Over these five weeks, we’ve learned about all kinds of transport — except the main one, my favorite little trains.

And now, in our sixth lesson, it’s finally time to talk about them — the trains! You’ve probably seen them on the title screen, and some of you, the more curious ones, may have already tried them out. Of course, everyone might think that planes, ships, or maybe cars are the best types of transport. I didn’t really like cars before and almost never used them. But as you can see, on the week5 server, I played only with cars 😄

With trains, it’s going to be a completely new game — you’ll see just how different it is.

So, railway transport — I saved it for the last lesson because it’s a very complex, or rather, broad topic. In this lesson, I’ll give only the basic information about railways — without talking about signals (I’ll leave that for the next season, if I’m lucky enough to continue).

In the game, there are four types of railways:

• (1925) regular railway
• (1965) electrified railway
• (1999) monorail
• (2021) magnetic levitation trains — Maglev

Regular trains can run on both regular tracks and electrified railways.
You can upgrade an existing regular track network to electrified without rebuilding it. The locomotives and wagons can stay the same.
But on electrified railways, there are fast electric trains — much faster than steam or diesel ones.

And the faster you deliver the cargo, the more profit you get.

This time, we’ll only look at the basics of regular railways.

Regular trains in the game appear from 1925 — even before cars! 😄
But in the desert, different types of locomotives are available, and they appear not in 1925, but in 1946.

For the sixth lesson, I’ll choose a more challenging biome — the desert. Here, the resources and industries are quite unusual.
Though some of you have already completed tasks in this biome before.

Water and food

The first special thing about the desert is that, for a town to grow, you need to deliver water and food.
You can find water sources on the map, but the town must have a Water Tower — otherwise, how would you bring water into the town?

As you can see, the Water Tower comes in two colors 😄

Water

So, the first task is to transport water to the town.
To do that, you need to build a railway station.

In the station building window, you can choose the station’s direction, length, and number of tracks.
Each tile of length fits two wagons, or one locomotive and one wagon. Some locomotives are double units — they take up one full tile. You can also buy several locomotives for a single train.

Here, I chose a flat world, so there’s no need to buy multiple locomotives for one train. But if a loaded train has to climb uphill, it might not have enough power — that’s when an extra locomotive is added. Since we don’t have mountains yet, that’s not important right now.

I built a station with one track and a length of three tiles (enough for one locomotive and five wagons). This track will be used to transport water.

Next to it, I’ll build another track — this one will be used to transport food.

Almost in a straight line, I found a water source — that’s where I’ll build the second station.

Now I’ll lay the railway line, just like I would build a regular road.

To remove a road (rail tracks), select the road tool and click the bulldozer icon — it works like an on/off switch.
Another way to remove wrongly placed tracks is to hold CTRL while building — in that case, the tracks will be removed instead of built.

Now, place a railway depot next to the track.

Then, I buy a Wills 2-8 locomotive and five water tank wagons.

In the train window, I click the orange arrow to set up the train’s route — pick up water and deliver it to the town.

After clicking the yellow arrow, a window opens with the GoTO arrow already selected.
To pick up water, I click on the water station, and to deliver it to the town, I click on the station in the town.

Go

You can start a train (or a car, ship, or plane) in three ways:

• Click the red X in the top-right corner
• Click the button showing the train’s speed and destination (right now it says STOP)
• Click the green circle in the depot (this will start ALL trains currently in the depot, not just one)

Food

Now, about food.
Food is no longer a raw product that you just pick up and deliver — it’s a secondary product. That means you first need to transport something, and then it gets turned into food.

In this biome (the desert), there is a farm that produces corn or a fruit orchard with fruits. You need to transport one of these (either corn or fruits) to the food factory. If both types are available — even better, because the factory will produce more food.

Then, the food should be transported to the town.

While we decide what and from where to transport, the water train is already earning us profit.

You can immediately set the station size to 3 by 4 — that is, 3 tracks, each 4 tiles long. But I don’t like stations with a roof, so I build them one by one.

One track will receive the train with fruits, another track will receive corn, and the third track will send the food products to the town.

Meanwhile, the train is delivering water to the town, and you can see this in the town’s information. But the info doesn’t update immediately and disappears quickly, because water delivery needs to be regular, not just once a year. (Cars handle this better.)

So, maybe it’s better to deliver water to the station by train, and then use cars to take it from the station to the town.

Similarly, I built a station at the fruit orchard and connected it to the factory with a road.

The corn is very far away, so I won’t transport it for now — that would cost too much for the road and the trains.
It’s better to send a train to deliver fruits for now.

select depot	choose orientation	build depot

buy wagons for fruits	buy locomotive	train window #2 appears

Now, I need to set the train’s task: transport fruits from the orchard to the food factory.

orange arrow for tasks	GoTo button already selected

I click on one station and then on the other. No extra instructions are needed — the train will figure out by itself where to load and where to unload.

