Running happens on a timetable. Every train has a week grid — seven days by twenty-four hours — and every departure you place in it is run for you, hour by hour, whether you are watching or not. Come back after being away and the summary shows what ran, what it earned, and anything that stopped.
There is no separate "manual" mode and no penalty for automation: a timetabled departure earns the full demand it can win. The skill is in the plan itself. Passengers do not spread evenly over the week — commuters crowd the weekday mornings and Friday evenings, bargain hunters travel at the weekend, and on long lines there are people who will pay for a berth on a night train. Survey a line and its Hours view shows the whole pattern: how many passengers remain to be won, hour by hour, after the competition and your own departures have taken theirs — and, at the flick of a toggle, how many travel the pair at all. The gap between the two numbers is the fight. Nights are thinner, but so is the competition — that trade is yours to make.
Suggest timetable fills a sensible generic week for a train: weekday mornings and evenings, a lighter weekend, empty nights. It is a starting point, deliberately unaware of any line's real pattern — a timetable tuned against the Hours view will beat it. Place and remove departures by tapping the grid; block time and turnaround are drawn so you can see when the train is actually free.
The game clock runs faster than the wall clock: a full game week passes in a few real hours, so seasons turn, fleets age and weekly bills arrive at a pace you can actually watch. Being away is safe — the timetable keeps running for a generous window — but a plan nobody tends slowly goes stale as energy prices, seasons and rivals move around it. Tending the plan is the game.
Wear does not pause because you are away. Set the auto-inspection threshold on the timetable card and the train is serviced automatically the moment it crosses it — at the workshop's normal price, with the missed departures reported to you. The craft is in planning ahead of the rule: an inspection placed in the grid as a service block, in a natural gap in the week, costs the same money and zero departures. The wrench icon is a weekly service appointment; the overhaul remains a manual decision, and its longer workshop stay blocks the grid while it lasts.
From time to time an operator will offer you a one-off train, outside your line network, paid up front at about 35% above the normal fare. It might be a sports team, a tour group, or a company moving people somewhere you do not normally run.
Charters expire within the hour. There is no way to plan for them and no way to catch one while you are away — the only requirement is that you happen to be here. That is the entire mechanic: a reason to look in.
To accept one you need a train free at the departure station with enough seats and enough reach, and energy in store.
Demand on a city pair is shared between everyone who serves it — but not as one lump. Each kind of passenger judges the operators separately: bargain hunters go to whoever is cheapest, premium travellers to whoever has the coaches, the service and the young fleet, the brand-loyal to names they know. A budget operator and a premium operator can share a pair almost without touching each other, while two railways fighting over the same segment will feel it. Your reputation still weighs in every segment — it is the multiplier on whatever position you have taken.
Direction does not matter: STO–GOT and GOT–STO are the same market. Your survey shows the demand for the whole city pair; the share you actually win depends on how you price, equip and run the line against the others on it.
Now and then the world does something. Some of it is economic — a business travel boom, a downturn, a spike in power prices that lands on every departure — and some of it is the railway's own: a signalling failure that closes a corridor for days, a track renewal that shuts a trunk route for weeks, drivers walking out across a region. While an event is running, a banner at the top of Operations tells you what it is and how long it lasts.
The disruptions are worth studying, because they are not interchangeable. Track renewal hits everything equally — a closed line does not care what the train is carrying — so it is the one that hurts a freight operator most. A strike is the opposite: passenger services are decimated while freight keeps running a reduced timetable with management crews. An operator with both kinds of traffic rides out what a pure passenger operator does not.
Events change demand on departures, never on surveys. What you paid to learn stays the baseline; the event is a temporary multiplier on top of it. A player who is logged in during a peak can raise prices and take the extra revenue; a timetable left untouched runs straight through on last week's prices.
Logging in on consecutive days builds a streak, shown in the top bar. Every seventh consecutive day gives you 5 pax tokens. Miss a day and it resets to one. It is the only way to earn tokens repeatedly, and it rewards coming back rather than playing for a long time in one sitting.
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