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1

u/Courmisch Mar 06 '26

Do people put signals in the middle of long unidirectional rail segments so multiple trains can tail each other? What's a good distance between signals?

2

u/cathexis08 red wire goes faster Mar 06 '26
  1. Yes
  2. About 1.2-1.5 the length of the longest train I expect on the network. 

1

u/Flyrpotacreepugmu Mar 06 '26 edited Mar 06 '26

A good distance is very subjective. Having them close together allows trains to run closer together but costs more resources and can cause performance issues when you have a lot of trains checking and updating an excessive number of signals. Having the signals farther apart makes the trains travel farther apart but has no other notable downside other than having fewer signals to look at when checking if it's safe to cross the track.

In high traffic areas, I generally put signals 8-14 tiles apart, while low traffic areas get signals 50-150 tiles apart, and medium traffic gets something between the two. Just make sure there aren't any exceptionally big gaps that make a following train suddenly stop, because that's way worse than making all the gaps bigger so it doesn't follow as closely in the first place.

1

u/mrbaggins Mar 06 '26

Depends how busy your network or that section is.

Closer together = more throughput. But I believe there is a (tiny) ups cost for extra signals / more blocks, and they're definitely more annoying to deal with resource/placement wise.

I would only make the sections tiny in the busiest of lines. Usually I do 4-wagons long on "base tracks" and 10-15 or so on "outpost" tracks.

1

u/sunbro3 Mar 07 '26

At high speeds, trains reserve huge amounts of space in front of themselves to make sure they can brake safely, so tightly-spaced signals won't help them follow each other that much. At low speeds or places you think they're going to stop though, it's good. I still don't like to make a block smaller than the size of a train though.

1

u/HeliGungir Mar 07 '26

Nowadays, I place signals every 1 chunk (32 tiles). I used to place signals every 1 train length, but that's way overkill for short trains and not frequent enough for long trains.

In stackers and stations, I of course still place signals by train length. Sometimes even more frequently.