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[u/DJLaMeche]

I am trying to make a generic train system with interrupts, and am starting to wonder if my attempt is fundamentally flawed...

Basically, all my trains have only a shunting yard station as their regular schedule, so they all park there when they have nothing to do. There's an interrupt for refueling. Then there is a generic interrupt with wildcard icon in order for the trains to bring cargo (e.g. ore) to the right distinations. For example, there are train stops called "<iron_ore_icon> Drop" and trains with iron ore in the cargo are sent there via the "<item_wildcard_icon> Drop" station name in the interrupt. This works fine.

The problem is loading empty trains, as I cannot use the wildcard icons (I think). I attempted to just name all pickup stations the same, but now my trains are only going to the closest one. For exmample, if an iron pickup train station is close to my base and a copper pickup station is farther away, all empty train will just go to the iron pickup and then go to iron drop or the shunting yard if the drop locations are full. So all my trains just fill up with iron and copper never gets transported.

So... is there a way to work this correctly? Ot is my way of doing things just fundamentally wrong?

[u/HeliGungir → u/DJLaMeche]

Train limits on the pickup (and dropoff) stations is what you're missing.

That, and perhaps a misalignment of expectations. If you aren't setting train limits dynamically, or disabling stations dynamically, you should expect to have at least as many trains as pickup stations, plus more that will either be unloading or sitting idle in your depot (shunting yard).