Building trains in Wube’s Factorio help you transport building materials out to the new outposts for early construction or expansion. In order to come up with a building train system, you will require two different parts – a base station and a receiver or outpost station.
Here we will show you how to put together your building train in Factorio smoothly. So players looking out to build the building train should look no further as they are in the right place.
Page Contents
How to Build a Building Train in Factorio?
Building the Base Station
The base station is generally your main base – the place where you produce items for building purposes, such as assemblers and power poles. First of all, look for a place close to your production facilities and layout of a train station which can serve five cars and the locomotive as well. Make sure to leave at least two tiles of space on one of the sides, and four tiles on the other side. It is advisable to use a standard layout of medium electric poles in the space you see between every car. But before that, you should set up filters in the cargo wagon to avoid your train getting crammed with unnecessary stuff.
By putting two rows of long-handed inserters flanked by two rows of requester’s chests, you will be able to feed a wagon from twenty-four different chests! Unfortunately, if you need to transfer a huge amount of objects, this can be a painfully slow process. Thus, we advise you to balance it by using stack inserters and one chest on a tile. This will enable you to feed at a larger throughput level. Recall that every car has the capacity to carry forty stacks of objects. As there is a limit of twenty-four types, you should try to balance a number of small objects with cards that possess larger stacks of the same item.
In case you are intrigued, we require a different chest for every different kind of object because if the train gets full of a particular object, then the inserter will not be able to drop it and pick another object from the chest. Thus, you should keep the requests limited to only one object for every chest.
How to set up your building train
The first vehicle you need to work with is the locomotive. Proceed to add a requester chest for fuel, followed by an inserter to feed the same. You can then go through every cargo wagon and select filters for the type and amount of stuff you want in particular cars. After that, put down double sets of long-handed inserters for lone stacks of objects, and stack inserters with chests for objects in large quantities. It is advisable to match the number in the requester with the amount loaded on your train.
In the case of objects like furnaces, rails, miners, and belts, you can try distributing them over a number of chests. This will help you load them faster. Observe that belts possess huge stack sizes, whereas other objects like Beacons and Roboports possess pretty small stack sizes. You should try to remember the number of objects present in their respective stack. In case you forget it, you can visit the Logistics section of your inventory and select an object. The stack size is the number mentioned right at the bottom.
Adjusting the cargo
Given below are the numbers of stacks you can try to have for every object in every complete train car. You can adjust them in accordance with the items you require in your base.
For the first car
Adding objects like rails, repair kits, and signals enable you to have easy access to them when you are driving the train. For example, your construction bots will put down new rails as your train moves ahead, thus eliminating the need for you to get out of the train to get it done.
The numbers you see are present in stacks.
- Arithmetic Combinator: 1
- Big Electric Poles: 3
- Cargo Wagon: 3
- Constant Combinator: 1
- Decider Combinator: 1
- Fluid Wagon: 2
- Iron Chests: 2
- Lamps: 3
- Locomotive: 1
- Radar: 1
- Rail Chain Signal: 1
- Rail Signal: 4
- Rails: 15
- Repair Kit: 1
- Train Stop: 1
For the second car
This can serve as a wagon for basic factory parts, such as belts, machines, inserters, and perhaps some slots for modules.
- Assembling Machine 3: 3
- Express Splitter (Blue): 2
- Express Transport Belts (Blue): 14
- Fast Inserter: 4
- Express Underground Belts (aka blue undergroundies): 4
- Long handed Inserter: 1
- Medium Electric Poles: 3
- Productivity Module 3: 1
- Speed Module 3: 1
- Stack Filter Inserter: 1
- Stack Inserter: 4
For the third car
You can use this to harbor beacons, bots, furnaces, miners, and chests.
- Active Provider Chest: 3
- Beacons: 6
- Construction Robots: 2
- Electric Furnaces: 4
- Electric Mining Drills: 6
- Filter Inserter: 1
- Logistic Robots: 8
- Passive Provider Chest: 3
- Requester Chest: 3
- Roboports: 4
For the fourth car
This car can be reserved for oil and nuclear power fuel.
- Chemical Plant: 6
- Cliff Explosives: 2
- Heat Exchanger: 1
- Heat Pipe: 2
- Landfill: 2
- Offshore Pump: 1
- Oil Refinery: 4
- Pipe to Ground: 5
- Pipe: 3
- Pump: 1
- Pumpjack: 5
- Steam Turbine: 7
- Storage Tank: 1
For the fifth car
This can serve as a wagon for recycling items that your outposts do not require. Put some active provider chests and stack inserters (facing outwards) around it. Eventually, the purple chests will be emptied into your base storage. Once you have set up all the filters and chests, proceed to add the medium electric poles and then blueprint the chests, stations, and finally, the train. This will save you some time on the next map.
