Efficient LOADING/UNLOADING Train Station designs | Factorio Tutorial/Guide/How-to 

All Master Class Blueprints are available on FactorioBin Overview and direct links to all Blueprints: nilaus.atlassian.net/l/cp/HBEUm524 (Pastebin links no longer work)

“Don’t worry...I’m going to show something that is better than whatever you have later on.” Hahahahahaha. Ah Nilaus. You make my day with your snark, man.

I watched a megabase tour where someone was using 4-100-4 trains. The idea was to more closely mimic the size of trains in real life. It was pretty amazing to behold.

The advantage of unloading faster than you need (e.g. emptying into 48 chests and outputting on 4 blue belts) is that the train gets on its way faster, so it can return faster. This can be helpful if your outpost is far away. You'll need fewer trains to supply your base. It's not a huge issue, but it is a consideration.

Just yesterday i started with trains. I was hit by a train like 10 times

Yes this is what I needed. Doing a train world and trying to figure out train balancing.

For future reference: while I don't at all mind that you didn't "go into details" (34:16) on the circuit stuff, it would have been nice to have had at least a quick visual on what those combinator settings were (each * -1 -> each, I presume?), for those who don't need an explanation per se, but who are trying to just take in exactly what's going on. If you're willing, please. :)

I totally get not going into the circuits in depth, but as someone who watches these days/weeks before I get a chance to play with it, just having the info box up for a few frames would let me see the circuits-I know them well enough to already know basically what you did from your verbal description, but confirming it with sight would be nice. That said, great explanation/reasoning on “big picture” planning over localized optimization. “Stay effective”

I love these explanations- I am not adept enough at this game to design these yet but being able to pause, rewind, and understand why something works this exact way is super helpful - been a follower for about a year and it's really upped my game!

This is exactly what I needed to learn, My trains were not loading and unloading efficiently, lol I'm just dreading the circuit network now. Thank you again

Finally, been waiting for this for sooo long

Absolutely what I needed!! Last few days I’ve discovered your channel, will be sticking around for sure.

Watched the whole thing. Informative and WELL PRESENTED. The author doesn't try to act cutesy, goofy, or ham it up. The info is presented logically sequentially and is explained at each step. Good stuff. Subscribed.

For the fluid stations, the pumps feeding/draining the central tank use the same calculation, but inverted. So you only need one combinator for both, just set the pumps to opposite conditions.

Brilliant!! Love the tricks for ups-optimisation. It also saves lots of belts and splitters and looks simpler and easier.

If I'm understanding correct your argument is that since you can only load a train at rate X you only need to unload a train at rate X or faster. But my train has multiple multiple mines. I need to unload as fast as possible because there is always another train waiting behind it to unload.

For anyone who was struggling with weird issues using the fluid unloader blue print with LTN - the left and right tanks are hooked to the circuit using RED wire. Swap that for GREEN wire, then you can use red wire for each of the tanks (except the middle one) to combine and find the total amount in all of the tanks.

Excellent video, Nilaus. I eagerly await your circuit master class because it's basically Eldritch magic to me and I want to learn how to do fancy cool stuff like the big boys. Keep up the outstanding work.

This was perfect timing for me. I was just starting to struggle with my loading and unloading.

I keep coming back to this video... it's just too damn cool! Thank Nilaus for providing so many years of great content!

Great video! I've never tried balancing my liquids like that. I'm gonna start now!

Thank you so mmuch Nilaus for this Masterclass Videos... Trains were a nightmare for me for like forever but I'm slowly starting to get an Understanding of them thanks to this Videos

nilaus, sir, you are the king of factorio. love the content man, please keep up the good work!

Thank you patrons! And OMG 112k views??? I haven't watched any of your videos, been off factorio for about a year, since your death world series. Glad you took the plunge into full time youtube/twitch!

great tutorial. a suggestion to make it easier to see: connect nixie tubes to chests/tanks to see how much in them while showing they are balanced

WOW, I learned what I needed to know watching this one.

