Freight Shiping

[1Veteran1 0]

Anyone who goes into trade, rather it be for buying and selling, selling freight from factories, oil, ore exc exc, will know that in the trade menu under city specialization, the menu displays the modes of transportation in use, available, and unavailable. The three modes are Roads, Rail, and Ports. My question is, how do you ship via rail? There is nothing, from what I can tell, under trade nor mass transit but when highlighted it says Available. I have searched high and low on Google and the Wikis and can't find jack on the subject. If anyone knows, please tell me. 

 

      -- Regards, 1Veteran1

[fatfreddy01 0]

im not sure, but i think the trucks just go to the station and go from there, dont quote me on that though

[1Veteran1 0]

im not sure, but i think the trucks just go to the station and go from there, dont quote me on that though

I'm sorry, meaby I didn't state my question well enough, what building do I use to ship freight? Because as far as I can tell, if you use the only train station available, all it does is transport sims. 

[pkderek 51]

You have to have access to a Trade Port. It's the 3rd item under the Trade specialization. Plop it near where you want to build your freight station and once plopped, open the modules. It's an upgrade option. Freight station as well as Seaport.

 

Yeah it's stupid but meh.

[1Veteran1 0]

You have to have access to a Trade Port. It's the 3rd item under the Trade specialization. Plop it near where you want to build your freight station and once plopped, open the modules. It's an upgrade option. Freight station as well as Seaport.

 

Yeah it's stupid but meh.

 

Ah damn. Well, thanks for enlightening me on this, but sadly, I got a city right now with 160,000 sims, 261k income daily from ores, 8k income from taxes, and not even a stream for a sea port. Really maxis? Why put the freight station under the sea port? I can see using the same upgrade requirements.. 

[TinyWeeny 6]

The Trade Depot comes with one Freight Lot by default. You can build more (up to a total of 4), and you can destroy it if you want 4 lots of another type (alloy, plastics, oil, etc).

 

The one downfall is that freight is not a commodity that is 'traded' on the regional market. You can set up all other resources to be traded, but freight doesn't work the same.

 

I still haven't 100% sorted out how freight works. The servers are still too buggy for me to really figure that out.

[Bobington 4]

You have to have access to a Trade Port. It's the 3rd item under the Trade specialization. Plop it near where you want to build your freight station and once plopped, open the modules. It's an upgrade option. Freight station as well as Seaport.

 

Yeah it's stupid but meh.

 

Ah damn. Well, thanks for enlightening me on this, but sadly, I got a city right now with 160,000 sims, 261k income daily from ores, 8k income from taxes, and not even a stream for a sea port. Really maxis? Why put the freight station under the sea port? I can see using the same upgrade requirements.. 

No, the trade port does not require water connection to be built since you can hook it up to rail and it works just as well. The name is just misleading.

[1Veteran1 0]

 

You have to have access to a Trade Port. It's the 3rd item under the Trade specialization. Plop it near where you want to build your freight station and once plopped, open the modules. It's an upgrade option. Freight station as well as Seaport.

 

Yeah it's stupid but meh.

 

Ah damn. Well, thanks for enlightening me on this, but sadly, I got a city right now with 160,000 sims, 261k income daily from ores, 8k income from taxes, and not even a stream for a sea port. Really maxis? Why put the freight station under the sea port? I can see using the same upgrade requirements.. 

No, the trade port does not require water connection to be built since you can hook it up to rail and it works just as well. The name is just misleading.

 

-_- Thanks. (-_- to my self and maxis...)

[titi4112 0]

I am having a similar problem. I have a trade port. I have a passenger station. I have rerouted my rail line to go to the trade port. I have added a 2nd passenger station right next door to the trade port. I cannot get them to ship rail. I am not seeing any upgrade options. Is there something else I should be looking for. This is an industrial town and I have set it up to make most of it's money that way and I am currently hemorrhaging  money trying to ship via rail.

[WiWun 1]

Would be nice to have a response of maxis on what we are supposed to do with freight.

My trade depot is filled up and my industry is complaining about not having anywhere to ship their freight.

[Bibor 3]

A trade port, unlocked by building the trade HQ is what you need. A Port doesn't mean only harbor. In this case it also has a railroad connection building. Trade port is basically just a very advanced trade depot, having, along with rail and harbor options, access to 12 freight trucks. Any serious trader should have it.

 

EDIT: here are some screenies of it: 

 

[curres 0]

I think you'd need a 'rail' module added to the trade port to ship via rail, although I've yet to use one myself.

 

BTW does anyone know how to ship goods between cities in a region? I take it goods used locally are local to the city and not to the region and goods are transferred city to city manually via the gift menu in region view. If goods are sent via a gift, do they end up in the destination city's trade depot, does the gift recipient city need one to receive the gift?

[Zades 7]

The Trade Port is not a Seaport.  It does not ship by sea.  It's basically a bigger version of the trade depot.  You need to upgrade your Trade HQ to unlock it.  Once unlocked, build it next to water/rail (not but too near them).  The Trade Port comes with multi addons, mostly having to do with what type of items can be stored, but there are two addons that deal with rail and sea shipment.  You need to hook the sea one up on the coast and the rail one onto of a railroad.

 

How freight works in this game:

Freight is basically items produced by industry.  Freight needs to be shipped to a Trade Depot, a Trade Port, or commercial buildings.  If your commercial buildings are very far from your industry it helps to build a Trade Depot or Trade Port nearby to accept freight.

 

Your freight shipment per hour is limited by how many trucks you have at the Trade Depot/Port, your traffic, and whether you have a seaport or a rail station attached.  The Depot/Port will ship to either global market, commercial buildings, or neighbors.  If you have a lot of traffic, escpically at the entrance to your city you might not be able to ship fast enough.  If your trucks is busying hauling ore/coal/or whatever else, your freight shipping rate might also not be fast enough.