better.
My game may look like a mess, but it works great. And it's much more fun to build than the standard stuff. I start out small and simple, but it becomes bigger and bigger. Well.. the results below. Not the greatest looking stuff, but as I said, it's a lot more fun:

Stations:

~180 trains http://img134.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... ionhg6.jpg
~180 trains http://img252.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... ionsn7.jpg
~100 trains http://img252.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... ionkl0.jpg
~110 trains http://img153.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... ionoo9.jpg
~120 trains http://img139.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... ionlt3.jpg


As for the pros and cons of these stations:
Pros:
- Works good
- Can handle a lot of traffic
- Great time building
- Looks awesome

Cons:
- Complex
- Sensitive to small mistakes
- Height difference
- Hard to adjust

Junctions:

http://img118.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... ionpw1.jpg
http://img75.imageshack.us/my.php?image ... ionvx6.jpg
http://img103.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... ionog6.jpg

Pros:
- Designed for all what they need to do, nothing less.
- Works for heavy traffic
- Tracks can be placed where ever you want them, so if there are industries in the way, it's not a big deal to build around it.

Cons:
- Designed for all what they need to do, nothing more.
- Ugly
- Takes up space
- Height difference

[Leviath.NL]

Tijs, please use the upload-function of the forums for your images and use png for screenshots instead of jpg.

[Jump]

And why creating a screenshot of the whole screen if you can create a png with ctrl+s ingame

[Tijs]

Tijs, please use the upload-function of the forums for your images and use png for screenshots instead of jpg.

The images are converted to links now. I'll use the upload-function next time.

And why creating a screenshot of the whole screen if you can create a png with ctrl+s ingame

Because for some reason it doesn't save the screenshots, so I did it like this. And the compression for JPG is adjustable.

[Emperor Jake]

This is a station layout that works very well for me:



Pros:
[*]Inline station, can be built on main lines
[*]Trains can pass through efficiently on the side tracks
[*]You can add more platforms
[*]To save space, you can put the bypass tracks in tunnels
[*]Through trains aren't disrupted when all platforms are full

Cons:
[*]If you have too many trains stopping here, it will hold up traffic completely while all platforms are occupied and another train wants to get in.

[yopefonic]

did i create a new junction? it's a cloverleaf but with a twist. it only spilts and merges a triple line setup. one of the few drawbacks is that for traveling in a streight line the train has to clim or descend at least one time but my setup is currently 2 one level shifts.

any thoughts?