Modern Bulk Rail Loaders: Pooled

Modern Bulk Rail Loaders: Pooled

A pooled-inventory rework of the bulk rail loader concept. Every station has one hidden cargo inventory (the pool); each visible silo is a Factorio 2.0 proxy-container — a physical window onto that shared pool. Because there is only one inventory per station:

• Contents can never get unbalanced between wagons. A train's order completes

whenever the station total suffices — no stuck partial loads.

• There is no balancing logic and no recurring UPS cost for it.
• Factory inserters/loaders can feed or drain any silo; it all lands in the

same pool.

Requires Factorio ≥ 2.0.38 (the version that introduced proxy containers).

Usage

1. Open a train stop and use the Bulk loaders panel: pick the wagon count,

locomotive gap, and the station mode (Load / Unload).

1. Silos are placed automatically over each wagon slot; blocked positions get

ghosts you can revive after clearing obstructions.

1. Loading stations show a hopper structure over each wagon; unloading

stations show a tipper grate beneath the track.

Circuit network / Cybersyn

Wire exactly one silo (any of them) to your circuit network or Cybersyn combinator — every silo reports the full shared pool, so wiring two silos doubles the reading.

Design notes

• The pool is a hidden, indestructible container placed at the train stop. Its

usable size is silo capacity × silo count, enforced with an inventory bar.

• Mining a silo loses nothing (items live in the pool). Removing the last

silo of a station spills the pool contents on the ground rather than voiding them.

• Stations are uniform: the whole station either loads or unloads. Mixed

stations would mix incoming and outgoing cargo in one pool.

• Hand-placed silos attach to the nearest train stop within 100 tiles

(preferring stops that already have silos), or get a private pool if none.

Licensing / attribution

• Code: original to this mod.
• All graphics (graphics/loader-*.png, graphics/unloader-*.png) are from

railloader by mspielberg (therax), licensed LGPL-3.0 (see LICENSE-railloader-graphics). Keep that license file and this attribution if you redistribute the mod.

Development

Symlink into your mods folder under the mod's name (the folder name must match info.json):

ln -s /path/to/this/repo ~/.factorio/mods/modern-bulk-rail-loader-pooled