I prefer using circuits for item loading too as they fix themselves when something screws up. If anyone is wondering, here's how: connect all boxes together with green wire and send it to arithmetic combinator where it's divided by the number of boxes and outputs signal A which goes out with green wires to all inserters. Then each inserter is connected to it's respective box with a red wire, the condition on the inserter is item

To the point. Effective. No nonsense. Thank you!

Thank you for the video. This helped me with moving oil from a significant distance to my starter base.

at minute 25 you do the math for ore saying we need a train every 15 seconds, but, if we're talking about green circuits, the train only needs to come every 1 minute, since a circuit train carries 4 times the amount of items when compared to an ore train. So the "theoretical" maximum kind of becomes practical depending on the type (compression) of the material we're carrying!

The design I came up with for loading stations is somewhat similar, insofar as it uses 1-4 trains with 24 stack inserters and chests on one side. I use the same 4-belt balancer to distribute items to each set of six chests, but I just use three splitters to break each belt into six from that point forward. I use circuitry to disable the belt leading up to each chest if the chest in question has fewer items than the average across all chests, which means it actually adjusts itself if you suddenly have way more items in one chest for some reason. Wiring is actually free if done via blueprint, and the entire thing only needs one arithmetic combinator. I use basically the same trick for unloading, except I disable inserters if the corresponding chest has *fewer* items than average. I never disable anything actually interacting with a train, so turnaround is extremely fast.

I was surprised when you didn't mention Madzuri's balanced loading station. The liquid balancing was new information to me! thank you

Thanks, I didn't know where to start with efficient stations When I get time ima watch the rest of the videos in your masterclass series

Cool video, I'd definitely be down for another discussing station logic. I've starting using stackerless designs and am pretty happy with it. They don't scale to megabase speeds, but as long as you are ok with a train every 1-2 minutes per station they get the job done and are way less overhead.

Excellent! Very cool video on train stations!! I have only been playing for a couple months now, and am in my 2nd run-through, this time with Krastorio 2 mode (and a few helper mods). My Train stations have gone through a pretty startling evolution and I currently have around half a dozen styles and types of loading and unloading styles for dry goods as well as Crude oil. I'll try out these designs, but honestly I'm a little baffled by that weird splitter arrangement for the loading stations. In my personal experience, I've found that a "stack" of 3-2-1 splitters works excellently and ensures even loading to all of the boxes for a cargo car on a train. But I'll try out this odd splitter arrangement. Thank you for providing blueprints so we can easily "print-in" these designs and try them out quickly! Thanks for the videos Nilaus!! Cheers!!

Thank You for that video! loading and unloading designs are awesome but talking about using "full belts" was eye opeing for me. I had one attempt in transision to a mega base (following your guide from like 8 months ago) where I tried using 8 wagon setup and i now noticed that i was unloading to 8 blue belts, and all factories required at max 4. So now i can reduce the numer of them and make my builds more compact. Same thing with loading stuff, i was using 8 blue belts and output of a factory only covered 2 blue belts. Now, off to remodeling that stuff.

I like using trains, but do struggle. Was kool the loading and unloading. I have dabbled with LTN, just started over a base in 1.0; noticed some different items have need introduce. Would be really good to see one of your videos on LTN. Your explaining and getting me back through watching your 1.0 play through was a great help. Also these tutorial one fantastic. Cheers Gary

Hi. Thanks for the Master Class playlist it helped a ton and still do. I have less than 100 hours and thanks to the main bus video I went from tasty spaghetti that somehow makes a rocket into a scalable base where robots are actualy usefull. Never even used have Mk2 Power Armor and Robots properly before the lastest playtrough. (In the games I finished I never had portable fusion reactors and ran all games full coal steam with very low throughput) Back to the point, when it comes to unloading trains, I focked around and found out, at my own expenses, that running 6 or 8 lanes ot even more out of a drop station is not a good idea unless you balances all the lanes out. I use a bus of 4 lanes wide and I stumbled upon the issue that if a single train stop fills more than 4 lane, and thoses are not balanced, you will have a situation like 4 lanes are completly empty while 4 others are completly staturated, but the empty lanes will never get refilled because the unloading station has too much ressources (using LTN the calls for refill are not generated) That makes me wonder what is better, either putting more train stops or balancing the lanes out. As balancing the lanes with vanilla splitters becomes exponentially more complicated and space consumming the more lanes there are, I think going for more stations is a safe bet. I think I'll go for 4 lanes per import station. If you drop off the ressources on a single side you can have a very compact design hence cramping way more train stops. With 1/3/1 trains sounds like that will work nice.

