Industrial Rework – Rail Transport for Industry

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Author: BizzerBifrost

Last revision: 17 Jun at 15:28 UTC

File size: 68.9 KB

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Description:
Rail Freight — Factory Transport for Industry

Make Railways matter in your industrial heartland.

The Problem

In vanilla Victoria 3, Railways are only useful in states with mines, logging camps, or plantations — because only resource buildings consume transportation. A fully industrialized state with no resource extraction has zero transportation demand, making Railways nearly pointless and barely profitable there.

The Fix

This mod gives every factory building a Transportation dropdown — the same mechanic already used by Logging Camps and Mines. Connect your factories to the rail network and watch both your production output and your Railway profits grow.

How It Works

Every light, heavy, and military industry factory gets two options:

  • No Rail — the default. No effect, no cost. Factories behave exactly as vanilla until you switch.
  • Rail Transportation — unlocked by the Railways technology. Consumes transportation tickets from nearby Railways and boosts factory output shown as real goods in the tooltip (e.g. "+9 clothes", "+10 steel").

Balance

Factory Tier
Transportation Cost / Level
Output Bonus
Light Industry
5 / level
+20% of base output
Heavy Industry
8 / level
+15% of base output
Military Industry
6 / level
+15% of base output

Rail Transportation is always net profitable — the output bonus comfortably exceeds the transportation cost at base prices, with enough buffer to stay positive even when transportation prices rise.

Key constraint: Transportation is a local good — it cannot be imported. Your factories can only benefit if Railways in the same state supply enough transportation. Build your Railways first.

Covered Buildings

  • Food Industry
  • Textile Mills
  • Furniture Manufacturies
  • Glassworks
  • Tooling Workshops
  • Paper Mills
  • Chemical Plants
  • Explosives Factory
  • Synthetics Plants
  • Steel Mills
  • Motor Industry
  • Automotive Industry
  • Electrics Industry
  • Arms Industries
  • Artillery Foundry
  • Munition Plants

Shipyards and all resource extraction buildings are intentionally excluded.

Compatibility

  • Game version: 1.13.x (Matcha)
  • DLC required: None
  • Save games: Best started on a new game for full default behaviour. On existing saves, the Transportation slot may appear uninitialized (blank icon) on first load — open each factory and select No Rail or Rail Transportation once to resolve it. Any factory built after loading the mod defaults correctly.
  • AI countries: Fully included — all nations use the same rules, keeping the world economy consistent.
  • Mod conflicts: Incompatible with mods that also override common/buildings/01_industry.txt.

Known Limitation

The output bonus applies to each building’s primary/base output good. For buildings that can switch output types via other production methods (e.g. Textile Mills producing luxury clothes, Automotive Industry producing aeroplanes or tanks), the bonus only adds to the base good regardless of which variant is active. This matches how vanilla automation production methods work.