Trainz/Industries and Products

Industry Flowchart

The TRS2004 and TRS2006 manuals include a very useful flowchart which shows the possible routings of products between the built-in industries, for example indicating that logs can be loaded at forestries and unloaded at lumber mills and seaports.

This flowchart can be found in section 9.3 of the TRS2004 Engineers Handbook and section 12.11.3 of the TRS2006 manual.

The flowchart excludes the "Multiple Industry" industries since they can be configured to behave as desired. It also naturally excludes any non-built-in industries and products.

Unfortunately both copies of the flowchart have the following misprints:

• An arrow should be added from General Goods to Airport.
• The arrow from 20/40ft Containers to Airport should be deleted.
• The arrow from Crude Oil to Airport should be deleted.

Industry Compatible Rolling Stock

When placing rolling stock in Surveyor, each item of rolling stock has a thumbnail image in the rolling stock righthand panel. If the item is compatible with the built-in industry system, it will have an "IND" icon in its thumbnail. Only rolling stock with the IND icon will operate with the built-in industries.

To explore which products a rolling stock item can carry, place it on a track in Surveyor, click the question mark button in the rolling stock righthand panel, then click the vehicle. A dialogue box will appear and its various options can be explored.

Loading And Unloading

Each industry has a separate length of track for each of its inputs and outputs. Multiple Industries New is the raw track, BI2 (bi2) grain, gravel etc are prepackaged instances of LARS enabled track and are much easier to use.

Some industries only have inputs, some only have outputs, some have both. Sometimes there are two separate loading/unloading sections and the track in between is already in place as part of the industry.

In some cases trains must be stopped in order for products to be loaded or unloaded. If there are more wagons than will fit in the relevant section of track, the train must be moved along in stages.

In other cases trains must continue to move but at a slow speed in order for products to be loaded or unloaded.

Unloading depends on the wagons having suitable products to unload, and the industry having space to accept them.

Loading depends on the wagons having space, and the industry having the goods available.

Industry production depends on the industry having sufficient goods in its goods inwards area and space in its goods outwards area. There is also an option to make some industries also dependent on an electricity supply.

Additional Comments

Basically products are associated with industries (special track) and wagons or coaches. They are generated or consumed by industries at a given rate that normally can be set in surveyor.

The config.txt file has product queues which control which products (kuids) can be loaded on each wagon or coach. Passengers are just a special case of product by the way.

Wagons and coaches have special points on the mesh that mean something to Trainz, a.bog0 and a.bog1 for example are the bogey attachment points.

If a load attachment point (a.load0 a.load1 etc) is present on the mesh then it can be referenced in the config.txt file by one of the product queues to say that if the product is present then attach this kuid to that attachment point. This gives you a visible load. In general if the attachment point is not present on the mesh then you can't get a visible load. However it is possible to create a second mesh, referenced in the config.txt file, which has the attachment point on so you can get a visible load to appear on a wagon that does not have load attachment points.

Bulk loads work by using a second mesh.

The various types of "Multiple Industry" industries can be configured to input and output various products.

LARS is a particular set of products that are designed to work smoothly together. For example by using LARS standard products for coal mines can ship coal that power stations etc recognise as coal. More details are available from Trainz Pro Routes, a third-party Trainz fansite.