Four numbers decide whether a train belongs in your fleet, and they are all shown when you order one.
Reach must cover the line. Every type has a maximum line length — set by its fuel, its servicing interval and what it was built to do — and there is no partial credit: a commuter unit will not work a 1,500 km intercity line, and the game will refuse the departure rather than let you find out halfway.
Platform length must be met at both ends. A full-length freight train needs around 700 m of track to be handled. A small suburban station has 200 m. That line does not exist for that train, and no amount of money changes it.
Energy per seat is what decides profitability, and it is why the train list in this game is not cosmetic. Consumption alone is misleading — a double-deck high-speed set draws several times what a commuter unit draws, but carries several times the passengers at three times the speed. What matters is cost per seat-kilometre, and the train reference ranks every type by exactly that.
Price is the smallest consideration of the four. A cheap old set that loses money on every departure is more expensive than an expensive new one that does not.
This game deliberately contains trains from the 1970s and 1980s — old diesel sets and first-generation electrics that are cheap to buy and will lose you money, because their energy consumption per seat is genuinely 25–40% worse than a modern equivalent.
That is a correction of the most common complaint about other tycoon games, where obsolete rolling stock somehow out-earns new equipment. Here, a 1984 set loses to a 2016 set because the real consumption figures say it should. If you buy one, buy it knowingly.
This is the single largest cost difference in the catalogue, and it is not a balance knob — it is thermodynamics. A diesel engine delivers about 34% of the fuel's energy to the wheels. An electric locomotive delivers 85%, and anything built from 1995 onwards also feeds roughly 40% of its braking energy back into the wire. Electricity costs more per kilowatt-hour than diesel does in the tank, so the two do not differ by the full two and a half times — but a diesel set still runs about 1.8× more expensive per seat-kilometre than an electric one of the same size and speed.
The catalogue does not label the traction type, and it does not need to: the difference is already in the energy figure, and the train reference ranks every type by cost per seat-kilometre with it included. What matters is the shape of the decision. Diesel sets are cheap to buy and expensive to run, so they belong on short branch work and on lines you are still testing. The moment a line proves itself, the electric unit that costs twice as much to buy earns the difference back in energy.
Two outliers are worth knowing. The battery unit runs almost as cheaply as a straight electric and comes with a range of barely two hundred kilometres. The hydrogen railcar is quieter and cleaner than diesel and roughly twice as expensive to fuel — which is precisely why hydrogen trains have not taken over anywhere in the real world either.
A train has a number of slots, not seats. Slots convert to seats at different rates depending on class:
| Class | Slots per seat |
|---|---|
| Standard | 1 |
| First | 2 |
| Sleeper | 4 |
A trainset with 300 slots is 300 seats in all-standard. Fit 30 first seats and you spend 60 slots on them, leaving 240 for standard — a 270-seat train.
The layout bar in the game shows this directly: the width of each block is the slots consumed, so you can see what premium costs you.
Premium seats earn far more per seat. First costs a little over twice the standard fare while taking twice the space, so it earns meaningfully more per slot — when it sells. The catch is in that last clause, and the reference fares in the game show you the ratio directly.
First-class demand is a modest share of the market — larger on long lines between big stations, small on short regional ones — and sleepers only exist on long lines between major stations, because nobody books a berth for an afternoon hop. Fit forty first seats on a short commuter line and most of them ride empty while still costing you the slots.
Survey the line first, then build the layout to the demand you actually found. Around 8–10% of slots in first is a sane starting point on medium and long lines, and none at all on short thin ones, but the survey is what should decide it.
The layout is not fixed at purchase. A parked train can be refitted — same slot rules, 2% of the list price, and a day in the workshop while the interior is torn out and rebuilt. Departures scheduled during that day are missed, so plan it like a check: in a night gap or a quiet weekend, and preferably before you move a train to a line whose passengers want a different layout.
Trains here do not age in years. They age in block hours and in runs, one run being one departure and one arrival — because that is how rolling stock actually ages, and because it makes how you use a train matter as much as how long you have owned it.
Two identical trains bought on the same day can be in very different condition a month later, and the one that spent the month on stop-start suburban work is the tired one. Runs punish the hardware that starts and stops — traction motors, brakes, doors, couplers, wheel flats — so a commuter unit doing eight round trips a day wears faster than a high-speed set doing one, despite covering a fraction of the distance. The game weights the two according to what the train was built for.
Every service adds hours, one run and some wear. Old sets pick up wear faster than new ones, so age costs you twice: once in energy and once in maintenance.
This one catches people out, because it is the only cost in the game that depends on your fleet as a whole rather than on the train you are looking at.
Every additional train family you operate raises the maintenance cost of everything you own. Every additional model within a family raises it too, by less. The reason is the one that drives real operators to standardise: separate spares, separate tooling, separate fitter training, separate manuals.
A railway that buys whatever looks good this week pays a premium on its entire fleet, permanently. A railway that picks a family and stays inside it pays the least. The factor is capped, so variety never becomes ruinous — but it is large enough that a mixed fleet needs to be earning something for the trouble. Before ordering from a new family, work out what it does to the trains you already have.
The fleet page shows your families and models as a number for exactly this reason. It is a cost you can only see by looking at everything at once.
You can name a preferred supplier and take a discount on parts and maintenance in exchange for committing to them for a period. It is a clean trade: a real saving now against a loss of flexibility later, and the flexibility matters most exactly when something goes wrong.
Two thresholds, both shown in the fleet list:
| Check | Cost | Out of service | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inspection | ~1.5% of list price | 4 hours | Wear back to zero |
| Overhaul | ~10% of list price | 36 hours | Wear back to zero and hours taken off the set |
This follows the real pattern. An inspection is a routine workshop visit that replaces worn parts. An overhaul is the heavy revision where the train is stripped, the bogies come out and the wheels are turned — expensive, slow, and the only thing that makes an old set young again.
The decision is when, not whether. Running to 89% squeezes the most work out of each check but bleeds reputation the whole way; servicing at 50% wastes money on downtime you did not need.
Charter stock is a category of its own in the train list, not a small intercity set. Panorama cars and luxury night trains carry very few people at a very high fare, and they fit stations that a full-length express could never call at. They are not a network train and they will not fill themselves — but on the right pair, with the right passengers, they earn per seat what nothing with five hundred seats can.
Treat them as a specialist tool. A railway built on them is a different business to a railway built on intercity sets, and both are playable.
Trains are registered automatically as your company code plus a sequential number: SK-001, SK-002, and so on. The number is assigned when the train is bought and does not change.