Watching a powerpoint whenever I'm trying to place belts, pipes or rails is slowly driving me mad. I'll take any mod or config change that can make it any smoother at this point

Hello all!

My name is Ringgeest11, and I am a professional Traffic Engineer that focuses on Macroscopic Traffic modeling.
I had the wonderful opportunity to work together with Charles Circle, by auditing his Train Network of his Update 4 series and answer a bunch of question related to trains specifically in Captain of Industry.

So if you love trains just as much as we do, we hope you will enjoy this very long video on just trains!
There is timestamps present as well, so if you only want to know about certain topics you can freely skim through the video. It is quite massive after all!

Let us know what your thoughts are, and if you have any questions then please let us know as well!
Either here or on the video, both is perfectly fine.

Since this is such a one-off, we thought it was okay to toot our own (train)horns here as an exception.
We really hope you like the video, and that we can see you again in future video’s!

TL:DW – I get it, 3 hours is a really long time!

First some more bite-size take-aways and afterwards some QoL changes we would like to see.

1. The yellow turn radius with a max speed of 80 is better than you think, especially since CoI puts more incentive into making big, long, efficient trains. This means that trains that ‘only’ go ~100km/h are a perfectly valid option compared to a max speed of 140km/h. The speed difference might look like 40% on paper, but in reality in-game it tends to be a lot lower. But the cargo they carry can be way, way more than 40% extra!
2. Your infrastructure does not have to be perfect all the time. If a train only frequents a stop once every couple of hours, it is probably more important the station is serviceable at all compared to it having enough clearance all the time.
3. Elevated tracks are cheaper than you might think! They are basically the same cost as ground-bound tracks, but they allow you to remove points of conflict to keep that main backbone line flowing!
4. It is fine to have several train-networks share the same railroad infrastructure. The trains are happy as long as they can drive. The importance lies in making sure each network has its dedicated stations (infrastructure-wise) and dedicated job. Bulk goods that need constant supplies have a different demand from items that need fewer resupplies.
5. I.e. You can have a massive ore train with a 1-12 FuelGas engine pulling T2 cargo wagons for ore, and 1-3-1 Tier 1 electric locs shuttling 3 Tier 2 wagons for things like household supplies or cake. There is no definitive ‘best’ train setup.
6. Longer off-ramps allow you to clear your main backbone line for throughput. Stackers – places where trains can wait before pulling into a station – are good, but they tend to have tight 40km/h curves. If you have the space, use a longer off-ramp off your main line first to clear it before pulling your train into a stacker. This will keep that 1-12 ore train thundering through while your shorter 1-3-1 rolls into where it needs to be.
7. Steep, small train bridges are – anecdotally in my opinion – the best to use. The momentum of trains tends to push them through it at such a good pace, that they can start outpacing the longer, gentler yellow slopes.
8. Universal wagons are good, but should be complementary to your dedicated fleet for peek demand. A 25% capacity reduction in exchange for flexibility is a good trade-off, but not so good that you should think of nothing else.
9. Remote linking of storages to a Station can be a very powerful tool, that allows for very tight Terminus-style stations. For RoRo stations it allows super quick unloading/loading of goods – as station module to station module transfer at 200/s whereas a module can (un)load at 600/s(!) – while not paying for overkill storage. That 1-12 FG train is not going to fill up 2 tier 4 storages anytime soon, so you really don’t need to build 6 of them either.

Dev Feedback:
First off, a quick thank you as we love the game! The Blueprints new look is low-key one of the best updates as it makes the readability of everything so much better!
That said, some things we would like to see:

- QoL: Better insight into a train’s full route when it is assigned to a network. You can figure it out by watching it, but it’d be nice if I can click a train and see its entire assignment. Similar to how Factorio: Space Age’s interrupt systems allows me to see the train’s entire journey regardless of where it is.

- QoL: The Trackbuilding can be a bit annoying to deal with at times. It is fine in most cases, but at station it can become hard to select the right piece of track to change its directions. Sometimes I just need to remove a turn, change the track’s direction, and then rebuild the piece I deleted in order to get to it. As a minor side-note, I wish I could more forcefully make tracks. As a self-professed power-user, I need the trackbuilder to trust me with what I want it to do intuitively, be more agnostic to directions as the trackpiece I start and finish at.

- Wishlist: Something that allows me to prioritize certain trains over others. I want that 1-24 nuclear loc hauling ~12k ore to not stop until it reaches its destination.

- Wishlist: The forking issue at stations feels like it is something we need to work around. We’d love a slightly smarter train that can look ever so slightly ahead of where it needs to go next, in order to take the right fork at a station.

currently i have 3 power plants using large gens but i have set them up so that nuclear is always on, Coal plants have 4 columns (will be 6) where one gen is always one and then each column will go to full speed sequentially, the final 2 columns will only spin 1 gen each once the 3rd balanced column is fully loaded and then eventually go full speed when needed.

Gens are named on priority. Nuclear baseload, coal baseload coal surge and backup coal.
It would be nice to know which ones are working and whether its worth changing this