TrainStation is a fun game where you can build trains, send them to various destinations, build your own train station and take on various missions and achievements. There are Local Trains which earn you Materials and Gold, and International Trains, which allow you to ship your own materials out, to your friends or to Contract partners to work your way through various contracts for some awesome rewards.
Basically, there are two train types: passenger/mail trains and cargo trains.
Passenger trains transport passengers and mail gathered at your station to destinations of your choice. After the train reaches its destination, you can visit the destination, take care of your train while it waits there and gain additional profit and experience points. The train then returns to your station and you earn profit from fares and mail delivery.
Passengers arrive and gather at your station constantly depending on the number and type of buildings built at your station. The more buildings, the more passengers.
Mail has to be collected either from the platform or by catching (clicking on) the flying envelopes, or from the neighbor's stations. If your station runs out of passengers and mail, you can not dispatch an empty train.
Cargo trains operate in slightly different way. You dispatch your empty cargo trains to loading docks, load them up and deliver the materials to your station. Visiting the loading docks and loading up your freight cars manually yields extra materials and experience points. Materials unloaded and stored at your station may be used to construct buildings, carry out station upgrades or they can be simply sold if you run out of gold. Additionally, you can send your materials to your friends via International Trains.
Locomotives
There are currently 4 different types of locomotives: steam locomotives, diesel locomotives, electric locomotives and maglev locomotives.
Steam engine is the basic type of locomotive. That’s what every player starts with. A steam engine has no particular bonuses and you might require a theme upgrade in order to be able to run some of them.
Diesel engines are more advanced than steam engines and yield +40% Overall profit. It means that you get +40% more materials and XP from freight trains, +40% more profit and XP from passenger trains as well as +40% more XP from special wagons attached to any train type.
Electric engines are a little tricky with their bonuses. The +100% higher profit applies to passenger, mail and special wagons only. In passenger destinations the train yields +100% more profit and XP from passenger mail and special wagons but no specific bonus from cargo wagons. In fact, they behave exactly the same as steam locomotives (no bonus) while hauling cargo wagons.
Maglev engines are the most advanced locomotives in our game to date. As steam engines, they don’t have any particular bonus themselves, but their wagons have a bonus that is more than compensating for this. Maglev has it’s own rail, construction yard and wagons which can not be put behind a locomotive of different type than maglev, and also, the maglev locomotive cannot pull any other than maglev wagons.
Wagons
Passenger and Mail Wagons
Passenger and Mail Wagons are the player’s main mean of earning gold. The passenger or mail train dispatched from your station takes away the mail or passengers it can carry and returns with gold. The passenger and mail wagon effectiveness consists of two parts. Primary is their passenger/mail capacity and secondary is the bonus. This means that wagon with 100 passenger capacity and 100% bonus equals to a wagon with 200 capacity and no bonus at all. When comparing wagons and deciding which is best to put on a train, always consider your station’s passenger income and your ability to gain Mail so you won’t find yourself in a situation when you don’t have any passengers waiting or mail in your stockpile to give you profit. The basic rule is that the players with smaller passenger income and not many friends shouldn’t run high capacity passenger and mail wagons with small or no bonus but focus on wagons with big bonus.
Cargo Wagons
Cargo wagons are the player’s best friends in gathering materials needed for new buildings, station extensions and for completing contracts. An assembled cargo train consisting of cargo wagons (4 material types at most) and special wagons if you wish, leaves the player’s station and returns always with a full profit.
Special Wagons
Special wagons (including Cabooses) are, as the name implies, somewhat different to the passenger, mail or cargo wagons. Their purpose is to let players haul assorted rolling stock, that doesn’t necessarily fit into the game mechanics, but would be shame not to have them in the game. Special wagons can be fitted to cargo as well as to passenger or mail trains. Since they don’t generate profit or deliver materials, their purpose is to reward the player with extra experience points. Experience point bonus applies to the particular special wagon only, not to the whole train!
Assembling Trains
You can assemble almost any train of your choice; either single wagon-type train (passenger train, mail train, lumber train, etc.) or a mixed train (passenger/mail trains or lumber/nail trains, etc.). The fundamental rule is that you are not able to mix passenger/mail carriages with cargo wagons in one train setup. Each freight train is restricted to haul 4 material types at once. Special wagons can be attached to both, passenger or cargo train types. Trains consisting solely of Special wagons travel to passenger towns by default.
