Trains

Trains are like an in-between of road vehicles and airplanes. However, their infrastructure is the most complex if you want to maximize efficiency using a more advanced system, and can be very challenging to plan and build.

There are five categories of trains:


 * Steam
 * Diesel
 * Electric
 * Monorail
 * Maglev

Running on four kinds of track:


 * Railroad
 * Electrified railroad
 * Monorail
 * Maglev

There are more types of engines and tracks with downloadable content.

Each type of engine has variants in each landscape.

Limitations
Capacity wise, trains are only limited to what carriages you assign them, as well as a car limit that can be changed. When making long trains, any train that is bigger than the station they're in will take a lot longer to load and unload. You can solve this by making stations longer, (which requires lots of space, a challenge in cities) and possibly extra infrastructure. Be warned, and keep your trains to a reasonable size. Trains also can't go up slopes very well either, and will slow down considerably. This can be avoided by adding more engines to the train (yes you can do that) or avoid the hill by building a tunnel or go around. Just note that tunnels each other can't cross without cheats on. Keep these in mind when building your routes.

Accidents
Trains can cause accidents to other trains and road vehicles, which can result in minor or major delays. In some basic layouts, collisions can happen because of mismanagement and/or improper timing. Unfortunately, more trains can crash into the mess as well, if there are no signals around. These crashes can lower your rating in towns/cities by 160 points, or 63% per station that are within 30 tiles of the crash. To solve this, you can use double tracks for busy or crowded lines, or use signals to avoid these conflicts. They can also run over road vehicles. Normally, road vehicles will stop in front of a crossing if there is a train nearby. However, if it stops or breaks down in the middle of the road, a train will run over it, and only the road vehicle will be harmed (?). This will lower ratings in nearby towns as well. To fix this, put path signals on both ends of the crossing. Junctions and merges may also spots to look out for. Remember to be aware of potential accident spots, and fix them with care.

Type of Tracks
Normal Railroad

Electrified Railroad

Monorail

Maglev

There are more types of tracks available, such as Vacuum Tubes or Universal Rail that can be available with NewGRF s. The looks of the tracks can also be changed with NewGRFs.

Extra Infrastructure

 * Signals
 * Bridges
 * Tunnels
 * Waypoint

Trivia

 * Maglev were thought to be futuristic at the time. Thus, all of the Maglev Engines are completely fictional.
 * Stations that are shorter than the train will take significantly longer to load, which may be why your trains take forever to get out of a station..
 * Electric Trains can run on Normal Railroad with the setting "Disable Electric Rails". This reduces the extra money needed for Electric Rails.
 * Typically, two train cars take up one tile. NewGRF trains may take up more room.
 * Forcing trains to turn on a 90 degree turn (by using diagonal tracks) will slow it down quite considerably. For people who are trying to deliver things quickly, try to avoid such turns.
 * An old setting called "mammoth trains" allowed the creation of 50 tile long (or more) trains, which is about 99 cars, plus an engine. Depending on the engine, more trains could be added (Lev4 "Chimaera" could have 100 tile long trains!) However, some trains may require you to replace some of the cars to be replaced with more engines, due to how heavy the train is.