Building railway stations

From OpenTTD

In this tutorial you can learn how to build train (railway) stations, how to connect railways to stations in efficient ways. Building stations efficiently is very important if you wish to establish a great train empire. There are hundreds of ways you can build stations, some examples below should direct you on the right path.

Contents 1 How do I build a station? 2 What kinds of stations should I build? 2.1 One-line stations 2.2 Two-line stations 2.3 Multi-line stations

[edit] How do I build a station?

Drag&Drop :)

The author is a little lazy right now, so just go to Quick start & Detailed start or Railway Stations

[edit] What kinds of stations should I build?

That is completely up to you :)

The general guidelines would be:

• Trains should not cause traffic jams while entering and exiting the station
• Stations should be long enough for trains to fit completely (else loading times will be long)

Below are some examples of stations:

[edit] One-line stations

One-line stations can service 1 train at a time. Such stations serve very well when there isn't much cargo to transport.

Below is also a one-line station, called "Ro-Ro" ("Roll-On Roll-Off"). The advantage of this station is that incoming trains don't have to wait for outgoing trains to leave. This is especially effective with multi-line stations (see below).

Note: It is a good practice to make the loading-exit and unloading-entrance lines to go straight into the station, while the loading-entrance and unloading-exit lines can loop around. This way trains delivering cargo will deliver it faster as well as loaded trains can leave faster.

[edit] Two-line stations

Once more cargo is served in stations, two-line stations are preffered. This could be the most used station type you build. Two stations mean two trains. Once one train is done loading, the other can start loading immediately - it doesn't have to wait for previous one to exit station.

(Note: If you are not familiar with Pre-signals yet, do not worry right now, just ignore them in the images.)

You can also consider building ro-ro two-line stations if more than 3 trains are using the station to completely avoid any traffic jams and wait times.

[edit] Multi-line stations

Once the stations start servicing many trains, multi-line stations are preffered, so there are no long wait times for trains.

Below you can see a four-line single entrance/exit station. Just keep in mind, that trains might have to wait a little to let other trains pass.

And this would be a four-line ro-ro stations. Incoming trains do not have to wait when (un)loading at this station.