4 ms·

There is a reason that freight trains are a thing. Clearly someone has been playing too much satisfactory and not enough factorio

6510 2y ago
The conveyor will have to be better than that. There use to be carriages designed to be uncoupled from the rear of a moving train. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slip_coach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slip_coach It would be nice if the empty containers and trains didn't have to travel back. I'm proposing edible containers.
- rob74 2y ago
  With all the recent research effort for self-driving cars, I wonder if there are also projects for self-driving rail cars that could cover the "last miles" to the destination without being part of a train. Of course, one problem is that in the last decades, most companies that might benefit from something like this were built on sites without rail connection...
  - zer00eyz 2y ago
    Parallel Systems is a company that proposed to do just that... only it's dumb. (like humane pin dumb)... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJNvpG5gktM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJNvpG5gktM
  - bluGill 2y ago
    Self driving trains have been in real world use for more than 20 years. What makes them easy compared to cars is with rail you just put a fence around the track and there is nothing else to hit so you don't need complex sensors to avoid killing people (more likely you put the tracks in a tunnel or elevated). Of course that gets into why we don't do this to individual houses - either the fences trap everybody in their own house (maybe they can visit a neighbor or 3, but not the whole neighborhood) or the costs to build it is extremely high. Roads are dangerous, but also a lot more flexible than rail and so better for low volume use.
    - 6510 2y ago
      Like with roads rail requires a lot of maintenance if you put the heavy load on it. Having to shut down the transport periodically isn't good for business. Perhaps with containers on rollers it is possible to replace one without shutting everything down. Kinda interesting puzzle, the rollers should fit in the containers. A telescope would make them to weak, picking up the old roller, rotating 90 degrees, bringing the new one, rotate 90 degrees, drop it in place.
klaustopher 2y ago
Satisfactory has freight trains and trucks as well
rob74 2y ago
Freight trains are great for moving huge quantities of freight from classification yard A to classification yard B (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_yard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_yard), not so great for moving smaller quantities door-to-door. Ever wondered why, despite the existence of freight trains, there are still so many long-haul trucks driving around? Because freight trains aren't the answer to all logistics questions!
- WJW 2y ago
  Ya but the article is about a conveyor belt, which arguably has even less flexibility than even a freight train.
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    We've had sorting conveyor belts for decades. Amazon warehouses are full of them. Way more potential flexibility than a railway. (With downsides, of course.)
    - jvanderbot 2y ago
      So put a sorting conveyor belt at the end of a train line? I could see a conveyor if and only if it saves a bunch of complexity at source /destination, or if it can be built in places that would be much more expensive to make trainlines. After all trains are just concentrated cargo, and are therefore much heavier.
      - InDubioProRubio 2y ago
        Still have the loading from train to sorting container. But yes, if that could be automated efficiently, it would indeed be a good solution.
      - ceejayoz 2y ago
        > So put a sorting conveyor belt at the end of a train line? Done right, a conveyor can fairly seamlessly branch off at arbitrary locations along the way. Individual items can fan out onto smaller sub-branches without any significant delays; a long train has to stop and start to accomplish the same. I think the main challenge here would be the maintenance of such a thing. Rail requires plenty; a conveyor has many, many more moving parts over hundreds of miles.

6510 2y ago

The conveyor will have to be better than that. There use to be carriages designed to be uncoupled from the rear of a moving train. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slip_coach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slip_coach It would be nice if the empty containers and trains didn't have to travel back. I'm proposing edible containers.

rob74 2y ago
With all the recent research effort for self-driving cars, I wonder if there are also projects for self-driving rail cars that could cover the "last miles" to the destination without being part of a train. Of course, one problem is that in the last decades, most companies that might benefit from something like this were built on sites without rail connection...
- zer00eyz 2y ago
  Parallel Systems is a company that proposed to do just that... only it's dumb. (like humane pin dumb)... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJNvpG5gktM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJNvpG5gktM
- bluGill 2y ago
  Self driving trains have been in real world use for more than 20 years. What makes them easy compared to cars is with rail you just put a fence around the track and there is nothing else to hit so you don't need complex sensors to avoid killing people (more likely you put the tracks in a tunnel or elevated). Of course that gets into why we don't do this to individual houses - either the fences trap everybody in their own house (maybe they can visit a neighbor or 3, but not the whole neighborhood) or the costs to build it is extremely high. Roads are dangerous, but also a lot more flexible than rail and so better for low volume use.
  - 6510 2y ago
    Like with roads rail requires a lot of maintenance if you put the heavy load on it. Having to shut down the transport periodically isn't good for business. Perhaps with containers on rollers it is possible to replace one without shutting everything down. Kinda interesting puzzle, the rollers should fit in the containers. A telescope would make them to weak, picking up the old roller, rotating 90 degrees, bringing the new one, rotate 90 degrees, drop it in place.

klaustopher 2y ago

Satisfactory has freight trains and trucks as well

rob74 2y ago

Freight trains are great for moving huge quantities of freight from classification yard A to classification yard B (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_yard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_yard), not so great for moving smaller quantities door-to-door. Ever wondered why, despite the existence of freight trains, there are still so many long-haul trucks driving around? Because freight trains aren't the answer to all logistics questions!

WJW 2y ago
Ya but the article is about a conveyor belt, which arguably has even less flexibility than even a freight train.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  We've had sorting conveyor belts for decades. Amazon warehouses are full of them. Way more potential flexibility than a railway. (With downsides, of course.)
  - jvanderbot 2y ago
    So put a sorting conveyor belt at the end of a train line? I could see a conveyor if and only if it saves a bunch of complexity at source /destination, or if it can be built in places that would be much more expensive to make trainlines. After all trains are just concentrated cargo, and are therefore much heavier.
    - InDubioProRubio 2y ago
      Still have the loading from train to sorting container. But yes, if that could be automated efficiently, it would indeed be a good solution.
    - ceejayoz 2y ago
      > So put a sorting conveyor belt at the end of a train line? Done right, a conveyor can fairly seamlessly branch off at arbitrary locations along the way. Individual items can fan out onto smaller sub-branches without any significant delays; a long train has to stop and start to accomplish the same. I think the main challenge here would be the maintenance of such a thing. Rail requires plenty; a conveyor has many, many more moving parts over hundreds of miles.