If you are at all similar to me, you have a fairly strong background in city builder games, feel somewhat overwhelmed by the prospect of successfully managing your corporation in A-Train and have found little guidance on how to successfully manage your company in its entirety. You've probably perused various guides on how to set up and configure a route, or how to game the stock market but continue to be somewhat mystified as to the entire picture of what makes a company successful ie: how to win.

This guide is intended to be the stop gap between you and quitting out of sheer frustration because once you get past A-Train's admittedly large barrier to entry, it is indeed a very enjoyable city builder from which you may receive countless hours of enjoyment!

It should be noted that even once this guide is published it should be considered a living document. If you have something to add or I have erred in my advice or suggestions please feel free to contact me so the guide can be updated! This guide may also contain any number of spelling or grammatical errors as it has been fairly hastily assembled. Any help in contibuting to this guide would also be welcomed, contact me if you feel like editing or adding.

Time compression is there for a reason, use it... or leave the game on 1x and go to work for the day. Your choice. Income can be slow, especially when starting out. Do not hesitate to use time compression! 8x is not an unreasonable compression at which to play.

Be sure to enable just about everything in the Schedule tab in the Options menu. Why these are not enabled by default is a mystery to the author. You can leave Platform scheduling and Individual Departures off for the time being. They have their own uses but are not necessary when starting out. Eventually you'll find a need for them.

Be sure you check the Platform Settings upon loading a map, A-Train has an extremely frustrating amusing habit of resetting platform settings on a game load. This bug is the opposite of fun should you encounter it.

At base, the goal of this game is to create a demand for growth by moving men and materials and thereby become a modern day robber barron. This game differs from several of its contemporaries in the sense that you have to manage all aspects of urban growth. In Sim City it's as simple as plopping down some zoning and roads and the people will come while in OpenTTD city growth is governed by delivery of people and goods.

A-Train is governed by both. Without transport infrastructure nobody will have any place to go while without subsidiaries (which are loosely analagous to Sim City zones) people will have no place to live, work, shop and so forth. In the middle of all this is material, without which nothing can be built.

You cannot ignore any aspect of A-Train and hope to be successful!

Materials are the blood of your city. Without them your city cannot function! The first thing required for any city to develop is a supply of materials. Materials are produced with Materials Factories and stored at Materials Depots. Construction can only be performed with materials stored at a depot. For intents and purposes, the materials produced at a factory are unavailable to both the player and the ai until such a time as those materials are delivered to a depot. Even if a depot is located adjacent to a factory, the materials will need to be picked up and delivered by rail or truck in a process we will call Flow of Materials.

The delivery of materials serves two purposes. It provides the raw resources required for any construction to occur and it provides a flow, creating demand for those materials thereby. Especially when starting out, demand is dictated by the delivery of materials.

With a steady trickle of materials being provided, men from far and wide will gaze upon your glorious pile of shipping containers and instinctively want to live near them. To do so, they will buy the materials from your materials depots and use them to construct homes and businesses. The homes they build are ultimately of little value and hold precious few people, but those same men who flocked to the storage container pile will now require jobs to pay for the error of their ways. While unemployment, to the best of my knowledge, is not modeled in A-Train there is a symbiotic relationship between business and residence. The more men that exist to work, the more profitable local businesses will be, the more profitable local businesses are, the more men will want to work at them.

To operate a successful railroad empire in A-Train 9 you will have to manage the flow of men and materials while operating in what accountants like to refer as "the black." Overextending your company in A-Train is not a hard thing to do, and many a new player has attempted a bold project in their early years only to find themselves drowning in red ink. The management aspect of A-Train covers several facets of gameplay. The first and most obvious is vehicle procurement and scheduling. However; the stock market, real estate, construction planning and financial prudence are all required for success. It should be noted in this overview that the financial aspect of this game is probably the most difficult part to master. Between income tax, value added tax [VAT] and property tax, the state has an entire arsenal at its disposal with which it will attempt to bankrupt you. As always, the man is standing in the way of free enterprise!

Subsidiaries are a crucial element in a company's success or failure in A-Train. When utilized properly they will propel your bottom line to new heights, but if mismanaged will sink your company in short order. They can be placed via the Construction menu or purchased once previously placed by the AI. Subdidiaries will have an influence on the types of buildings that the AI will place in their general area as well as a direct effect on passenger ridership. In the long term, there's no sense in simply operating the transit networks of the city when you can own the entirety of the city; keeping the simpleton masses living in constant fear that at any moment you will buy out their meager apartment in order to construct your railroad headquarters.



Tip: Anything making 10% or less of a margin is losing you money on an annual basis once you factor in income and property tax. Either improve the economic situation of the subsidiary or cut bait, take the loss and let the AI deal with it.


Passenger flow and demand will be largely governed by the placing of subsidiaries, but until such a time as large volumes of people are being moved nearby, the profit margins of subsidiaries will languish. While it may be tempting to build a district of department stores around your station, unless it is already well established with a large ridership, profits will suffer and you'll end up losing money every year on property taxes. A pet store or a supermarket is a much more viable early game / early development choice. By the time it is well established it will have paid for itself, you can demolish it and place a shiny new department store in its stead. Subsidiaries like department stores, temples and stadiums scale very well with increased population and passenger flows. Things like self storage and parking garages do not. Cull the poorly producing subsidiaries as passenger flows increase.

