[novembermike]

Typically everyone does both freight and passengers, but it'll be better at one or the other. Passengers want fast trains with few delays that get close to population centers. Freight doesn't care about speed as much but cares about the overall throughput and wants to end up in distribution centers.

[einpoklum]

Anyway, about "distribution centers" - just have an optional turn when approaching some town, choosing between the central train station and the "distribution center" location. That in itself does not sound like much of an issue.

However, other comments suggest that freight needs _slow_ speed and must avoid tunnels. Maybe that's the reason?