Trains delivering materials to wrong station

Question

I have experienced multiple cases with trains where material is delivered to a wrong station/freight platform, including stations that are not on timetable of any train. I suspect the game will unload a train car if its locomotive stops close enough to the station even though the locomotive does not have that station in its timetable. Possible occurrences include power outage, or locomotive stopping after it took wrong turn on a switch. Perhaps also loading a save with the locomotive right at the wrong place.

My single rail train "network" has over 60 stations and 14 trains on it, it's not possible to always watch where which train is and what is it doing so I only discover these cases after I realize some production line stopped producing. And honestly, cleaning up a belt that has delivered this wrong material all the way to the machines is rather unsatisfying experience.

The train unloading/loading process should always check if the station is on the train's timetable.

Comments

I have the same problem. I have a loop because there's several stations on cliffs. Frequently the freight cars mix materials and after 50 hours I discovered the Smart Splitter but it's not ideal because some materials go quickly while some do not.

Answer 1

Not seen this happen at all.

Do you run a single track system? (Trains with locks facing both ways?)

Single with a loop at the ends.

Full closed loop?

I don't think the unloading is the problem.

It's probably a train that loads wrong. And the most likely reason for that is a double ended train that gets reversed on its track (typically once/each time through its timetable).

Another possibility is that at some point you added locos to the front (or either end for dual faced) of a train thereby shifting the freight by 1 position.

Comments

All my trains consist of single locomotive and single freight car. I used to have heavily branched fully looped track but that did not work - locomotives were running in circles, stealing switch control one from the other. Multiple cases of wrong material delivery happened by then in single station - later I realized it is in exactly the "wrong" distance behind a switch that trains that took wrong turn there stopped very close to the station. I did not see a wrong train getting unloaded there, though (not that it's any easy to distinguish them now, they all look the same and they're all called Locomotive in the map), I only found several kinds of wrong material in that station several times. Later I rebuilt the track, made it a single rail with a teardrop at each end. Itnow looks like this:

https://imgur.com/97YNtqf

There are some switches on it since I am extending it and adding trains to it and the loop at the bottom right is the "exile" loop where I send all freight cars because they'd disconnect anyway and I don't want them wandering on the main track. Also the track crosses itself several times at different heights which can't be seen in the picture.

Late case of materials delivered to wrong station happened - I believe - somewhere around the time after I rebuilt the track when I was experimenting with effect of power on/off state on game's framerate. Again, I did not see a train getting unloaded in a wrong station, but after series of these experiments, I found some wires in station that was not even on timetable of any train. Note it was different station than where I had problems before and I believe on original track no trains were even passing through it since it had its own branch that was not on any shortest path.

Answer 2

I also have the same problem. I build my factory as a Train-Grid with about 30 Trains.
On top of that my, trains need very long to reach their stations because they get directed to wrong routes. I think its because the rail switches are manipulated from other trains.

This also leads to trains driving through wrong stations, and accidentally unloading there.

Comments

Trains have natural order in which they were added to the game (either by building them or while the map is loaded). A train will always set up its whole route and all switches on that route. If two trains want to manipulate the same switch, the train that's later in this "natural order" will win the battle. If the "naturally earlier" train comes to the switch first, it will take wrong turn. If the "naturally later" train comes to the switch first, it will release the switch right after the locomotive passes it, then the "naturally earlier" train will flip the switch and will detach any cars hooked to the "later" train's locomotive.

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would it maybe be posible for the trainstation to be programble in what it takes out and what should be left in like a programble spliter cauze i think that would shorten alot of the stations and trains? this is the wrong place to post it so i will make it into a seperate question