Nilaus, your videos are great!

This is a massive step up from the circuit monstrosity I constructed to evenly load/offload trains. All this averaging, comparing, machine toggling madness... I think there are a total of 14 different logic machines for each train.

Awesome guide for liquids especially

I have like 50 hours in this game just learning things by myself and each step of the way I always thought "oh fuck this game can get really complicated". Today, I had the impression I may not be using trains properly and for the first time I came to RU-vid to learn how I could do it more effectively. Now I know I'm like a newborn trying to take a quantum physics exam. But very helpful videos man, thank you.

What a amazing video! Exellent content and quality! You're a bit fast sometimes but youtube have a decrease speed button so it is ok:)

Neat trick for loading/unloading materials, I have a blueprint for them, full of balancers. To the toilet with them. For liquids I use 1 pipe that divides into 3 (I use 3 wagon trains) into Storage tanks and then pumped into the wagons, It works fairly well for me

Thank you. I do a lot of testing myself but this is one I didn't want to do.

Oh shit just in time. I'm starting to reach the stage where I need trains.

I love you and what you do Nilaus

For those using the liquid unloader: The pumps enable condition is set to water; You'll need to change it to "everything" (the red * symbol) to properly balance other liquids

Having recently done a megabase, the consideration for even distribution across the same wagon is not really concern to be bothered about, even with heavily modded belts, wagons, miners and inserters. Let's first calculate how many trains a 6-chest station can buffer. 6 chests with 16 stacks (worst, 64 ideal) with 40-stack wagon gives 2.4, 4.8 and 7.2 trains. With more wagons comes more chests that don't decrease this number. What this means is, for whatever reason, gridlock or halt of any sort, this mine will function as to let the next 2.4 trains fully ready to be loaded right after the train issue or base consumption gets resolved. I haven't played vanilla purely put I can hardly imagine even with worst fuel types for a train to take so long this long before it arrives back from base or wherever this output is supposed to be unloaded at. And even then, stacker at unload and at load would solve this speed issue. Or used more chestsnif you will. A different type of advise would be, pollution is cool but have you tried limiting you chests for one train only? 40/6=6.666=7 stacks ideally for 1 train if your base is well managed for output and signals. Or 13.333=14 stacks (still manegavle by wooden chests) for 2 trains, or 20 stacks for 3 trains. Steel chests costing 8 steel *6*4 for 4-wagon train *10 iron per steel = 1920 iron plate. For a marathon run, wooden chests become a base savior even with highly functional base. True, wooden is burnt bit steel is kep later for logistic chests, iron is such a precious and valuable commodity that I don't enjoy "wasting" easrly on, on chests. And wood is almost abundant easily on. Coming to inserters, Wiki reports 0.83, 2.31 turns per second,and you can test that btw. Meaning, for normal inserters with stack size 1 has maximum 498 item per minute (assuming homogenous input, i.e., inserter does not pick 2 of item A (when it is waiting for item number 3 if you have stack size of 3 that is) then comes only item B where it waits and wastes time.) Keeping in mind belts have 15, 30 and 45 i/s, they have 900, 1800 and 2700 i/s. Slowest inserter is 49.8 and 138.6 turns/s. Meaning, 900/(50i/s) is 18 inserters per belt (more than 6 per wagon), or 6.52 (7) fast (filter, stack and filter stck have the same turning speed. Difference being stack size only.), or 3.26 (4) with stack size 2. You can do the math for you level of technology but I think only this is relevant, with 40/(138.6*12)= 1.62 stack inserters at max bonuses. I think this proves that for vanilla belts and inserters, if you're concerned about balancing this station, tbe issue is output consumption, not even distribution. Plus, all these 6 insertersns load a single wagon, which means if output is fine, next train is gonna balance it off and take the rest (which is very likely faster than belt throughput anyway.) And if the throughput itself is low, it really doesn't really matter how you put it inside the chests, plus the train would first load then buffer would build up, which is once again not an issue to be bothered about because that's the best that station can offer.) So my suggestion would be, as long as you balance wagons, then either limit your chests (especially for pollution concerns in early-mid game) or build stackers on input (i.e., mine) and output (base or smeltry or whatever uses this resource) if you have some issues in train network or are repurposing or expanding your base/smeltry.

