Starting to Transport Passengers - Strategy Needed

[clarklawson]

I've been playing the large UK scenario for a while now and always concentrate on industrial transport but fancy moving onto passengers and mail. However, I never seem to get anything decent going.

I was thinking of having a two tiered approach, some intercity trains and some local services to suburbs and towns. However, this never seems to provide a good organised system.

As industries are A to B type transport, I was wondering what the best solution to creating a rail nextwork for passengers.

Any tips and experiance on this type of network would be good.

Like where do you start? How do you start and then look to grow the network?

[Wintersoldier]

Well, I almost always start my games by choosing a large city, building two or three bus stations and then building two buses to serve those stations. I'm no expert on building complex rail networks, but I'd start by finding two relatively large cities that are fairly close together, building a rail line between them, and just going from there.

[Doorslammer]

I've been playing the large UK scenario for a while now and always concentrate on industrial transport but fancy moving onto passengers and mail. However, I never seem to get anything decent going.

I was thinking of having a two tiered approach, some intercity trains and some local services to suburbs and towns. However, this never seems to provide a good organised system.

As industries are A to B type transport, I was wondering what the best solution to creating a rail nextwork for passengers.

Any tips and experiance on this type of network would be good.

Like where do you start? How do you start and then look to grow the network?

I tend to have fairly convincing networks after a few years that would resemble a proper railway as opposed to all these ultra huge junction complexes and stations others tend to go for. Although you are right, it isn't efficient. I would rather be happy than right any day though...

Play as you feel, learn along the way.

[nevann]

I have a Passenger game going at the moment that I'm essentially doing backwards.

I started out on the scenario editor and only added 1 town. Then I started building main-lines and branch-lines and then added new towns around the track, rather than the other way around.
I'm using the Cargo distribution patch so that passengers don't just get off at the next stop, which is essential when you're building a proper network.
I haven't got far with it yet, but I've been running 9-car express services between the cities and smaller 3/4-car commuter services that stop at the main-line's smaller stations and run the branch lines. I also ran a couple of buses between nearby towns via small villages

Here's some screenshots:

[clarklawson]

Thanks guys, I've move onto the ultimate USA scenario which I'm concentrating on goods at the minute.

It's a fun scenario and will hope to move to passengers sometime soon.

[audigex]

Try using a cargodist build - it naturally lends itself to different types of routes and services (suburbans to collect the passengers into a main city station, rural routes to reach the outlying towns, intercity trains to link up the cities, and expresses to link the major centres without wasting time/capacity on the smaller locations).