I'm going to play with mixed cargo trains, where trains that are only partially loaded at one station may go to another station and get filled up with another resource. That is no problem with common loading/unloading stations where inserters are used because you can set filters on the inserters. However, if a train that happens to carry, say, iron ore and coal would arrive at a station with a bulk rail unloader, this would unload everything.

Would you consider adding filters to your entities so that something like this could never happen, or do I have to manually filter every unloading station (i.e. filter the output from the unloader to belts/chests)?

I will not add filtering to BRLs. They are big, cheap, fast, and above all dumb devices that are gravity feed. If you want something smart, use inserters. If you want something big and fast, you need to add the smarts externally.

OK, guess I'll have to try to fit some belt cleaning mechanism into the small space I've left then. Thank you anyway -- I like this mod so far and I'm looking forward it to see it in full action! (Still laying out the network, with much improvising and manual driving of trains -- not ready yet for automated traffic.)

Sorry to hear that. Your mod would be great for LTN =/

Sorry to hear that. Your mod would be great for LTN =/

Therax is right, though: It doesn't make sense! If you open the bottom of a wagon, anything small enough to pass through the grid (supposing there's something like a sieve on the wagon bottom) will fall through. It does some naive filtering, though, as wagons loaded with bulk and stackable cargo will only drop the bulk cargo.

I've used Ware houses on each side of the unloader (chests would do as well, but a Ware house can be placed between 2 unloaders and allows for easier filtering output). With some circuitry control, I set the filters of the inserters on one side to only remove the material needed at that station (e.g. coal) while the filters on the other side remove everything else (e.g. iron and copper ore) into trash storage where it can be picked up by bots. That's quite fitting for my play style as I like using combinator logic -- and it provided me with another little puzzle to solve. :-D

They actually work great for LTN, as long as you’re willing to have unit trains that only carry one type of item, with dedicated stations for each item. I use them that way all the time, with LTN taking care of which train to send to which station.

is there a mod that allows the bulk rail loader to load things other than ores?

That's something you can change in the mod settings.