BlockFactory:Railways

Railways move goods over long distances. In Epoch 1 a goblin pushes a Goblin Cart back and forth between two Buffer Stops. From Epoch 2 on you run real trains with locomotives, wagons, Train Stops, schedules and signals.

Overview

	Name	Epoch	Unlocked by	Size	Recipe
	Rail	1	Goblin Carts	1 × 1	1 Wood + 1 Iron Plate → 2
	Buffer Stop	1	Goblin Carts	1 × 1	4 Wood + 4 Iron Plate
	Goblin Cart	1	Goblin Carts	on the rail	1 Trapped Goblin + 10 Wood + 5 Iron Plate + 4 Iron Gear
	Steam Locomotive	2	Railway	4 rails long	10 Engine Unit + 30 Steel Plate + 10 Electronic Circuit
	Cargo Wagon	2	Railway	4 rails long	10 Iron Gear + 20 Iron Plate + 20 Steel Plate
	Train Stop	2	Railway	2 × 2	5 Concrete + 5 Steel Plate + 2 Electronic Circuit
	Fluid Wagon	3	Fluid Wagon	4 rails long	10 Iron Gear + 16 Steel Plate + 8 Pipe T2
	Golem Locomotive	4	Golem Locomotive	4 rails long	1 Steam Locomotive + 2 Golem Core + 10 Rune Slate

All of them are crafted by hand or in a Fabricator. Rail Signal and Chain Signal are covered on Signals and Programmable Interface.

Rails

• A rail connects to rails on its four sides at the same height. There are no slopes, so keep the track level.
• The shape follows from the neighbours: straight, curve, or a switch where a rail has three connections. Trains pick their way at switches by themselves.
• A Buffer Stop ends a track. The rail attaches to its back.
• A rail has 60 health when creatures attack it (see Enemies).

Goblin Cart

The Goblin Cart is the Epoch 1 railway. It needs no fuel and moves at about 3 blocks per second, roughly walking pace. It carries 8 slots of cargo.

1. Lay a track with a Buffer Stop at each end.
2. Hold the Goblin Cart, crouch and Use one Buffer Stop. That stop becomes the cart's home.
3. The cart shuttles between its home and the Buffer Stop at the other end. At each end it halts on the last rail, where Grabbers can load and unload it.

The cart leaves an end once its cargo has not changed for 2 seconds, at the earliest after 3 seconds and at the latest after 20. The track must end in a second Buffer Stop; a track that loops back or ends in a dead end gives the cart nowhere to go.

Use the home Buffer Stop to see the cart's cargo. Crouch and Use it with an empty hand to take the cart back; the cargo stays in the stop. If the home Buffer Stop is broken, the cart drops out with it.

Trains

	Steam Locomotive	Golem Locomotive	Cargo Wagon	Fluid Wagon
Top speed	10 blocks/s	15 blocks/s	–	–
Energy	600 kW from fuel, 3 fuel slots	none	–	–
Holds	–	–	32 item slots	25,000 units of one fluid

Building a train

• Place a locomotive: hold it and Use a rail. It faces along the track in the direction closest to where you look, and it needs 4 free rail cells behind its front.
• Add a wagon: hold it and Use the rail right behind the last vehicle. A train has at most 4 wagons behind the locomotive.
• Trains only drive forward. They never reverse. Build a loop at each end of a line, or one loop through the whole network.
• A train never drives into rail cells taken by another train, even without signals.

Fuel

The Steam Locomotive burns fuel from its 3 fuel slots: Wood (2 MJ), Coal (4 MJ), Tallow (1.5 MJ) or Solid Fuel (12 MJ). At full speed it draws 600 kW, so one Coal lasts a little under 7 seconds. At lower speed it uses less, but never less than a fifth of that while moving. Fuel it by hand in the train window or with Grabbers while the train waits at a Train Stop.

The Golem Locomotive is pulled by a golem and needs no fuel at all.

Loading and unloading

Grabbers load and unload wagons, and fuel the locomotive, only while the train is halted at a Train Stop. Each vehicle is 4 rail cells long, so place the Grabbers along the cells where the wagons stop.

Fluid Wagon

While its train waits at a Train Stop, a Fluid Wagon connects to pipes on every side of its four cells. Pipes or a Fluid Pump next to it fill or empty it. Grabbers cannot load it. When the train leaves, the connections close again. See Fluids and Oil Processing.

Train Stop

Place the Train Stop beside the track with its front facing the rail. A train halts with its locomotive on the rail cell in front of the stop.

Use the stop to rename it (up to 32 characters). Several stops can share a name; the window shows how many do. A train heading for that name takes the nearest free one. If all of them are taken, it drives to the nearest and waits in front of it.

A Train Stop wired to a signal network can be switched off with the stop signal. Trains do not head for a stop that is off. The stop also reports train = 1 to the network while a train is halted at it.

The train window

Use a rail under a train (with nothing train-related in your hand) to open its window. It shows the status (Idle, Moving, At stop, Waiting at signal, No path, No fuel), the destination, every vehicle with its fill level, the fuel and the cargo. You can:

• add fuel from your inventory and take out all cargo,
• set wagon slot filters from the current cargo, or clear them,
• switch between Automatic and Manual,
• Drive the train yourself,
• Pick up last: take the last vehicle, with its contents, into your inventory. Picking up the locomotive removes the train.
• edit the schedule.

Schedules

A schedule is a list of stops, worked through from top to bottom and then again from the top. To add a stop, type the Train Stop name and a number, then press one of the condition buttons. Each entry gets one departure condition:

Condition	The train leaves when …	Number field
Full	every slot of every wagon is full
Empty	every wagon is empty
Time	it has waited this many seconds	seconds (default 30)
Inactivity	nothing was loaded or unloaded for this many seconds	seconds (default 5)
Item count	the wagons hold at least this many of an item	amount (default 1); hold the item in your hand when you add the entry

Entries can be moved up or removed. The next stop is highlighted.

The conditions look at item cargo only. A Fluid Wagon's tank does not count, so use Time for fluid trains.

Driving by hand

Choose Drive in the train window and you ride on the locomotive. Walk forward to accelerate; stop walking and the train brakes. Crouch to get off. While you drive, the train is in Manual mode: it goes straight ahead at switches and the schedule pauses. It stays in Manual after you get off, so switch it back to Automatic in the window.

Getting run over

A moving train hurts every player standing on a rail cell it enters, except its driver: 40 damage per hit, at most once per second. Do not stand on busy tracks.

Moving locomotives are also loud: each one makes 30 noise per minute (see Enemies).

Stuck trains

Every train appears on the world map. A train without fuel or without a path is marked as stuck, and you get the warning "A train is stuck (no fuel or no path)". A train has no path when no Train Stop with the scheduled name can be reached by driving forward, or when all of them are switched off.

See also

• Signals and Programmable Interface
• Grabbers
• Fluids
• Goblins
• Buildings