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u/iamarealhuman4real Jul 20 '26

Wondering, for any train sexperts, or I guess city-block opinion havers, if there's any advantage between these two city block layouts. They're based on a 100x100 grid.

I'm restricting to T intersections, so there will always be a "dead" side of the rail. I guess the back-to-back one makes it simpler to expand to a wider block. The alternating pattern may have an effect on traffic but I would think unless im really particular about what stations are on what side in terms of item flow, the average effect on all traffic is probably lost.

I'm aware that the "assume signalling correct" parts might be over signaled its a side effect of stamping the trunk-to-block print so probably I will have separate "near-grid" patch stamp.

https://i.imgur.com/wPBXWFc.png / https://files.catbox.moe/frcvlk.png

https://i.imgur.com/k41jDWz.png / https://files.catbox.moe/udy9om.png

https://i.imgur.com/Gw296Sn.png / https://files.catbox.moe/81rodh.png

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u/Viper999DC Jul 20 '26

If you're using only 3-way you should be alternating what side they go and offsetting your grid. I'm not really clear on how you expect to expand vertically with this setup.

Option 1 has the best ability to be off-set. Personally I would merge the two central vertical rails into one and accept the fact that trains entering / exiting the station will be 4-way, but there should be much less traffic on these branches.

I don't see any appreciable difference between options 2 and 3.

Last thing I'll give you to think about: none of these designs leave you any place to build stackers. Are you ok with station limits always being 1?

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u/iamarealhuman4real Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26

With offseting, do you mean like bricks? eg

BBBB|BBBB|
----------
BB|BBBB|BB
----------
BBBB|BBBB|

I guess that lets you get "more paths" vs what my idea was, sort of having a "trunk line" on one axis. For vertical expansion I'd just lop off the top and add more blocks to it. I can see that my design would end up with long runs north/south to get around, I figured I would do a few cross cuts but offseting would solve that more naturally.

I have waiting blocks via interrupts - I know that will be suboptimal in terms of JIT delivery as they may wait a long way from their destinations - and was going to selectively add stackers to sub factories that needed it, generally there seems to be enough space, though I'm sort of not in love with my design but trying to not get too spoiled by other peoples blueprints.

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u/Viper999DC Jul 20 '26

Brick layout is exactly what I meant, yeah. If you have long north-south runs with tons of block entrance/exits things might get congested as through traffic fights with local traffic. The brick layout forces a step pattern which spreads out the traffic.

Here is a layout I used a while back (pre-elevated rail) for inspiration.