Very nice video, thanks.

Very awesome!

I really wish you had gone through the circuit logic for the balanced fluid loading and unloading. You normally go into so much detail for topics it felt weird to see you just plop a blueprint down and not really have an explanation for how to set it up ourselves.

Thanks for providing the free factorio lessons :) I would have liked if there was a link or something to a more in depth view of the logic circuits being used for the fluids train. Much like trains, logic circuits are one of those parts of the game I don't feel like I grasp as well as I should to really master the game. I can manage a very simple check like an overflow to my light/heavy oil cracking, but I don't think I've ever used a combinator that wasn't part of some pre-fabbed blueprint.

Thank you for the video. The balanced loading station is really helpful for me as this was(

In the immortal words of Mr. Burns "Excellent".

@Nilaus I'm following your base in a book series and I think I found an optimisation to the liquid loading station. When pumpjacks get depleted and flow lowers so that trains arrive when tanks are not full, I found that the tank wagons 1 and 4 are filled much quicker than 2 and 3. This is I think because the middle tanks have 2 outputs (wagon and the last tank) so the flow is halved. I changed the ratio at which the last tanks are filled by changing the "* -1" on the combinators to "*-10" and adding another combinator between the middle tanks and pumps with a "*5". Now all wagons are filled at a constant rate. Thanks for the vids.

that loading station override of the stack size trick was amazing. love it. Makes every station cheaper too, just as an added boost! But I'm not sure I got the stack sizes right. Are they 12-6-6-6-6-4?

The way I think of trains especially when I see a post online where someone is asking throughput of a train i always think ‘well if you get 4 belts(any) in and they don’t get backed up due to a full box then you get the source throughput. (Btw when writing this comment I was at 15:11)

very good material, Nilaus. You are a true master, but I would like to add something you failed to mention.... a caveat of sorts: There is a difference between TRAIN LOADING speed (or train-exit speed), and PRODUCTION vs CONSUMPTION speed...both aspects are things to consider for whether you "require/should use" blue inserters or stack inserters on a single side or both sides..... You can have 20 ore outposts each only producing a few red belts of ore but there is VALID reason to set up the outposts to load DOUBLE-sided onto the trains that arrive. Although the chests will fill SLOWLY, trains can still LOAD at max "stack inserter speed", and only be at the station for a few seconds, assuming circuit conditions are utilized and you have multiple mining outposts for the trains to choose from.... Although GLOBAL consumption CANNOT exceed the total production across all outposts or the train loading speed will suffer... there still exists several factors that exist that give benefit to loading trains double-sided, one additional consideration is PARKING spaces...by setting up the stations to load as fast as possible, you reduce the need for larger stackers. But you must utilize circuit conditions in order to manage this properly. The rate trains can exit from any particular station will still be limited to the INPUT for that station, but by having MORE outposts than delivery spots (or just...more mining capacity than the smelters require), you can MINIMIZE the time the trains require to RE-LOAD at these outposts by "going ahead" and plotting down the double-sided loading station blueprints. This also helps future proof for the point where you begin adding speed modules and gaining more mining-productivity.

for the unloading I always use 4 boxes in a 110011 pattern (Instead of 101101) I can put the first belt right next to the track and it will make it very compact

With filter stack inserters, a little wire, and a constant combinator you can design an easily adjustable station that can help prevent mis-delivery accidents contaminating your base. I'm also curious if you considered the MadZuri style circuit controlled inserters for balanced loading and unloading.

oh wow, I didn't know the lequid can't be balance by itself, thanks for the important information

I'm at 9:22 watching you lay out a mirrored version by hand and I'm like "bruh do you not know the G hotkey?" F flips horizontally and G flips vertically!

thank you sir!

