General In Game Designing

[Nite Owl]

This thread is for the community to display and discuss their designs from within the game (as opposed to NewGrfs which for the sake of this discussion will be considered outside the game). If you are like me then you will occasionally start up a new game strictly for designing and testing purposes. It could be for a station, a junction, anything you like. There are always a lot of threads asking for advice about a new junction design, or which of these two possible routes would be better, or if you think this particular thing will work better than that particular thing, or how would you go about doing such and such. This is the thread for all of that. It will hopefully also serve as a place where newer players can find answers while veteran players can display and discuss the cutting edge stuff that they have built in game outside of their own ongoing screenshot thread. On the surface this may seem a bit similar to the Random Screenshot Thread but the idea here is to discuss and display innovations as opposed to shots from your most recent game. If you like this idea please post as you see fit. If you do not like this idea then just let the thread die quietly.

I will get the ball rolling. I was looking at a few screenshot threads and did not really like any of the designs I saw for a 'middle track bypass station'. I played around with the idea and came up with the following. The stations to the left and right are one single station. The central overpasses are a separate station which eliminates the need for waypoints. Yes, it is very NewGrf specific in terms of how it looks but if I found these NewGrfs so could you. From a functionality standpoint the NewGrfs have no effect on the basic design. It would not look as good but it could be replicated with the default graphics.

[SwissFan91]

Really attractive station. Where are those station buildings from ? They look like NewStations but... bigger ?

[Nite Owl]

It is indeed the Kritzendorf tile from the New Station Grf. It is a single tile station building that comes together nicely when placed end to end.

[jvassie]

After seeing the idea Nite Owl posted, I realised i had a similar thing in my own current game at Brighton.

Brighton Thru.png (121.07 KiB) Viewed 5510 times

As you can see 3 pairs of 2 platforms each of which look identical. The middle two platforms are actually a seperate station, and all 'thru' trains are routed via this station, whilst stopping trains have a 'go to' command for the outer platforms at the main station. It works quite well, only problem is a bit of a backlog but thats a seperate issue

[Badger]

I've also used this system .....

Through lines.png (155.48 KiB) Viewed 5489 times

The middle parts of the overbridge are a seperate station from the rest.

[Zergspartan]

American-style Yard, looks very fancy when filled:

(Click pic for large)

Prototype American Hump yard, needs more work:

(Click pic for large)

[jvassie]

Realistic Trackwork

Junction Design 1.png (111.16 KiB) Viewed 5452 times

We have three lines merging into a 4 platform station throat (station yet to be built). Note the use of crossovers to give a realistic yet functional look, all routes can access all platforms (as signals dictate - 2 outer singular directional and 2 central bi-directional platforms) as necessary.

The layout also gives room for expansion, with additional crossovers capable of being added as necessary, for example you might want to expand to six platforms, it could look like this:

Junction Design 2.png (130.06 KiB) Viewed 5452 times

The key is to allow multiple train movements in and out of the junction at any one time, but still maintain that level of realism. The second picture could handle five trains at once in theory!

[jvassie]

Another aeshtetically challenging task can be having a station at a point where two lines on different heights cross. Here is an exampel from my current game.

Multi-Height Station.png (78.71 KiB) Viewed 5409 times

Note the placement of footbridges and station buildings to give a fairly authentic view, works quite nicely in my opinion!

[DeletedUser6]

Tamworth springs to mind on that picture!

Matthew:out

[ZxBiohazardZx]

nice trackwork examples i think we should find out how many trains can use it, so we can show players that you dont always have to bridge/split all lines unrealisticly

[Hyronymus]

Looks good James but how much time do you spend figuring it out?

[jvassie]

nice trackwork examples i think we should find out how many trains can use it, so we can show players that you dont always have to bridge/split all lines unrealisticly

Hard to say to be honest, as unlike with cargo where the majority are along identical routes, passenger routes are much more numerous and diverse, one example of a rather busy station is here at Ixworth Thorpe, where I have 56 passenger trains calling, at 10 platforms, its quite large, but it gives 5.6 trains per platform.

Ixworth Thorpe.png (171.14 KiB) Viewed 5311 times

What I have found is that once you get to around 40 or 50 trains, you have to keep the trains per platform lower at a very large than for example a much smaller platform with fewer trains, it doesn't scale very well.