Building the Receiver Station
It is advisable to construct the receiver station while building your train station. Put a constant combinator in place of power poles, and add unique items corresponding to each combinator in every car. After that, add appropriate values for the quantity of every item you require in a specialized outpost, minus the zero numbers, of course.
This number will be stored in the boxes when you complete building the outpost, so try to keep the numbers low in consideration of unused machines. After you do this, you can create a blueprint of the new destination station.
Building the Destination Station
You need certain circuit connections in order to build the destination station. First of all, visit your outpost destination and put the blueprint you created above with the constant combinators. Then proceed to place the power poles on the opposite end of this track. Then add six purple filter inserters on the left of the combinator, facing away from the train. Ensure that you do not use stack filter inserters here, because filter inserters possess more filter slots as opposed to only one in the former. That enables them to snag a large variety of objects from the train.
Now connect the inserters to each other using red wire, and connect it to the constant combinator as well. However, do not connect it to the next combinator yet. Now click on any one of the inserters, select “Set Filters,” and then copy and paste this setting through the entire line of inserters. Filters will come up when you paste to every inserter. After this, put a row of red passive provider chests right behind the inserters. Connect them to each other with red wire, but make sure not to connect the inserters to these chests. Now put an arithmetic combinator right next to the other combinator, facing upwards. Proceed to connect the red wire from the chests to the input side of the combinator, which is represented by the In arrow in the lower part.
Use red wire to join the constant combinator with the output side of the arithmetic combinator. Connect the latter to the power pole using green wire. Now set up the arithmetic combinator as shown:
- Input: Yellow each sign * (multiply) -1
- Output: Yellow each sign
Ensure that you retain a copy of the blueprint of the original combinators. Proceed to copy and paste everything related to every wagon of the train. Although this will change all the combinators to the first combinator’s settings, you can fix it by blueprinting the first blueprint again. Ensure that you have connected the green wired objects to the power poles.
You only require four chests for the bot wagon. Put filter inserters under the chests and a roboport below that. Now set these filter inserters to move only logistics and construction bots. Proceed to connect the new roboport to the input of the arithmetic combinator using red wire. Put two yellow storage chests and two-stack inserters (for feeding into the train) for the trash wagon. Use the green wire to connect these chests to each other and to a power pole. Now use green wire to connect the power poles to each other and to the train stop. Use the given settings for the train stop:
- Mode of Operation: Enable/Disable
- Enabled condition: (green) Anything sign > 0
Now copy the whole station into a blueprint. By doing this, you will be able to use it in other areas. Now open every one of the constant combinators and remove objects from the list, or modify the quantities you require for your outpost. Keep in mind that the storage chests should be the only ones in that network. Otherwise, your items could get wasted away and not return to the base.
The working principle behind this design
The basic idea is that the constant combinator is your list of requests. Upon connecting the inserters to each other and to the combinator, you signal the inserters to take certain objects from the train, depending on the combinator’s settings. At the same time, the filters on the inserters ensure that they do not snag unnecessary items from the train.
When the objects are unloaded, the boxes will store them and give out the number and type to the arithmetic combinator. This will multiply every value by -1 and pass the signal back to the constant combinator, which will add the values. The signal will then be taken back through the inserters. When the number of any particular item becomes zero or negative, the inserter will discard that filter setting, as no more is required. When the combinator requests are all met, the signals will cease to circulate, and the inserters will stop.
The train stop will stay open as long as there are any requests for objects (represented by a positive number). In case all the power poles display negative numbers, the train stop will get disabled and will be passed over on your train’s schedule. As a result, you will have a number of stations being attended to by one building train because they will essentially be taken off the list since they have been satisfied. You will also be able to expand outposts and obtain more materials this way. If you wish, you can also take off outposts remotely, because all the components will be placed in the trash wagon and be taken back to the base.
That is it for now. We hope our guide helps you properly build your building train in Factorio. Now, check out our Windows Guides, Gaming Guides, Social Media Guides, iPhone, and Android Guides to read more. However, if there are any queries or feedback, comment down with your name & email ID. We will try our best to reply soon. Also, subscribe to our YouTube Channel to watch awesome videos on gaming and smartphone tips and tricks. Thank you.