This video made me realise i have an unloader design that has 16 belts capacity and actually even more if i would divide it, but i use it on 4 belts and that's good because having 16 belts from 1 station would become quite crammed so i'd rather have 4 stations that don't need a train every 30 seconds.

At 4:50 or so, you say that you're limited by the belts, not the inserters. This is only *usually* true. As you note, the belt speed is 4*30 = 120/second. With 4 cars and 6 inserters each, you have 24 inserters. To allow your inserters to keep up with your belts, you need each inserter to sustain 5/second. However, inserters are spec'ed per swing, and a wiki check shows 2.3 swings/second. This means that blue inserters will be slower than your belts until your inserter capacity bonus is up to +2 for non-stack, which I think is level 8. At level 0/1, with no bonus, 24 blue inserters can only sustain 55 items/second; with a +1 bonus at level 2, they sustain 110 items/second - just barely too slow. Green inserters get to pick up even before bonuses, so will always be fast enough. But you need significant stack bonuses to sustain more than 4 red belts, and your favorite unload configuration with 4 inserters per car needs an even higher bonus to not be inserter-limited. (I can see this watching your trains unload on the deathworld; the belts pulse with the inserter swings and thus can carry more than the inserters put down.) To fill a red belt with 4 green inserters, your stack size needs to be 8+; to fill a blue belt with 4 inserters, your stack size needs to be 12+. (edit: typos)

"I'm going to show something better then you have" made me laugh. It's so true

I've always used circuit based loading/unloading to help prevent inequity when you don't have full consumption/production. (eg one side is pulled more than the other side, you don't quite get fully compressed belts in, etc.) Essentially the same thing that you did for liquid loading/unloading but for chests. (red wire to box, green wire gives the negative average, and it only swings when this chest 'more full'.) I don't know that it is inherently better, it does have its own quirks. I'm also curious on the liquid loading/unloading, in that you can have 2 pumps per wagon, each one unloading into a separate storage tank (with the tanks joined on the opposite side). I can see a point that the total throughput isn't necessarily improved as it is rate limited by whatever output pipes you are doing, and how much you consume. It has been useful in modded play when you have much higher throughput. (The most annoying part of modded play is that pipe throughput is very hard to understand.) I really like how everything lines up nicely, though.

You should use F5 to show the grid. that'll help for placing as well as for us to count spaces :)

Great!

"Don't worry, I'm going to show something that's better than whatever you have..." Nilaus has the only accent that can make everyone believe a statement like this without question.

liquid works perfectly!

For balanced in- and output to trains, you can use stationary cargo wagons instead of chests.

I like the one at 18:30 cuz it's sooo simple and I like simple.

Nilaus can u make explanation on IVTN? Or probably implementing it on your base so i can have the idea of how it works?

"Going into details.. I don't want to go into details.." X)

So the fluid stations.... Do I just hook them up the same way I would a soild to an LTN station? With green wire to read the contents.... Wont that interfere with the pump's signals?

My normal settings map has trains coming from all over the map to a central station from ore patches of different sizes, so my priority is to unload the train as fast as possible to clear the terminal for the next train of that type. Loading the trains takes very different amounts of time and I don't like having one unload station for each train. Some of the trains have very long paths to get to their destinations so even slow load times, yellow inserters to full train slow, are still the shortest part of the journey. I don't use anything slower than blue inserters for trains but you get the idea. of course now I want to see if I can mine an entire coal patch without electricity and what that would look like.

I tend to be more biased towards the buffering capacity at a station than total optimal throughput. As long as it doesn't run out before the next train shows then most of the time it's good. (Also dumbs down a bit what has to be designed for.) Combine that with something like a minimum 3-train stacker with full trains just before an unloading station, and you don't have to worry about resource demand at that station exceeding any delay by trains transiting to the resource locations. And to avoid any possible traffic jams, a simple "round robin circuit" based on a counter is put on such stackers to take care of queuing when a train leaves the drop-off. (I like a stacker setup as a particular kind of standby station vs. the usual, as they can be placed anywhere nearby the drop-off on the rail system rather than having to be just before it. But requires wiring stuff to tell when trains depart a drop-off. I suppose LTN may achieve similar without the wiring stuff?) Of course such isn't quite to the megabase level where people seem to worry about UPS, that I see elsewhere in comments. So the approach used may be a case of YMMV.

