I’m just starting to design my first rail system(LHD), and I’ve encountered some issues while trying to design an intersection.
First, I couldn’t figure out how to make a curve without first attaching to an existing rail which is problematic since nothing in the BP designer can connect with anything outside of it. I got around that by making a BP of just a single curve (after deleting the connecting piece).
The bug where the designer’s bounding box doesn’t visually match was easy to work around once I figured out what was happening. Hopefully the finished blueprint isn’t cut off.
Apparently signals can’t be placed on the ends of tracks. Being unable to attach more rails to these curves inside of the designer means that I have nowhere that the game will allow me to place signals.
Is there a way to make a more complete BP for intersections, or will they be mostly manual each time?
Edit: realized after I posted that the left and bottom curves are going to the wrong side. Glad I noticed before trying to use it.
I always built temporary tracks at the edge for where I want things to match up. Remember you can always remove items when your done building an intersection.
The tightest reliable 90 degree curve you can make is a radius of 3.5 full foundations. So count from the edge one two three blocks, then halfway through that one is the closest you can make a reliable curve.
You can get tighter, but it won’t be uniform, you’ll need to manually put down the curve and then probably have another manually placed one.
For intersection blue prints I suggest don’t put the blueprint of the intersection, but rather the temporary endpoints that you will connect to. That way you can easily lay down the endpoints you want to have, clicks few buttons to match the tracks up, then blueprint remove the endpoints. (Blueprints notoriously have some stitching issues with trains anyway, so I’d argue it’s better to only use them for temporary train things)
I have spent WAY too much time building my rail network so please don’t hesitate to ask. I think my last build we topped out at around 200 ten car trains running around at any given time.
I read earlier that rails won’t snap between two blueprints, so I already expected to have to lay the majority of the track manually. That coupled with what you’ve said makes it seem as though blueprints are useless for rail networks other than the aesthetics surrounding them. That’s not nothing, but having to manually place all the signals at every intersection will be a chore. I guess I’ll just have to minimize intersections.
It becomes second nature after a while. I recommend dedicating a whole hotbar just to rail, make 1 rail, 2 block signal, 3 path signal, etc. (if you didn’t know that you could do that it’s Ctrl+scroll). I have a few “rail pylon” schematics that I built that are just some steel pylons that are meant for aesthetics to hold the rail. Then in the blueprint I have 2 (or even 4) tracks that just shoot off into thin air after the pylon. These are purely 100% for snapping the last pylons’ rails to the new one. Then after they are snapped I remove the new floating rails out in front, and I’m ready to repeat the process at the next pylon.
This makes perfectly straight rails, or perfectly curved ones even if I’m going great distances. I usually zoop some foundations along the base, snap the pylons to that, add the rails, then remove the foundations and extend the pylon into the ground.
Edit you can see some of it here : https://poptalk.scrubbles.tech/post/515298