Railway

experimental

Railway is a buildable structure which trains run on. Train stations can be placed by the track. Track can be laid on the ground. It cannot loop upside-down.

Switches are made by joining two rail segments and then adding a third segment to that junction. A flag will be placed on the switch, but currently it's wonky, and its setting is ignored by automated trains.

Minimum and maximum build length
The minimum length for a single segment is 12 meters. The maximum is 100meters. You can connect multiple segments end to end to build a longer rail.

Cost
The cost of the rail is 1 Steel Pipe + 1 Steel Beam at the first 6 meters, and 1 Steel Pipe + 1 Steel Beam for every 12 subsequent meters. Due to the build length constrains, it is capped between 2 Steel Pipes + 2 Steel Beams to 9 Steel Pipes + 9 Steel Beams.

Turning radius
The minimum radius is 17 meters.

Maximum slope
If the starting and ending points lie on the horizontal surface such as foundations, the maximum slope is 28 meters high over the distance of 94.5 meters, which is 3.375. If both starting and ending points lie on the 8 x 2 ramp, then the maximum slope can be increased to 1:2.7. You could not build a rail on a 8 x 4 ramp.

Build order
One should build the Train Station before building the rail, else the station will be build on top of it but will not connect to it.

Collision width
The is no collision box implemented at the moment, which means that the rail (and entire trains) can clip trough the ground. Judging from the visual it is about 6 meters wide and 1 meter high.

Snapping
Rails snap on foundation in Version Early Access (EXPERIMENTAL) - v0.1.17 - Build 10135 (28. Jun. 2019) or later. Rails do not snap on foundations in older versions.

Deconstruction
You can deconstruct the rail at any time. You cannot deconstruct the rail in a train station, you have to deconstruct the train station instead.

Supporting columns
There is no supporting columns for the rail, as opposed to what is displayed in the E3 trailer. The latitude curvature of a rail is only dependent on the slope of the stating and ending points, that means if the starting and ending points lie on a flat surface such as foundations, the rail will be perfectly horizontal, despite a large gap in between. On the other hand, Attempting to build on uneven ground could lead to unexpected sloping of rail.

Derailing
A train cannot derail when approaching the end of the rail with high speed. Instead, it will simply stop abruptly at the end of the rail.

Power
Railway can conduct power, to feed it to Electric Locomotives, or between any station. You could utilize it as the backbone of your Power Grid.