Freight Stations.....Pointless?

[Raistlin 0]

Just wondering if its something I'm doing wrong. However I have a fairly extensive rail network in a couple of my regions. Sims are using it for transport which is fine. But in a city where Industry reigns whether it be dirty, manufacturing or High Tech, none use the freight stations. They just use the roads. I have a hard time getting them to use a seaport in an all industry city.

So should I just not waste my time with them?

Only agriculture seems to use it regularly but even then, not so much.

[stardust_sam 0]

Are you using the original SC 4 fright station? I had the same problem like you, until I've downloaded sveral other stations from the stex. And wow, they worked....

Don't know if this helps you, but it is a suggestion, but not a real solution.

[JoeMeister 1]

How did you place the freight stations? I found that the freight stations MUST be placed within the industrial area, if placed around it, industry will most likely not use them.

When industry is placed directly alongside a railroad, most of the time the freight is directly transported by rail instead of road.

Hope this helps!!

[burtos 0]

All the industrial wants to do is find the nearest way out off the city, town etc, so if that means going by road instead of rail that is the means of transport they will use. too combat this just make connections using your rail to other maps and delete the ones for the roads

[SC4BOY 20]

Play with it and do as you like.. there is no "RIGHT" answer as far as I know.. I have used freight stations often and they work fine, but I have also built rather large cities with NO freight stations.. as long as generated freight has a route off-map.. via freight stations/rail or direct transfer/rail or truck/road or truck/seaport etc.. as long as it can get off your city map.. it just doesn't matter.. 

 

I slapped this city together just for grins.. it is a city square covered with lots of small farms, an interspersing of houses, a few scattered commercial and some dirty industry.. the industry is at the bottom left and note that the rail only exists at the right of the map from top to bottom and 2 freight stations on the rail.. The region has nothing else in it.. I made it so i could make/ break the rail connections easily to test the effects of freight traffic on congestion.. but at any rate freight is happily shipped from ALL OVER THE MAP to the 2 lone stations and shipped off-map by rail if one breaks the road connections.. even with the road connections form 1/3 to 2/3 of the freight will leave via rail.. I don't know how the algorithm decides to allot traffic, but you can force it either way or just let it "do it's thing"

[Pixelrage 34]

The key is using the "no trucks" tile on all roads.

Also, create industrial sectors in clusters with no roads leading out of town. Then, trucks will pretty much be forced to use rail.

[SC4BOY 20]

Personally I find absolutely no need for the "no trucks" plugin.. or most other plugins as far as that goes.. most peeps can be very happy sim'ers without mods.. And from the pic above you can see that I make no artificial mechanism to "force rail" yet it happily uses rail.. so unless you have some special need, what's the point? Just curious as to what problem the mod solves? I could see it for some special need, but I'm puzzled that you see it as "key" on all roads.

[Pixelrage 34]

...and others do feel the need for them, because they don't want to 'waste time' figuring out why their well set-up freight stations are not working.

Don't have a heart attack