Consider a farm producing both grain and livestock. How do you handle both cargo types? Here are some options:

• Use a single station for both cargo types, a set of grain trains, and a set of livestock trains — What if you have (say) 4 platforms, and four trains of each cargo type? Your livestock trains could be occupying all platforms, waiting for a very low rate of that cargo type, while your grain trains are sitting idle on the incoming track or in an escape depot, and your grain is rotting. Whatever you do, you just can't guarantee that one cargo type will take up more than its fair share of platforms.

• Use a single station, and trains with wagons of both cargo types — But if your trains leave as soon as one type becomes full, the other may be empty, so you're hauling wasted wagons around. If you can wait for a truly full load, one of your cargo types will be sitting around for longer that necessary, losing value. It's a pain to have to keep adjusting the proportion of livestock wagons to grain wagons.

• Build two separate stations, one for each cargo type — But (say) a livestock train could wander into the grain station by mistake, and trigger production of livestock at that station. That cargo will be wasted as you fail to pick it up later. A couple of trucks going back and forth between the stations could rectify that, but they're really wasted journeys.

  You could ensure that your trains are always on ‘non-stop’, but it only takes one slip-up to spoil it.

• Use a single station for both cargo types, but dedicate tracks to each cargo type — Logically split the station into two parts, each with its own entrance, escape depot, and load-balancing pre-signals; but also insert a waypoint (best after the depot but before the load-balancing.