Rails
Quick Start
Goal
You want to accumulate as much prestige as possible.
Prestige is generated by moving the most cargo in a region, or building one of
the special routes, such as Gulf to
Build Some Track
You can only build track from a city that you're already connected to. At the beginning of the game, this means you need to start from your Home city (the one with the waving flag). Once you've laid track to a city, you'll be able to lay track from that city as well. You can't have more than 5 tracks under construction at any one time.
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Select a city, and click Lay Track and then
Suggest to find a good destination. Click Purchase,
and construction will begin.
Add Locomotives
Once you’ve laid track, you’ll go to the Track Details screen. From here you add locomotives to the track. Drag a locomotive card from the right to one of the slots, either Cargo or Passenger. Green trains are good for cargo, purple for Passengers, and blue is good for both. Once you have a locomotive assigned to a slot, you can add more engines by using the up/down arrows on the card.
Trains are rated for how many carloads they can carry at what speed, and how efficient they are. If a train will pull 5 carloads at 30 mph, and another one will pull 10 carloads at 30 mph, the second train is twice as good at pulling cars. Efficiency is how often the train is running, as opposed to sitting in the shop. If a train is 30% efficient, it spends 70% of the time sitting in a garage being worked on. If one train was 20% efficient, and the other was 40% efficient, the second one would run twice as often. If you want to upgrade your locomotives, click the up arrow on the card to go to the Upgrade screen.
Making the Trains Run on Time
Select
a track and you'll see the engines you've assigned on the right. The
Utilization lights, the horizontal zig-zag band of
lights, help you assign the right number of trains. If you have too few trains,
it will be red or yellow on the left. If you have too many, it will be red or
yellow on the right. These lights don't work until the track is completely
built. If adding more trains keeps moving the light to left, your track may be
congested. Click on the track, then Details on the switchboard on the
right, and from the Track Details screen, improve your signals or double
track your route.
Out of Money? Get a Loan!
Building tracks is expensive! To help you keep going, click Financial up in the top right of the screen. The Loans tab will let you request loans, but don't get too many, because those interest payments really add up!
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy isn’t the end of the world in high finance. If you have a negative income, you can go to Financial – Special and hit the Enter Bankruptcy button. You’ll lose prestige, but all your debts will be forgiven, and your expenses will be lower. While you’re in bankruptcy you can’t build new track or buy any shortlines, but you can improve existing tracks. After twelve months, you’ll be able to exit bankruptcy from the same screen.
Buy Shortlines
Independent railroad companies are called Shortlines. They’re the white tracks on the screen. You can offer to buy these tracks. If they decide to sell to you, you’ll get the track and you’ll be able to build from the cities that it connects. This may let you build up a new area that would have taken you years to reach otherwise.
Who's Winning?
Check how well you're doing from either the Financial – Annual Report screen, or by clicking on the general map anywhere besides a city or a track. You'll see an overview of what's going on in the switchboard screen.
How Can I Change That?
If you find you are falling behind your competitors, you can try to use influence to help you out. Using influence, you can make shortlines more compliant, help an opponent slide into bankruptcy, blow up your competitor’s tracks, and even hack away at their prestige.