Dispatching and Managing Your Trains
Assembled trains can be either put into service or they can be stored in your depot. Active trains-in-service occupy local train slots or international train slots while idle trains in depot occupy depot slots. You have limited number of train slots, international slots, as well as depot slots, so use your capacities wisely. You are able to increase the number of train slots, international slots and depot slots later throughout the game.
Dispatching your local trains is simple. After the wagons are emptied at your station, click the locomotive and send the train to a destination of your choice. The longer the route, the higher the yield (but it’s not proportional).
Dispatching an international train is a bit trickier. The first option is to assemble the train in an international slot, and then select an option to send the train to a friend. Second option is to assemble the train in depot slot, and then select the previously mentioned option, to send the train to a friend. This will open a new window with all your friends and contract partners. Select one or more friends (contract partners) and then select how much gold, or materials you wish the train to carry. You are able to dispatch a train to multiple friends at once if you have bought the Trainroute Planner.
Every train has to pay tax upon leaving the station. This tax depends entirely on the type of locomotive you use in the particular train setup. Steam engines pay tax in gold, diesel engines pay tax in fuel and electric and maglev trains pay tax in uranium (U-235). The tax represents maintenance and running cost of a particular engine.
From time to time, Express trains arrive at your station as well as at your neighbour’s station. Most of the time you can’t tell exactly when an Express train will arrive at your station, but you can call them by blowing a Whistle earned during the TrainRide. Look out for the blue signal lights when they come up, it means that an Express Train is just arriving. Taking care of Express trains, either yours or of those at your neighbours’ stations, gives you extra resources and extra experience points.
The station screen is where the major part of your train fun happens. You dispatch trains, collect profit from returned trains, collect mail or build various buildings and enhancements around your station. Everything is in this main screen.
The station itself consists of two important parts: the street (all the buildings are built here) and the rail (your trains arrive here, stop and leave the station.) You begin with one rail and one street and can upgrade to more later on.
All the useful information about your TrainStation is located in the upper part of the station screen: here you can find your passenger and mail count, passenger income, current gold and gem amounts, as well as your current level, experience points needed to progress to the next level, and the overall experience points you earned throughout the game. You can also access other important screens like Trains Overview, Materials Overview, Gift Box, Achievements, Contracts, Museum, Shop and TrainStation settings from the station screen.
TrainStation settings are very easy to use: simply hover over the options and above every button there should be a hovering text with the name or description of the settings button. There are few basic settings like Zoom In and Out, go to Full screen, take a picture of your station, Save current settings and game progress, Lock your buildings and decorations, and two rollout setting menus, one of which contains options to Enable or Disable Sounds, Music, Hints, Gem Confirmation, option to adjust the volume of the game, and visual quality and option to Hide or Show Flags at your station. The second rollout menu contains The building tool.
As soon as you start thinking of building more and better trains, acquiring more wagons, building fancier buildings, or even jazzing up your station with some exciting decorations for your station, you should visit the shop. Each item in the shop has its own square that contains the item's name and some additional information which is explained further here. The shop itself is accessible easily from your main station screen and is clearly organized into sections:
Special and Vintage Offer – Special Offer is the way to obtain some sweet limited items with better stats than regular items available for the same level. Vintage Offer is a way for the new players to get a chance to buy premium stuff from late Special Offers that they might have missed. Vintage Offers are in no way changed from the previous Special Offers they are based on, to ensure that the new players don’t get any advantage over longer playing players that might have bought stuff from those offers. Special Offer and Vintage Offer change twice a week. SO changes on Tuesdays and Fridays and VO changes on Sundays and Wednesdays at 15:00 CET.
Locomotives – Select from a large selection of locomotives for your trains. You can choose from the cheapest engines to the most expensive, most powerful and most profitable models. The additional information contains locomotive cost, tax and power.
Cargo wagons – An extensive variety of cargo wagons for your freight fleet. The additional information contains cost, cargo and capacity.
