Infrastructure

Supporting Players
Eventually you’re going to need help. Eventually, you’ll have bigger trains with more demand and you will need some extra muscle to handle them. This is just part of the train experience, and I fully encourage everyone to find ways to streamline their train operations.

1. Fueling
Right off the bat, this will probably be the first support structure you make, and I’m willing to bet it will be a water source for steam locomotives. Easy, right? All we need is a water collector and a storage tank. Ideally we’ll have a RailCraft liquid loader to automate the process.

Later on, we can copy the same setup for diesel fuel.

And of course, steam locomotives need a solid furnace fuel, right? For an example, here’s a coal storage tower I made. I’ve got ideas for a smaller, locomotive-only tower based on real coaling towers used back in the day. This unit contains a battery of Factorization barrels chained together to feed RailCraft loaders inside the concrete ceiling.

2. Locomotive House/Workshop

This one has many potential forms. This building ideally serves as your train workshop, storing all your materials needed to make trains and track, and a place to initially deploy your new train cars and engines. Its size depends on your needs.

Railcraft’s Village building makes an excellent starter workshop. After a while it can get cramped, though. My Hoboserb rail shop is a railcraft building, modified with a Malisis Garage Door, TC tracks and storage drawers.
Remember to leave room for expansion and plenty of chest space to store your unused railcars.

3. Freight Handling
Now the really fun stuff. At some point your home base is going to need a facility to deal with the stuff you are hauling in. How big and involved depends on your habits. Larger trains favor automatic unloaders.
On this particular map, I have been outright abusing Immersive Engineering’s crates. Everything I find gets stuffed into the things. I had so many sitting around waiting to be emptied that I finally put together this freight depot with RailCraft Item Unloaders to pull the crates off my train and automatically dump them into storage. Wrapped around the building is also a return loop track for easy turning.