Bulk Rail Loaders

This mod adds dedicated train loaders and unloaders for granular bulk cargo, as often used in reality at mines, power stations, etc. A large hopper placed directly over the track drops granular solids into the top of a hopper car, and at the destination the bottom of the car is opened and the cargo pours out through metal grates and onto conveyors.

Loaders benefit from inserter stack size bonus. When fully researched they will fill or empty a cargo wagon in about 5 seconds.

This mod should be considered ALPHA quality. Expect bugs, and please report any you find to the mod thread. Graphics are placeholder. If you would like to make pretty graphics, or know someone who would like to, see my request thread.

How to use

Place your rails and train stop first. The Bulk Rail Loader item will show a preview of the loader and an image of a cargo wagon, to help position the loader correctly. The concrete pad of the Bulk Rail Unloader serves a similar purpose.

Loaders are circuit-connectable chest entities that output their content. You can connect them to Logistic Train Network stops to manage automatic creation of transport orders. Loaders are not circuit controllable, and will always load or unload as many items as possible while a cargo wagon is stopped.

Boosting Throughput

Rail loaders and unloaders can fit 4 inserters or loaders on each side, for an inherent 8 belts of throughput. If this is insufficient, you can add any kind of 1x1 chests to the corners of the loaders, and they will automatically push or pull items into these chests. You can then connect inserters or loaders to the chests for up to 12 belts of throughput, 6 per side.

What items are supported?

Anything that would tolerate a long drop onto the hard metal floor of a cargo wagon, then would fit through a metal grate, and would survive a trip up a screw conveyor.

By default, this does not include plates, but a setting is available to enable them if you wish to abandon realism. You can even enable Bulk Rail Loaders to handle any item at all.

From vanilla:

• Coal, stone, copper ore, iron ore, uranium ore
• Landfill
• Sulfur

From Bob's mods:

• All ores, including quartz
• Solid chemical intermediates (salt, lithium chloride, etc.)

From Angel's mods:

• All 6 primary ores from Angel's Refining, including refined variants up to purified crystals
• Crushed stone and slag waste products from Angel's Refining
• Processed ores from Angel's Smelting
• Solid chemical intermediates from Angel's Petrochem

If you feel something that meets the above generic description is not included, let me know. You can also edit bulk.lua if you would like to change the set of supported items for your own use.

Known Issues

• Loader configuration is not preserved when blueprinted.
• Loader circuit connections are not recreated when building from a blueprint.
• Loader ghosts can be placed in locations they cannot be built, either by blueprint or by shift-clicking. Robots will make repeated trips attempting to build the loader until they are successful or the ghost is removed. This allows robots to eventually complete blueprint construction even if they run out of rails or similar. An alert will be added to the map to warn that player intervention may be needed to complete construction.

Acknowledgements

• Arch666Angel for the loader graphics.

Version History

• 0.1.0 (2018-01-20):
  • Initial preview release.
• 0.2.0 (2018-01-21):
  • Add improved graphics.
  • Fix some blueprinting crashes.
  • Improve robot handling when trying to build a loader before the rails are built.
  • Use flying-text instead of console notifications when inserters lock in an item.
• 0.2.1 (2018-01-21):
  • Fix bad migration.
• 0.2.2 (2018-01-23):
  • Enable walking and driving vehicles through loaders.
  • Enable using the pipette feature (Q) with loaders.
  • Fix crash when clicking a single point to create a blueprint.
  • Fix misleading loader placement guide.
  • Shrink placement collision box.
• 0.2.3 (2018-02-02):
  • You must now actually research the technology to unlock rail loaders and unloaders.
  • Fix crash when creating a blueprint with a GUI open in Factorio versions before 0.16.21.
  • Fix crash after mining a loader under certain circumstances.
  • Loaders do not lock in an item if set to accept all items.
• 0.2.4 (2018-02-04):
  • Fix bug building new non-locking loaders.
  • Add partial support for preserving circuit connections in blueprints.
  • Add alert to map when robots cannot build a loader due to missing rails or an obstruction.
• 0.2.5 (2018-02-09):
  • Fix failure to join multiplayer maps with unconfigured loaders present.
  • Fix crash when placing loaders set to "any" item type.
• 0.3.0 (2018-02-13):
  • New feature for increasing throughput: interface chests.
  • Loaders no longer lock onto a single item. Instead they handle up to 5 item types per cargo wagon.
  • Since this leads to increased message frequency when loaders reconfigure themselves, you can now turn these notifications off.
  • Add support for Omnimatter's omnite ore.
• 0.3.1 (2018-02-14):
  • Fix crash when migrating from a save with unconfigured loaders.
• 0.3.2 (2018-02-14):
  • Fix crash when building on top of modded rails.
• 0.3.3 (2018-02-19):
  • Fix crash when build conditions are not met (colliding entities, rail not present).
  • Add support for Pyanodons Coal Processing.
• 0.3.4 (2018-02-23):
  • Fix configuration on train arrival.
• 0.3.5 (2018-02-23):
  • Prevent loaders from being built when there is only one rail underneath, which could block connecting rails from being built, particularly when building a blueprint.
  • Prevent loaders from being built over curved rails, which leads to odd "train driving through a wall" appearance.
  • Give better messages when a loader can't be built.
  • Prevent rails blocked by loaders from being damaged, destroyed, or mined, since they cannot be replaced without removing the loader.
• 0.3.6 (2018-03-16):
  • Change how graphics are rendered.
  • Fix crash on mining BRLs in Factorio 0.16.29.