For loading, balancing between the boxes, while neat and cool, is not really essential because as you mentioned earlier the main limiting factor is the total belt throughput.

But what about adding more pumps to pump the oil in or out of the fuelwagons? I think 3 per wagon is possible.. isnt that much faster?

That fluid solution was cool, does it affect performance a ton doing all the math when you’re in the megabase stage?

Do it anyway you like, the idea is to have fun and sort things as you go

thanks

12:17 nice loading design and hack there :)

30:20 The oil goes in your pockets obviously!

NICE

There is a simpler design possible for your tank setup. Simply connect all of the tank together and have a single combinator divide the total content by the negative amount of tanks you have with a red wire. The result is the average amount of oil you have in your tanks. From there, connect your pumps directly to your pipeline. Connect all of the pumps with a green wire to their respective tank. Connect all of the pumps to the output side of the combinator with a red wire. Your pumps are now getting the amount of oil from their respective tank on the green wire and a negative average amount of oil on the red wire. Setup your condition if oil < 1 then enable. Your pumps will turn on or off based on the average amount of oil in their respective tank. This system is easily scalable and also works for balancing a regular cargo station.

I tried your oil circuitry, and also the even loading circuit from the wiki that averages the tanks. It works when no train is present but as soon as one pulls up the middle output pumps suck the middle tanks dry before they have a chance to pump to the outer tanks. The individual tanks stay balanced (at basically zero) while all the oil goes to the middle wagons. So is the point just to avoid the clogs that happen when tanks are draining into each other? Because it doesn't load evenly into the train.

You lost me at the calculator part. Anyways, this is legit helpful :D

I'd like to know how the train loading 2 setups compare against this 3rd one : for any one given train container, the belt that feed the 6 boxes, instead of having a very active balancer, or manipulation of the arm stacks, is a single splitter in the middle, each side feeding 3 arms/boxes, and the arms have their regular stack sizes .. since the splitter receives a full belt input, the 2 sides of it will be half belts, does this involve a lot of calculation ? is it more calculation than the resizing of the arms ?

This entire series is amazing. But, on the loading station I am not sure why you would use the splitter design after having discovered the stack size tweak? The top design is lower lag, and uses considerably fewer resources, and is faster to upgrade from red to blue, and can be tweaked for yellow if for some reason you want to do that. It also has what I consider to be one of if not the most important feature of a factorio design: you can see "at a glance" if something is broken. The splitter design hides most of the length of the belts in undergrounds so that a small mistake causing gaps in the belt or reduced flow to one car is hard to see.

18:29 question: is there a difference between merging the two belts using a splitter vs. simply dumping them into a third belt from both sides? In theory just dropping the items should be as fast as the splitter, right? Also, does a balancer actually do anything for the unloading station, given that all belts are being loaded from exactly identical chest setups from wagons that are all filled to exactly max capacity? Sorry if these questions are noobish but I've not been playing factorio for long.

I would likw to advocate for iron chest as station buffres over steel chests, since iron chests have (to my experience) more than enoughh capacity to fill up multiple trains, so steel chests end up just being a recource sink and you don't want to have dead material lxing around in some buffer spaces unnessecarily, especially when you move higher up in the production chain.

My megabase used 16 blue belt loading ( i.imgur.com/x4uqOCM.jpg ) and unloading ( i.imgur.com/gPxAQZC.jpg ) stations (while also using 4-1 trains ofc) Stack inserters load so much faster if the actual hand doesn't have to move around the belt to collect the items.

9:15 couldnt you use the Flip key to mirror it, instead of building it new? Or am I mistaken in that?

How does the circuit logic on the liquid balancer effect UPS? I can’t imagine constantly doing mathematic operations in a mega base is CPU friendly.

You make great content! Can anyone tell me why the magic 8 for inner unloader works?

Can u please share the blueprint of the balanced oil loading station, as I fail to understand the combinator logic / setup?

Can we fill the fluids from boths sides of the trains for the extra fast loading/unloading? xD