May 31, 2009 10 Comments

Big hubs in a nutshell – finding a universal hub design

written by davil

Recently I started playing a game on my own, featuring some LL-RR main network. When I had to build my first ever 4-way hub for double tracks, I first took a look at the Junctionary just to find out that all hubs were designed quite different and hardly any of them follow all necessary rules (curve length, double bridges/tunnels, merge after split). I then started wondering if there’s a universal way of thinking about hubs.
Read the rest of this entry »

May 30, 2008 5 Comments

Building means signaling

written by planetmaker

In recent games it occured quite some times that patches of ML were found without any signals on it or even worse that hubs or station entrances or exits came without signaling, just plain tracks. All examples shown here are taken from the current public server game #97.
properly signaled merge
Figure 1: properly signaled SLH (albeit unnamed!)
Read the rest of this entry »

May 8, 2008 2 Comments

Track curves

written by tneo

In games it is important that trains can stay up to speed, for the best flow of a network. In recent games we’ve noticed that curves in particular often aren’t long enhough, causing trains to slow down.


Read the rest of this entry »

February 28, 2008 No comments

Station balancing

written by tneo

As a follow up to the blog about Clean building we have noticed that, in recent games, stations frequently aren’t balanced.

During a game it is important to have a balanced network. There are a couple of ways to make the network balanced, one of them is by building a load balancer on the mainline. However a balancer like that isn’t preferred. It is preferred to let stations entries and exits function as balancers of the traffic load over the mainline.

Station exit balancing

Image taken from Memberzone Game 6

Read the rest of this entry »