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Railway

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For the research see Railway (research)

The Railway is one of the big transport methods in Factorio. Although the installation of such an network is sometimes complicated and takes a lot of resources and space, it is especially over large distances more efficient and faster than belts and robot logistics.

Besides the use as transportation medium it must be said here, that driving trains is really fun. :)

Railway isn't learned in an instant! It takes some minutes to learn the basics. After one hour you should be able to automate your transport. For the expert knowledge how to manage a big network it takes some hours to really understand train signals and schedules.

Beginner

This section covers how to build track, assemble trains and get moving. This enables manual transports over large distances using trains.

Railway/Tutorials
Sometimes a picture/video says more than a thousand words.
Railway/Do not cross the tracks
A train is very fast, take care! Entering/exiting a moving train is possible, but dangerous.
Vehicle/Train/Defence
Defend yourself as trains are a priority target of Enemies.

Tracks

Straight rail Curved rail |-
A very minimal station. The gaps between the inserters are no longer needed.

Trains

Diesel locomotive Cargo wagon |-


Advanced

This section covers items used to make trains automatically transport items between stations. To fully understand you should be familiar with the Beginner Section.

Automated rail transportation

Train Station with multiple Train stops and Rail signals to allow operation of multiple trains on single track.
Train stop |-
Train stop
The item that marks the position for the locomotive to stop.
Train Station
The complete facility around one or more Train stops including un/loading machinery, defense structures, refueling/repair installations.

Rail signals

Rail signal Rail chain signal |-

To make the understanding of Railsignal and their behavior and effects easier we start with some definitions:

Rail segment
A piece of track. There are just Straight rail and Curved rail.
Segment
A single path of continuous rails, a track without intersections or switches. This becomes important when you want to use Signals. You can see the number of the current segment when hovering over the track.
Block
A set of segments. Every connected segment belongs to one block, no matter whether a train can drive on it or not, and even if it can be driven only in one direction (for example a joining switch: the other segment of the switch belongs to the same block!). You can see the current block numbers of a rail piece in the info section. See also this forum post for a good explanation about blocks.


Researching Rail signals enables to drive more trains.


Expert

This section contains further links to in-depth knowledge.

About Trains

About train stations and stops

Tipps & Tricks

Relationship to OpenTTD

Factorio's railway system works basically exactly the block signals in Open Traffic Tycoon Deluxe. If you ever played that game you will find some elements also in Factorio. If not, you can learn from their documentation.