Town hints

[fletch5535]

I haven't seen these hints/tips written anywhere on here or other sites on the webring (maybe because they're stating the obvious - but no more obvious than some others), so here goes.

If you're running passenger trains, you need them to be long and fully loaded for max profits. You therefore need your villages to grow into towns/cities. If you bulldoze a village centre to build a station, you will zap half the population an your trains will be empty. Furthermore, your town will not grow. You need to put your station just to the edge of the original town - don't worry, roads will be built and the city will grow around your station and you won't be on the edge for long. Adding a bus station (even without buses) on the townward side will help capture more of the city (you can remove it once traffic builds up). Might as well build a big station, to save knocking down, clearing more land, and rebuilding later.

Design your station so it doesn't prevent growth. If at eaither end of your station you add signals, junctions, depots, the roads built by the game will be unable to cross your railway, and will prevent growth on the other side of the tracks. Better still, deliberately build roads crossing each end of your station and opening up the area beyond to city growth. Try to put depots beyond the catchment area of the station.

[fletch5535]

Carrying on from the above:

Don't build diagonal tracks (diagonally across squares, ie., vertically or horizontally across screen) in towns. Roads, and therefore your city, cannot grow across them. Wait until beyond the station's catchment area before turning diagonal.

Roads can't cross tracks occupied by junctions or signals, so put these beyond the catchment area too. Doing this can extend single track approaches to stations, however, resulting in trains turning back from signals (esp if another train is broken down in the station). Compromise will be required, or a 2-track station - even if initially underused.

Once you have passengers waiting in their thousands, you can be quite savage at expanding stations and increasing track capacity in towns, confident that you'll still have plenty of passengers even after destroying workplaces, homes, roads. You'll have fewer passengers, greater capacity to serve them, and your ratings and profits will actually improve.

[fletch5535]

And there's more.....

Your railways cannot cross roads that have junctions. To cross these roads, remove the junction/stub, then lay your track. You can't do this if it's owned by a competitor (or at least I have never found a way).

The council will not let you remove roads which form part of a through route. To remove square of through road, lay rail track across it (you now own it!), then bulldoze it.

If you want to clear a square which is a road junction on a through road, do both of the above. Remove the junction, lay track across the road, then bulldoze.


OK, obvious, but posted for completeness (and for absolute beginners).


I have not found a way of removing junctions or bends on competitors roads, only council roads.

[Purno]

Don't triple post. Don't even double post. If you forgot to say something, edit your post with the edit button. And be patient about replies, this is not Instant Messaging.

[fletch5535]

Sorry, purno, didn't see the edit button - thanks.

I just luurrvve your NS rolling stock, by the way.