Passenger and mail wagons – Procure passenger and mail wagons of many kinds for your passenger trains. The additional information contains cost, maximum capacity and profit.
Special wagons – You can choose from various types of special wagons which give you additional XP. The additional information contains cost, profit and bonus.
Buildings – Buildings add glamour and style to your unique station and also serve to attract more passengers for you to transport. Each building has a different passenger income ratio. Apart from common buildings there are some special buildings which enhance the functioning of your station.
Decorations – The purpose of decorations is to make your station look pretty.
Station extensions and themes - This is where you upgrade your station. Add build lines to your station to construct more buildings, add rails to accept and dispatch multiple trains at once or proceed into new themes to discover new trains, buildings and much more.
Flags - Flags placed at your station help you increase your station's passenger income rate and passenger capacity.
If you want your friends to join the fun and play TrainStation with you, just invite them and become neighbours! Having your friends as neighbours in TrainStation offers many benefits. If your friends need more passengers, you can send them a flag which they'll be able to erect at their station to temporarily raise their passenger income rate. All flags expire after a certain period of time from its placement, but they provide an extra bonus to passenger income rate and passenger capacity. Every player is allowed to have maximum of 10 flags at his station. If a player buys a special building called Embassy, it will allow him to place +10 more flags and with the building called Aerial Tower II another 5 more flags.
Help your neighbours and whenever you are in trouble, just ask your neighbours for help. The basic idea of having neighbours is to help each other, making it easier and more fun to play TrainStation.
Visiting your neighbours’ stations lets you collect rewards for dispatching Express trains and also to collect extra mail bags. Express trains and mail bags at neighbours’ stations do not belong to anyone. Therefore collecting rewards and mail at neighbours’ places does no harm to your neighbour.
The 'Trains' screen gives you a brief overview of your trains. Every train has its own status bar, where you can see what is happening at the moment.
Arriving Station – Trains arriving at the station.
Arriving Docks – Trains arriving at the docks.
Arriving Town – Trains arriving at the town.
Departing Station – Trains leaving the station.
Departing Docks – Trains leaving the docks.
Departing Town – Trains leaving the town.
Delivering Shipment – Trains are on their way to your friend or Business Partner.
Pending in Station – If your station rails are full, other trains wait for empty rails to be able to arrive at the station.
Pending in Docks – If the rails in the loading docks are full, other trains wait for empty rails to be able to arrive at the docks.
In Station – Trains waiting in the station are ready to unload and depart either to a destination or into the Construction yard.
In Docks – Cargo trains waiting in loading docks are ready to get loaded.
In Town – Passenger and mail trains waiting in town are ready to get unloaded.
In Depot – Trains waiting in the Construction Yard are ready to get modified or sent back to the station.
Heading to Station – Trains returning from their destination.
Heading to Town – Passenger and mail trains heading to their destination.
Heading to Docks – Cargo trains heading to their destination.
You are able to speed up your local trains any time. This will instantly return your train back to your station. Speeding up trains gives you full profit upon returning but costs gems. You can also speed up your international trains which will cost you 9 Gems, so the journey takes only 3 hours instead of 4. You can cancel your local trains during the first half of their journey. Cancellation of the trains is free but returns the train with zero profit! Local train will return to the station 7 minutes after the cancellation. International trains can be canceled within 10 minutes after the dispatch.
This is basically your train depot where you buy, sell, set up new trains and rebuild old ones. The bottom line of the screen represents your storage of wagons and locomotives. The upper line is the depot’s train assembly rail, where you simply drag (or double-click on the locomotive/wagon) and drop your desired train setup from storage. If you don’t have any locomotives or wagons in storage, access the shop by clicking the 'Shop' button and buy some. As soon as you are done making your new train or modifying an old one, you may send it to the station or you can just leave it in your construction yard for later editing.
Accessing Construction Yard is possible in two different ways. Either via the 'New Train' button in your 'Trains' screen (you need a free train, depot or international slot to do so), or via 'Edit Train' button in 'Train Management' screen (the screen where you are choosing the train destinations).