I try to keep the trains per platform between 4 and 8, any higher and it can jam very easily, as I found out at Winchester, when before upgrading it I had 47 trains through 4 platforms! Trying to untangle a jam of 20 odd trains from a dozen connected signalling blocks isn't fun!

At the other end of the scale, station like Appleby, it has 6 platforms, but shockingly, only 7 trains call here. However, some 20 or so high speed trains pass through, alongside various local services which dont stop here.

Hyronymus, it depends! As Ameecher knows, it can be a massive headache sorting some of these problems out, on the other hand, developing trackwork from scratch is fairly simple once you've done it for a while, the real pain is redesigning a busy junction on the fly!

[Badger]

Hyronymus, it depends! As Ameecher knows, it can be a massive headache sorting some of these problems out, on the other hand, developing trackwork from scratch is fairly simple once you've done it for a while, the real pain is redesigning a busy junction on the fly!

I agree, once you've done it a few times it comes a lot easier. It's the major redesigns that are difficult, sometimes simplfying a busy area can cause more chaos than it's actually worth! I've redesigned a junction/station only to find a train now can't reach it's destination because I missed a set of points out!

[Christopher]

Realistic Sidings and Yards

While I don't really consider myself a veteran, I think that I can share what I know about train maintenance and storage. In my opinion, making yards and sidings is the easiest realistic network thing to get the hang of, and it boosts realism by a lot.

First picture, a rural siding; these are usually, but not always, found at small terminal stations, and consist of about one or two tracks. To get trains (usually local trains) to use the siding, all one must do is build an appropriate station tile (that can be a bare track station or some flat station, I used a flat one to illustrate the example) and route the train to it and have it timetabled to stay for some decent number of ticks or days.

Second picture, basically like the first but larger. These are found in cities with terminal or through stations, and they can handle several trains at once. I recommend bringing lots of local trains and a few expresses to such places, since more experienced labor is available in cities to work on your trains. To add some flavor, some rolling stock without a train can be placed on the track with one of those invisible trains. Also, to give the illusion of large depots, although not all sidings like this end in depots, pick your favorite grf for this kind of stuff. I used bare tile platforms in front of the depots this time.

Third picture, a classification yard, marshalling yard, or just yard. These can be found in cities and large industrial complexes, and mainly serve the purpose of storing rolling stock to be picked up by other locomotives, but they can also serve the purpose of the sidings shown earlier by adding some depots on the ends and having trains wait here. If you want other trains to go through here make sure that there's some track in the middle so other trains can pass through.

[supermop]

Good to see some sheds there, I promise to get better about the speed of new releases.....

[Ameecher]

Hmmm, I shall dig out some shots when I return to Uni. I've used the concept of seperate stations for through stations for a good while because of the way the OTTD pathfinder works. The only thing I'd say about your station Nite Owl is that there seem to be way more platforms that your line has capacity for. If a need for through tracks and 6 platforms I generally need 4 tracks on the line itself!

My most recent game is an example of how to try and squeeze the most out of infrastructure. Based on a narrow river valley the demand for faster services to fit in with local trains has seen a number of interesting layouts, on one route adoption of 3 track stations with a bi-directional through line has been successful in allowing expresses to overtake stoppers. Unfortunately the confined space has limited the oppurtunity of making 4 track intermediate stations common place.

[brickie]

This is a very good and useful thread, and I'll certainly be using some ideas from here.

Can I make one suggestion, though? If it's possible, can you set the catenary to "invisible" before taking your screenshots? Just helps to make complex track layouts clearer...

[jvassie]

This is a very good and useful thread, and I'll certainly be using some ideas from here.

Can I make one suggestion, though? If it's possible, can you set the catenary to "invisible" before taking your screenshots? Just helps to make complex track layouts clearer...

Presume that last bit was directed towards me, no worries, I'll try to remember in future, sorry

[Ameecher]

This is the most simplistic of my passing stations. The signalling set up is such that trains will prefer to use the normal single directional platforms before using the centre platform. Here the middle platform is occupied by a stopper and is over taken by an express on the outside (normally it'd be the other way round - not sure what's got on here!) and a slow lumbering freight passes in the opposite direction.

Alpenzell on the other banks has a similar set up except it allows terminating trains from the south.

[jvassie]

WTB a picture