Wiki / Building
Stations
A station is a door into the network. Where the door is decides who uses it; how wide it is decides how fast they get through.
Placing a station
Stations go on track. Select the station tool, then click a piece of track — the game will not place one in mid-air, and it will tell you if the spot cannot take it.
Three things matter more than the artwork:
Spacing. The tutorial's own advice is 1–2 km between stations. Closer than that and every train spends its day stopping; much farther and the walk at each end eats the advantage over driving. The demand model compares total journey time, so a station nobody can walk to contributes almost nothing.
Platform length. A platform has to be long enough for the trains you intend to run. Platform length is part of the station's cost, and it is the cheaper half of the capacity question: one long platform serving long trains usually beats two short ones.
The station building. The building is drawn as a footprint with corners and has its own cost. It also counts as a waiting room — if you have already built one, the game will not charge you for a second.
Station upgrades
Each station can be upgraded from its panel. The four upgrades are small in the interface and large in the simulation:
| Upgrade | What it does | When to build it |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal | Trains turning here use both platforms; turning capacity goes from 15 trains per hour to 30 | Any busy terminus, and any station where several lines end |
| Waiting room | Waiting here feels 20% shorter | Busy stops with low-frequency lines — the wait is the cost |
| Parking lot | Travelling here from far away feels 10 minutes shorter | Suburban and park-and-ride stations at the edge of the network |
| Passing tracks | Faster trains can pass slower trains that are stopped here | Mixed-speed lines, and any station where an express is stuck behind a stopper |
Two of these are about perceived time, which is the currency the demand model actually spends. A waiting room does not make trains faster; it makes riders more likely to choose them. That is usually better value than another train.
Upgrade the complex, not the station
Waiting rooms and parking lots can apply to a whole complex — every station connected by passages. If two platforms serve the same place, upgrade the complex once rather than each station separately.
Terminals, turning and the capacity list
A line has to turn its trains somewhere. Where it does that has a hard capacity cost, and the line inspector will name it:
- Turning on a platform — a line ends at a through station and reverses on one platform. Expensive in capacity: each train holds the platform for its turnaround plus a minute.
- Terminal — the station gets sidings past the platform, so trains turn off the platform. Doubles turning capacity.
- Reversing partway — a train reverses mid-line. Limited to 12 trains an hour on each side of a stop, or 30 at a station with a terminal.
- Dead-end terminus — no crossing conflict at all. The cheapest way to end a line, if you can route it that way.
If a line is "full" but the track looks empty, the answer is often here: the bottleneck is a platform where every train stops and turns.
Passages and complexes
Two nearby stations can be joined by a passage, making them one complex for transfers. This matters because a transfer is where a network stops being a collection of lines and starts being a network: a rider can change from one line to another without leaving the station.
Passages are drawn from the station panel and cost money like anything else. They are worth it when two lines cross at different depths or a few hundred metres apart — the alternative is riders walking between them, or not making the trip at all.
Reading a station
Select a station and the panel shows its boardings, its lines, and what its upgrades are doing. On the map, the station display can be switched between three counts:
| Layer | What it counts |
|---|---|
| Origins | Riders starting a trip at this station |
| Transfers | Riders changing lines here |
| Total | All riders using the station |
A station with high origins and low transfers is a destination. High transfers and low origins is an interchange. Both are useful, and they need different things: origins want access (parking, walking catchment), transfers want platform capacity and short walks between platforms.
Why a station can be busy and still lose money
Boardings are not the same as revenue. A station can be the busiest on the network and still be served by a line that runs half empty in the other direction all day. The line panel's average load is the number to check, not the boardings alone.
A checklist for a new station
- Is it on track that trains actually run on, on the line you meant?
- Is it 1–2 km from its neighbours, not 300 m and not 4 km?
- Can the platform take the trains you run — and the longer ones you might run later?
- Does it need a terminal (if lines end here), a waiting room (if waits are long), parking (if it is the edge of the network), or passing tracks (if expresses use the line)?
- Does it connect to anything? A station with no transfer and no destination is a stop, not a network.