Vehicles can be bought/sold in vehicle depots, hangars, or shipyards. You can learn more about building depots on the stations and depots page.
Open the depot window by clicking on a depot building. There you can get new vehicles, sell vehicles, and change the configuration of vehicles:
Vehicles can't be transferred from depot to depot directly, so make sure to buy them in a depot, from which they are able to reach their intended destination. However, if a vehicle is send back to the depot, it will not go back to the depot it was bought, but to the nearest reachable depot.
Most wagons, trucks and ships can load multiple types of cargo. You may manually specify a specific cargo type, or leave it on the default setting “Automatic”. If left set to “Automatic”, the vehicle will automatically refit itself to the cargo waiting at each station along its route.
If you manually set a cargo type, the vehicle will ONLY ever load this specific cargo type. In the example on the right, the tank wagon will either load crude, oil or fuel.
Even when set to “Automatic”, an initial default cargo type will be shown when leaving the depot for the first time. e.g. Road freight vehicles generally show “logs” as their initial default but will change when first loaded.
Units set to a specific cargo type may be reset by returning them to the depot. Likewise, those set to “automatic” at purchase time can be re-purposed for a specific cargo type at any depot.
Besides trains, vehicles usually can't be linked together in the vanilla game. When buying trains, wagons will automatically link to the last bought locomotive.
Note: the the top speed of a train is determined by the lowest top speed of any locomotive or wagon in the train. Top speed is a factor in setting a train's transport price per Km.
For more information about weight, lifespan, tractive effort, power and top speed please visit the vehicles page.
The vehicle window is composed of a current view of the vehicle, various controls, and information about the vehicle.
The vehicle window can be opened by clicking:
The vehicle controls on the right side (“Overview” tab) include:
On the bottom of the “Overview” tab you can find the current state of the vehicle, and below its current load and speed.
Any vehicle in service needs to be assigned to a line, in order to be able to travel between destinations. A line consists of a list of stops, e.g. train stations. A vehicle assigned to the line will try to travel from one stop to the next. When the last stop is reached, it will travel back to the first stop in the list. A line should consist of more than one stop and two consecutive identical stops are not recommended.
The train in the example on the right will travel from A to B to C to B, and then back to A.
When running multiple trains on one line or multiple lines on one track, the use of signals is recommended. Please refer to the signaling guide to find out more.
Lines are created and manged via the line manager. Click on the respective button in the menu bar to open it.
Create a new line
Click the “New line” button to create an empty line or select an existing line from the list to edit it. Lines can be filtered by transportation mode or by visibility on the screen.
Add a station
Click the “Add station” button (it will activate automatically when creating a new line) and then click on a station building or icon to add it to the list.
New stations will be added at the end of the list. If you select a station from the list first, new stations will be added right after the selected station.
Remove a station
Select a station from the list and click on the “X” symbol to delete a stop from the list.
Frequent problems
Note that mixing station types on a line (for example a bus stop and a train station) is not allowed. A warning will be displayed, and the line will not show up in the assignment list of a vehicle. As already mentioned above, the line should also contain at least two stations. You will be warned about that, too. Same for consecutive duplicate stations in a line.
Change terminal assignment
Terminals are assigned automatically to each stop of a line.
It is possibly to change the assignment in the “Terminals” tab of a station, by clicking on the line name and selecting a specific terminal.
Alternatively, a terminal can be assigned in the overview tab of a line, by clicking on the terminal number.
Automatically fix connection problems
One or more terminals may become unreachable if the road or track network is changed by the player and a message will be displayed in the warnings list.
To fix the problem you can be reassign the terminals as described above or click the “Try to fix problem automatically” next to the error message in the line window.
Trains and street vehicles will always use the shortest route to travel from one stop to the next. But sometimes it can make sense for the player to adjust this behavior, e.g. for traffic regulation. The player can influence a route by placing way-points and add them to the stop list of its line (similar to stations). As with stations, the vehicle is obligated to visit the way-point and thus changes its route, if the way-point was not placed on the previous shortest route. See the example in the image on the right for comparison.
Note: Vehicles will not stop at way-points, and in case of trains, signals can also be used as way-points.
The load mode can be changed by clicking on the label right to the stop name.
There are four load modes available:
Note that in the vanilla game “all” and “any” only applies to trains and ships, they are the only vehicles which can load multiple cargo types at once. Any other vehicle type will wait for full load in both cases.
Timeout
To avoid vehicles waiting indefinitely long, a timeout can be set in the “Vehicles” tab. After the specified time, without receiving any new cargo items, the vehicle will depart. The default timeout is 3 minutes and refers to real time passed, when playing on default game speed.
An automatic vehicle replacement is available on the “Replacement” tab in every line window. By clicking on “Set vehicle” you can select or change the vehicle or composition, which is used to replace current line vehicles or compositions. When the automatic replacement is set to “Yes”, a vehicle on this line will be replaced, when reaching the selected percentage of its lifespan. Vehicles are usually replaced after stopping and unloading at a station.