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Getting started
trainsworld is a game about modal share. You build the alternative, and then you watch how many people take it.
What the game actually is
trainsworld is a free browser game. You pick a city on a real world map, draw track, place stations, and run lines on them. The game is not about driving trains — it is about where people go. It simulates the trips of everyone in a metropolitan area: from homes to workplaces, schools, hospitals, shops, airports and each other. A few of those trips are on your trains. The rest are walked, driven, or not made at all.
Every system in this wiki exists to change that split. The game calls it transit share, and it is the number you are optimising.
Everything is on the real map
The map is real geography with real city names and real coordinates — 3,982 metro areas in the current data pack. The demand inside each one is simulated, not real census data, but it is generated from real place types: schools, hospitals, airports, attractions and workplaces are mapped from sources the game credits in its own panels.
Starting a game
A new game asks for three things.
Where. You can find a city by name, choose a point on the map, or use your current location. The city you pick decides the map you start zoomed into, the homes and jobs the model creates around you, and the neighbours you can eventually connect to.
How hard. Easy, medium and hard adjust the starting conditions. A first game should be easy: it gives you room to learn the build tools before the money matters.
What kind. There are three switches that change the game more than the difficulty does.
| Option | What it changes |
|---|---|
| Normal | The intended game: you start with a budget and earn your way out of it. |
| Sandbox | Unlimited money. Good for testing a layout. Sandbox games are excluded from leaderboards and community sharing. |
| Real world network | Starts with the city's own rail lines already built. A completely different puzzle — you inherit a network and have to improve its share. |
The loop, in the game's own words
The built-in tutorial walks through exactly this. It is worth following the first time, because the order matters: demand first, then track, then stations, then trains.
- Zoom into a city. The filled part of the map is where the model has homes and jobs.
- Look at the bar at the top of the screen. Green is walking, red is cars and other modes, blue is transit. It is the mode split for what you are looking at — the same number you are trying to move.
- Click a demand bubble. A bubble is a cluster of homes; its colour tells you how those people get around. Click a destination to follow one trip and see what it would take to serve it.
- Place about 5 km of track. The track tool draws in a straight-ish line; you can add points and change level as you go.
- Place stations on the track, 1–2 km apart. Closer than that and trains spend their time stopping; much farther and nobody walks to them.
- Construct your blueprints. Track and stations are drawn as a blueprint first. Nothing is built — or paid for — until you construct it.
- Create a line and assign stops by clicking the stations in order on the map.
- Add trains to the line. The schedule panel has a stepper for each demand period.
- Unpause. The clock runs and the demand solver starts reporting what your line actually carries.
- Watch the load. If trains are crowded, lengthen them or add more; if they run half empty, take capacity out.
The one habit that pays off
Before you draw anything, click two or three bubbles and follow their trips. Ten seconds of looking at where people go is worth more than ten minutes of track. The game models the demand already — your job is to notice the patterns in it.
Reading the top bar
The bar across the top is the game's dashboard, and it is worth learning to read early.
- The mode bar — walking, driving and transit, as a share of trips. This is the headline.
- Transit share — the percentage of trips in the current scope that use your network.
- Cash — what you have. Hovering it shows today's fares, running costs and upkeep.
- The demand period — which part of the day you are in, and when the next one starts. Demand is not flat: morning peak is not the same as midday, and it decides how many trains you need.
- The clock — pause with Space. Time speeds up as the solver catches up.
What to do after the first line
The order that works:
- Make one line genuinely useful. Connect a dense residential area to a dense job area. Aim for a line where the trains are busy at peak and not empty at midday.
- Check the load in each demand period, not just the one you are looking at. A line can be crushed in the morning and comfortable at lunch — that is a schedule problem, not a capacity problem.
- Add a second line that meets the first, and let people transfer. A network's share grows faster than the sum of its lines, because a transfer turns two half-routes into one journey.
- Look at your weakest city, not your strongest. The cities panel sorts by share; the bottom of that list is where the next station pays for itself.
Saves
Games live in your browser's storage. The game autosaves, and the saved-games list on the start screen lets you download a copy, load one from a file, or delete one. A game open in another tab is locked until you close it. There is no account required to play; an account is only needed for leaderboards and community sharing.
Two tabs, one save
The game refuses to open the same save in two tabs at once — you will see a message telling you to close the other one. This is a save-integrity feature, not a bug: two live copies would overwrite each other.