Railcraft, trains and loaders

[DrCeph]

Hey guys,

Has anybody had any luck creating trains and getting them to work with loaders? When I make a train of several chest carts and have a loader/unloader set up with a boarding or holding track (either the cart or train version) it doesn't seem to work quite as expected. The first cart fills fully, but the boarder then shoots the train out, and the other carts will only be about 1/4 full, which I'm guessing is the loader trying to fill them as they shoot past.

I thought it would behave by stopping each carriage as it passed under the loader, but this doesn't seem to be the case.

This isn't a problem if I just use individual carts, but having a train of storage carts looks wicked!

 

[jammiewins]

I don't know much about railcraft, but could you load them all seperately, then attach them together as a train then send them off?

 

[Wall]

I'm using 1 loader per cart in my train

 

[DrCeph]

I'm using 1 loader per cart in my train

Could you describe your set up for me, perhaps there is an obvious thing in how to set this up that I've missed.

How do you have your boarding/holding tracks configured? One under each loader? Or do you have just one for the front of the train??

 

[Omicron]

Let's say your train is 4 carts long.

Have a row of 4 loaders over the rails, and one single train boarding track under the frontmost loader.

Your train will arrive and the first cart will hit the train boarding track and be stopped, so that each cart is under one loader. Once the first cart is filled up, the train boarding track will send the train on its way. Unfortunately there is no method to check for all four carts to be filled; the other three will just have in them whatever managed to get in during the time the first cart filled up. This might be full, or it might be less than full, depending on the contents of the loader.

 

[DrCeph]

Righto thanks for the tip, I'll give that a go. The loaders give of a redstone signal right?

I imagine that once Redpower is in with decent redstone you could have a setup with a bunch of AND gates that would only enable the front boarding track once all loaders give the all clear signal!

 

[Dex Luther]

Hey guys,

Has anybody had any luck creating trains and getting them to work with loaders? When I make a train of several chest carts and have a loader/unloader set up with a boarding or holding track (either the cart or train version) it doesn't seem to work quite as expected. The first cart fills fully, but the boarder then shoots the train out, and the other carts will only be about 1/4 full, which I'm guessing is the loader trying to fill them as they shoot past.

I thought it would behave by stopping each carriage as it passed under the loader, but this doesn't seem to be the case.

This isn't a problem if I just use individual carts, but having a train of storage carts looks wicked!

Open the Loader's GUI and click the wait button. If the normal one doesn't have one, you might have to get yourself an Advanced Loader.

 

[Omicron]

Righto thanks for the tip, I'll give that a go. The loaders give of a redstone signal right?

I imagine that once Redpower is in with decent redstone you could have a setup with a bunch of AND gates that would only enable the front boarding track once all loaders give the all clear signal!

The problem with that is that the loader gives the redstone signal directly to the rail below it. There's no way to keep the loader from doing that, and no way to reroute the signal. And in order to stop the train in the desired position, you must put the boarding track directly below the loader. So regardless of what mod you use, the loader will always directly activate the boarding track below itself, no matter what any other external elements try to do.

The only workaround would be having another cart at the front of the train that is acting as a dummy and doesn't do any work. Then you can move the train boarding track out from under the frontmost loader, one block ahead. The dummy cart will hit that track and stop, while all the 'real' carts end up under their respective loaders. Then you can wire up a series of AND gates to make sure that the boarding track is only activates when all loaders have finished.

 

[Dex Luther]

The problem with that is that the loader gives the redstone signal directly to the rail below it. There's no way to keep the loader from doing that, and no way to reroute the signal. And in order to stop the train in the desired position, you must put the boarding track directly below the loader. So regardless of what mod you use, the loader will always directly activate the boarding track below itself, no matter what any other external elements try to do.

The only workaround would be having another cart at the front of the train that is acting as a dummy and doesn't do any work. Then you can move the train boarding track out from under the frontmost loader, one block ahead. The dummy cart will hit that track and stop, while all the 'real' carts end up under their respective loaders. Then you can wire up a series of AND gates to make sure that the boarding track is only activates when all loaders have finished.

Or he can use an advanced loader and click the "wait" button.

 

[Omicron]

Which has absolutely no effect other than making sure the loader fills the cart before sending it off. That's not what this discussion is about.

The problem is that the loader, advanced or normal, will not pay attention to the state of OTHER loaders. They are all fully self contained units and don't care if they send a train off with all other carts half empty, so long as their own cart is filled.

Reading helps

 

[Dex Luther]

My trains have no issues waiting for other carts to fill.

The whole length of the train was stopped from moving into the portal by the chest cart on the left. When it's done filling it will push the three other carts into the portal.​

I've got an advanced loader and to the right of it a liquid loader. The tank cart fills and the attempts to shoot off, but is held back by the filling of the chest cart. When the chest is full it moves forward pushing the tank cart forward and pulling the next tank and chest carts into place. Then the whole train waits for the second chest cart to fill. When that happens, the whole train is pushed through the portal.

Passing through the portal decouples the trains, so I've had to set up some boosters and a length of coupling tracks. That's really the only issue I've come across.

 

[Omicron]

...wow. That is... interesting.

I've never gotten any setup to work where the boarding track was at the start or in the middle of the assembly, or where a single loader would be able to handle an entire train. Everytime I tried, the train would just shoot right through as soon as one cart was filled, or at least skip a cart or two.

I can only speculate why it works for you, but I think it may be because you have the cart types staggered? That way it must in fact skip one cart to position the next pair correctly.

 

[Dex Luther]

...wow. That is... interesting.

I've never gotten any setup to work where the boarding track was at the start or in the middle of the assembly, or where a single loader would be able to handle an entire train. Everytime I tried, the train would just shoot right through as soon as one cart was filled, or at least skip a cart or two.

I can only speculate why it works for you, but I think it may be because you have the cart types staggered? That way it must in fact skip one cart to position the next pair correctly.

Actually, I don't think that affects things at all. I just put it like this thinking "this way the tank cart will fill while the chest fills too." I have holding tracks at both stations.. When the tank cart is done filling it does move forward slightly, but it's stopped by the cart behind it. I can add any number of cart behind it, and the only issue I'll face is a cart in the train touching the portal as it moves forward to fill the next cart.

I do have to redesign the unloading portion though. The decoupling of the train because it passed through the portal does cause issues. I tried to save space and left out another set of coupling tracks. Also on the other side the Tank cart gets unloaded first. When it's done it launches forward locking the chest cart into place to unload.

I tried putting a double tank cart on the end and a double chest, and everything works fine. The whole system depends on the Wait button of the Advanced loader/unloader, Hold Empty and Top-off for the Liquid loader, and the Empty button for the unloader.

The Loaders are also set on T if that helps. I haven't been able to figure out what the S and the E buttons do, and the Railcraft wiki doesn't have any information on them either.

 

[Omicron]

It does now. Maybe it was only recently added.

http://railcraft.wikispaces.com/Item+Loaders+(Device) Scroll down down to the bottom. Basically, the T, S and E buttons control how the filter rules are obeyed, if any are specified.

 

[DrogenShomuro]

I know this is a pretty old post, but I think I've found the solution and I thought I'd post here for the benefit of others.

It seems that *regular* boarding/holding tracks will hold any cart in a train if it's supposed to, while *train* boarding/holding tracks will only ever hold the first car in a train.