Supply Tower

A Supply Tower is a building that can be be placed on flat land only, and not on bridges or in tunnels. Supply Towers provide trains with Sand, Lubricant, and Water.

Usage
Supply Towers are a crucial part of any rail line. Every rail line requires at least 1 Tower on its journey (some exceptionally long lines require 2). Without a supply tower, trains will slow down due to lack of supplies, and eventually break down.

Towers also function as signals. They behave just like stop signals, wherein the train can stop there.

To minimize the amount of supply towers you need to buy, make your tracks as parallel as possible. Multiple parallel tracks can be served by just one Supply Tower, meaning that you can have for example, eight parallel tracks, each serving maybe two trains, which mean you could supply 16 trains with one supply tower!

Restrictions
A Supply Tower is a building that can be be placed on flat land only to provide trains with Sand, Lubricant, and Water.


 * 1) Supply towers cannot be built on Tunnels or Bridges.
 * 2) Supply towers must be placed on existing tracks.
 * 3) Supply towers cannot be placed too close to cities, rural industries or other buildings.
 * 4) Supply towers cannot be placed on multiple tracks unless the tracks are parallel.
 * 5) Supply towers cannot be placed on land heavily modified by Earthworks.



Strategy
One method of rail strategy, which I call the Branching Method, is used primarily for freight, where all of the freight from maybe 8 to 10 locations all come back to one or two platforms in a station. This allows a constant supply of freight to the city (this method is also amazing at controlling freight input into Warehouses). Here what newcomers do is put the supply tower right at the point where all the tracks form one single track, which goes into the platform. This is a big no-no. The reason is that if a train stops at the supply tower there, it will block other trains form entering the platform, which causes delays (and delays are never good). The best way to put a supply tower here is to first make sure that for at least one mile, all the tracks are parallel. Then, place the tower there. That way the trains can stop before reaching the switch point, fill up, and wait there turn before entering the platform.