Having goods under control is very important for an enjoyable gameplay. Material overview shows you your current materials in stock. Every time you unload any of your cargo trains in your station, all of the materials are immediately taken to your warehouse. Afterwards they can be used for building structures, sold to gain some immediate gold or sent via international trains. Materials can be also gained by playing the daily minigame on our TrainStation portal and will be added to your stockpile after refreshing the game.
Museum represents the player’s personal collection of locomotives. It is divided into 5 sections: Steam Engines, Diesel Engines, Electric Engines, Maglev Engines and Train Sets. It holds a record about every locomotive that the player has ever purchased. The record remains in the museum even after the locomotive is sold. Having the locomotive in the museum doesn’t mean it can’t be used. Since it’s just a record in the museum, the locomotive can be put into service normally, if it's present in your storage. The museum is available from player level 6. You are also able to visit your neighbors’ museums to see their collections.
The loading docks and towns are special places. This is where you send your cargo and passenger/mail trains to get loaded up with materials or transform passengers/mail into gold. Once your train enters the destination, you can access it and load the train yourself if you wish or you can simply stay at your station and leave the train to get loaded automatically. Don’t worry, your trains get loaded in the destinations even if you go offline. Remember though, that loading your trains at the destinations manually (by accessing the destination and clicking on an empty wagon) gives you some extra materials or gold and experience points.
As mentioned before, there is a difference between a train running on a Local route and an International Train. While Local Train is sent to earn materials or gold for you, the International Trains are sent carrying your materials from your station to your friends or Business Partners. Local Trains can be sent on many routes, spanning from 10 minutes to one week and the amount of materials brought back depend on locomotive type, wagon bonus, type and route length. International Train is always sent out on a 4 hour run but it arrives in your friend’s station 10 minutes after it’s dispatched due to cancellation possibility. After arrival, an International Train rests at friend's station for 24 hours awaiting collection of goods or gold. If an International Train is not collected by friend at his station within 24 hours, it leaves and all its load is lost (doesn't return to sender). There is a flat -10% Tax on material and gold sent via International trains. It means, that the recipient receives 90% of the material and gold the sender has sent. There is a catch though, when sending International Train to a Contractor, it arrives in the Contractor’s station 2 hours (halfway through its run) after it was dispatched. There, you can unload it to avoid the -10% Tax, or it will be unloaded automatically and the -10% Tax applies. You can read more about Contractors and contracts in a separate topic.
Train ride is a cool feature allowing players to observe their trains while travelling to their destinations. More than that, there are materials, gold, and XP icons flying up from the wagons, which you can collect and the amounts will be added to your material stockpile or your level progress. While collecting the XP icons, they are summed up and when they add up to 85 XP, you are rewarded with an express Whistle. The Whistle can be blown afterwards in your station if you have at least one rail vacant and it will immediately call an Express train that you can take care of. The limit of Whistles obtainable while on TrainRide is 99. However, you can get whistles as a reward for completing contracts and then the maximum amount you can have is limited to 999. Also, you won’t be able to gain any of them on the TrainRide unless the number drops below 99 again.
Contracts can be considered as missions or jobs you take on for various Business Partners. There are currently 12 permanent contractors, mostly based on real people that were somehow connected to the railroads or were a part of the railroad history. Contracts are unlocked once you buy your first International Slot. Afterwards you can choose which contractor you would like to help. You can focus on one particular Contractor, progress randomly or work with all the Contractors at the same time. The decision is yours to make. Some missions require that you sell or move some items at the Contractor’s station, some require building buildings or decorations at their stations, there are also contracts that need you to send a particular wagon, locomotive, or locomotive type and the last type is to deliver some amount of one or more materials. The main tools in progressing through contracts are the International Trains. By dispatching them to the contractors and loading them with materials or gold, you can meet the goals required by our elite twelve railroad businessmen.
Achievements are goals toward which you work, even if you are not aware of it. Basic achievements have 4 levels mostly, with each level a bit tougher than the previous one. They usually require goals like: Send %trans_var1% electric trains, Deliver %trans_var2% material or Build %trans_var3% buildings/decorations. There are also some special achievements, which usually consist of 10 or 13 achievements for which you are rewarded with one locomotive and some special cargo, passenger, mail and special wagons and one main achievement which requires you to send a train set previously obtained in the set achievements consisting of all the wagons and locomotive on a two day route to get the final reward which is usually an awesome building with better passenger income.