I click the red Stopped button at the bottom of the train window, and the train starts its route.

Now, I need to build a road from the food factory to the town to transport the products.

I had to slightly change the railway entrance near the town.
Now I place a depot and buy a train that will carry the products — if I have enough money.

It turned out that I built the station one tile past the factory, and the station didn’t accept the fruits, so I added another track.

After that, water was being delivered to the town, but not the fruits — or sometimes the opposite. We need the resources to flow more evenly.
So it’s better to transport from other places as well, or use cars — slower, but regular.

On the left, I saw another water source — smaller, but closer.
I was going to add another track in the town, but I decided to build a separate station for the second water train. The main thing is that it reaches the water — meaning it can accept both water and fruits.

By the way, pressing the DEL key closes all windows except the pinned ones (right-click the window to pin it), and Shift + DEL closes all windows.

Now that water is delivered more often, I see “water: delivered, food: delivered” in the town window more frequently.

But the town’s population isn’t growing much 😕 — at the start, it was 401.

There was corn on the left, so now I’ll start transporting that too.

At first, I wanted to do it this way, but then I thought it would be closer — and therefore faster — from the other factory, so I decided to transport from there.

The main thing is to build a station that can accept the products and to calculate the right number of wagons for the grain so that no corn is left on the farm.

I also added mail and passenger routes to the neighboring town. After that, my town seemed to grow a bit faster.
Next, I’ll add routes to the town above.

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The best features of trains are length — a train can be very long and carry a lot of cargo — and speed. The first steam locomotives are very slow, only 64 km/h; I hardly ever buy them, except sometimes for short trips. Electric trains can go 200–300 km/h, and MagLev can reach 600 km/h — it goes so fast that it’s hard to click on it with the mouse to give orders!

Another great feature is that you can combine different wagons. A train can carry grain, coal, passengers, and everything else at the same time.

And again, transfer

Just like with ships and planes, a station can’t cover the whole town. For this and other reasons, a transfer is necessary. Most often, buses and trucks deliver passengers and mail to the railway station.

I want to emphasize the importance of transfer.
My company already has extra money, and there’s no point keeping it in the balance, plus I’ve already paid off the loan. The town is receiving few products, and I noticed another fruit orchard far away. So, I’ll transfer fruits to the farm near the corn, and from there transport everything together to the food factory.

But my train is only carrying corn, so I click on it with the mouse and send it to the depot to buy more wagons for fruits.

When the train arrives at the depot, I can buy additional wagons, but they might be longer than the station. My station is 4 tiles long, so each wagon also needs to be 4 tiles long. That makes 1 + 7 — one locomotive and seven wagons.

Under the yellow arrow, there’s a white sheet — this shows detailed information about the train. In Total Cargo, I can see how much of each resource the train is carrying and how much it can carry.

About transport efficiency

What do you think is the most profitable to transport?
In the desert, it’s wood! Passengers have the lowest efficiency. Efficiency also increases if your deliveries are fast.

⚠️Breakdowns ⚠️

❗❗❗Updated ❗❗❗

Transport has a reliability rating. If it’s low, the vehicle often breaks down.
There are three ways to improve reliability:
buy a new, more reliable vehicle;
send it to a depot for maintenance;
set a service interval.

1. Buying a new vehicle is straightforward. By the way, if you quickly sell the old one and buy a new one, it will automatically inherit the old vehicle’s orders.

2. Just like you send a train from station to station, you can also send it to a depot for maintenance.

1. Or you can change the service interval — then the vehicle will automatically look for the nearest depot.

How often you send it to a depot depends on the tasks and the map.

To prevent the vehicle from going to a faraway depot, build several depots along its route.

homework

Task 1. (3 points)

Find a town with a Water Tower and a population of up to 500 residents (don’t choose a metropolis, marked as “City”).
Place your headquarters there, and in the terrain menu, use Place sign to write the town’s starting population. Take a screenshot.

Task 2. (4 points)

Build two tracks. You can use one station for both tracks or build two separate stations in different parts of the town.

• One track for water
• One track for food

These two are necessary for the town to grow and develop. You can also help the town by slowly building asphalt roads, so the town focuses on building houses, not roads.
After that, you can transport anything you like — additionally, products and water, or wood/diamonds to earn money.

Task 3. (3 points)

Choose one research option:

1. Try transporting passengers and mail by trucks first — does the town grow?
2. If you deliver lots of products and water, does the town grow faster?

Task 4. (1 point)

At the end, you will be evaluated on:

1. How much the town’s population has grown
2. The value of your company
3. Your account balance

The results on the server will also affect selection for the top 6.

I will set up the server tomorrow morning.
When doing the tasks, don’t hesitate to ask questions.

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