Hello ladies and gentlemen, hello train controllers,
After playing Rail Route for many hours, I would like to introduce you to a major topic: Train stations !

For a good and smooth gaming experience, escpecialy when you want to automate your train traffic, it's mandatory to design train stations. Therefor, I showcase my ideas. Please copy them or, the method I highly suggest, feel free to adapt them to your likes and needs.

My guide has two simple axioms:
a) Right-hand traffic.
This axiom will not be used permanently, but if you are in doubt, please use it.
After watching the examples, it should be easy for everyone to change them to left-hand traffic.
b) No support of shunting.

Picture one shows a simple station named Central Station. To the west you see the most simple connection, just tracks. This is the easiest and least space consuming method to connect tracks with stations. It has a high throughput capacity but also a little drawback. Trains cant switch platforms.

To the east of Central Station, you see an idea on how to improve the situation. A crossover between both tracks. Each train is able to reach any platform. Trains from all platforms are able to reach all tracks. Such a setup covers all sorts of train taffic (except shunting) and has a high throughput capacity.

Picture two shows another example, the station of Lochhausen. It has a crossover at each end of the station.

Now let's advance to stations with 4 platforms. Please have a look at picture 3, the station of Hamburg.

To the west, you see a simple connection of 4 platforms to one double track. Each inbound train is able to reach every platform while each outgoing train is able to reach each track. Again, it has a high capacity and is still compact. Conflicts of inbound and outbound traffic are possible but not very likely.

To the east, the station is connected to two double tracks. As usually, each inbound train is able to reach every platform and each outbound train is able to reach every track. If there is a very high traffic demand, outbound and inbound traffic may conflict and cause delays. How to solve this ? Well let's advance to a station with 6 platforms.

Please have a look at picture 4, the stations of Hambug and Berlin.

Let's focus on Berlin first. Berlin and Hamburg are connected with 3 double tracks. The decisive change is that the inbound and outbound traffic is concentrated. The outbound traffic uses the 3 tracks in the north while the inbound traffic is using the tracks in the south. It's a simple setup and as you can see, the more platforms a station has the more space is needed for the turnout field. Again, depending on the volume of the traffic, inbound and outbound traffic may conflict.

Now please focus on Hamburg, portrayed in detail with picture 5. For simplification, the east just shows the incoming and outgoing traffic.
In the west, there a two tunnels. The tunnels are connecting the topmost tracks and the lowermost tracks.
Inbound traffic is no longer able to move to all platforms. Only platforms 4,5 and 6 are reachable. Outbound traffic is no longer able to move to all tracks. Only the outbound tracks of all three possible destinations (to NW, to Bremen, to SW) are reachable. But inbound and outbound traffic is finally seperated !!!
If you choose the platforms carefully, this station is able to support a high traffic rate of 2 incoming and 2 outgoing trains at the same time. That's huge !

Stations with a lot of platforms may look very different. According to the space available, the number of destinations to serve, the number of platforms and the traffic volume, I think every big station will be unique.

But for a simple example, please have a look at picture 6, Central Station.

In the west, the station is connected to 6 double tracks. Each inbound train is able to reach every platform. Each outbound train is able to reach every track. Conflicts between inbound and outbound traffic is likely. To improve the situation, you may add more crosslinks. Usually the automated system of track reservation of Rail Route is doing quite well then and reduces the number of conflicts to a minimum.
You may also try to seperate inbound and outbound traffic with tunnels as mentioned in the example for stations with 6 platforms. But let me introduce you another solution:
In the east, you see a turnout field with a huge reduction in space usage. There are only 2 double tracks connected to the station, named north and south. Each outbound train is able to reach every track and each inbound train is able to reach every platform. The reduced size of the turnout field has another important advantage: Trains need to travel a shorter distance to pass the turnout field. Thereby, they are blocking the turnout field for a much shorter time period. This allows for a higher traffic volume.

Thanks for your attention !

Please feel free to comment this guide.

Please feel free to use this guide as an inspiration for your own designs of stations !



Thanks to the makers of Rail Route.



v 0.1 Removed links and added pictures instead.
v 0.2 Some spelling corrections.