The best way to run your Station wisely and with ease is to have all the materials, passengers and mail prepared and have a bit more than needed.
Passengers are gathered in the station thanks to building buildings. The more buildings, the more passengers come to your station. The station’s passenger income can be increased if you put flags at your station.
Mail can be gathered in three different ways. First is collecting envelopes flying up your Station Screen and occasional Mail Parcels that drop at your station. Second is collecting the Mail Parcels that spawn every 12 hours at some of your neighboured stations. The last is receiving Mail as gift. Apart from Mail spawning every 12 hours at neighbours’ stations, there are also Express Trains. However, they spawn every 24 hours only so watch out for the blue train icons and white envelope icons next to the Pictures of your neighbours at the bottom part of the game screen.
Gifts are the easiest way of obtaining materials and/or some items. Every neighbour you have, can send you a gift every 24 hours and so can you. There is a limit of Gifts you can send per hour, which is currently set to 40. However, the amount can be increased by building a special building called Royal Post Office to 60 gifts per hour. Each day of the week, there are 6 different gifts to choose from. Even gems can be obtained as a gift (see 19. Gems). Once every few months we change the basic gifts to keep them appealing.
After a gift has been sent to you, it goes right into your Gift Box and the Gift Box button on your main screen starts jumping and shaking to alert you. In Gift Box, you can see who has sent you which gift and you can also decide how you use your gifts. All gifts, except for materials, may be sold right from Gift Box. This might be handy, because Gift Box has a limited capacity of 200 gifts. Capacity of Gift Box may be extended by another 100 units by constructing a special building called Royal Warehouse.
Also note, that all gifts older than one week are permanently deleted during updates, so check your Gift Box for valuable gifts regularly.
Gems are the TrainStation’s premium currency. There are several ways of obtaining the gems:
The main way of obtaining gems is to buy them with real money by clicking the green plus sign at the top right corner of your Game Screen. On our Pixel Portal (http://portal.pixelfederation.com/), you can choose from 4 gem packages – 310, 660, 1650+165 and 4400+440 gems, while the last option is the most profitable. You also get +10% more gems compared to Facebook, if you purchase them via Pixel Portal. There are also several payment options, such as Paypal, creditcard, etc.
Another way is to complete contracts. Some of the rewards are gems.
You can also receive 1, 2 or 3 gems from Mr. Bill's gem train. This special train arrives once a day at your station.
If you buy one of the 2 bigger gem packages (1650+165 gems and 4400+440 gems), you are able to send 10% to any of your friends who play TrainStation. This move is not necessary you can still keep those 10% for yourself.
We announce weekly competitions on our Facebook Fanpage where you can participate and might win some gems. We also give to our players free Gems during other special events (for example Christmas).
When in the Shop, things you can buy for gems are always indicated by a green square, highlighted with 2 gem signs and you can see how many gems particular thing costs. You should really look out for these indications when you buy things so you don’t lose your gems accidentally. For that reason there is the Confirmation option in the setup menu which prevents you from these accidents.
Storage is where you keep all your unused decorations, buildings, flags, themes and rolling stock. It can be easily upgraded in the Extensions tab located in the shop, whenever you feel you need more space for your precious items. There are some basic filters that work the same as filters in shop. The storage is limited by our technical possibilities but we try to improve it regularly.
Creating Train sets is a feature that was introduced to improve steam and diesel train sets. Even though they looked good, they were not as powerful and efficient as electric sets. Set bonus starts at 5 % and can go as high as 145%. The set bonus kicks in when you have put together a set locomotive with as many set wagons as the locomotive can utilize but there cannot be any non-set wagons or locomotive because the set will not be admitted. If you are not sure which locomotive goes with which wagons, just check the Train Sets tab in your Museum. The set is approved in Museum as complete after you own at least one of each items that the set is composed of, but the completeness in the Museum does not affect the set bonus you obtain. Some of the contracts require sending train sets. If the Contract demands to send a train set, it's also necessary to utilize the locomotive capacity with the correct set wagons (Please note that you are never forced to use gems for completing any of the Contracts in TrainStation – there is always an option to use the items for gold).