It is imporant to note that the demand of passenger transit (read: the maximum number of people that can move at any given time) is based upon the city's population. If you've added a few new trains to your schedule and trains that were previously full are now running at half capacity you have probably found this limit and should consider investing in apartments to grow the city's population. More population = more passengers = more business = better returns on subsidiaries and transport.

Who would have guessed that you also get to play utility company in A-Train? Ensuring an adequate supply of electricity is essential for fostering city development as well as lining your palms with silver. Manage the supply of electricity carefully. Too much and it's not profitable, too little and you will stunt your city's rate of growth. Ideally you want to keep generation of electricity less than 10,000kWh over demand. This ensures adequate supply while allowing for high rates! Plopping down an enourmous amount of capaity early on does littlle but ensure you'll be losing money on electricity for the next decade.

Power plants can be constructed via the Power Plants tab under the Construction menu. The Swift Wind Turbine is a strong consider until around such a time as you can afford GeoThermal power and the demand exists to support it. They cost next to nothing to build in terms of capital and materials and will pay for themselves in just a year or two. They can also be placed in very close proximity to roads low density housing and business! Try to keep them out of the way of choice development land-- coastal areas and hills are good spots for placement.


Remember to phase out obsolete production methods as you place down high-capacity power plants! For every 250,000kWh GeoThermal plant you place down, remove 247,000KwH of Wind power! As the city and demand grows, place more Windmills down until such a time as you can repeat this process.

The need to borrow money to get started is largely dependent upon the scenario you choose to play. Some scenarios start you out with an abundance of capital with some offering just a few hundred million to work with. You're going to want to have between $700m and $1b in the corporate account before you start developing your city. If you are below this threshold, open up the Market screen, select the Bank tab, select the amount you wish to borrow and change the Loan Term to 10 years. Ideally interest rates are very low, but you work with what you've got at the start of the map since you don't really have time to wait for a better rate. This will give you much needed capital for early development!

Tip: Borrowing less than $100m is generally frivolous, and if you need such a loan it's probably indicative of other problems.

Tip: The interest amount noted on the loan at the time of taking it out is assuming the loan is paid back over the course of the selected period. You will pay less in interest if you pay the loan back early.

Tip: Try to avoid high-intest loans (see picture) as much as possible early in development. Paying back the initial loan +50% is just painful.

Probably not what you wanted to hear, but planning ahead will save you a lot of time, money and frustration in the long run. The biggest advantage in planning ahead is of course monetary saving. Before an area becomes developed, land values are dirt cheap and you can lay down huge swaths of road and rail for a few million dollars. Compared to once an area is built up and just a few hundred feet of track can cost several (tens of) million dollars the monetary incentive for early infrastructure development is enormous! Realizing you require a switch in an area that the AI has graciously plopped down a department store can run well over a hundred million. Lay infrastructure early as much as possible.

This isn't to say you have to cover the entire map with road and rail when just starting out, but you should have it laid to the edge of the materials depot development zone which is, unfortunately, not shown visually with a nice green halo. I've read it influences a radius of approximately 600m-- going a bit beyond this won't hurt anything... especially when it's nice and cheap. Suffice to say, the influence area of a materials depot extends well beyond the green halo of a train station's influence. Plan accordingly!

Tip: Wait for a market dip and buy out profitable businesses that are in the way of track or other infrastructure you might need to place. Assuming that the infrastructure you are wanting to place does not need to be immediately constructed you can mitigate your costs by waiting for the business to pay for itself before demolishing it! Take heed that this will probably take several years to realize. If it is absolutely critical that it be placed immediately, you're just going to have to eat the cost.

All buildings in A-Train are a multiple of 20m in size. 40x40 are very common but there are plenty of buildings that will occupy 60 or 80m in a direction-- some specialty buildings larger still. You can use material depots nature preserves to measure out where you want roads to go to maximize space. Think of the roads in A-Train more along the lines of avenues rather than streets. Streets are presumed to go through the various developments. Consequently, it is not a requirement that every building touch road or rail. They will continue to develop a fair ways off of the beaten path. An untested guess would be 200m.

Leave yourself a few meters of wiggle room when mapping out your roads. A-Train has a fun habit of not letting you plop things down in spaces that should fit but are hair tight from time to time. It can be frustrating and it can be costly!

Tip: Use the geo tool to be certain that all the ground inside your block is level at the altitude you want. Ironing out a few bumps will save you money later.

Tip: If, when placing subsidiaries, the building does not want to snap to existing construction or road there is a good chance there is a minute change in elevation present. Once again, use that geo tool!

Tip: Use ctrl+mouse wheel to change the desired elevation when placing roads, rails or depots.

Tip: Roads and rails appear to have a 10% grade when changing elevation. They must travel 200m in a straight line to be raised 20m in altitude. Consequently, if you wish you elevate your road/rail on to a hill your block should run a length of at least 240m as the junction or bend will require approximately 40m of space.

The land around busy rail stations will become supremely valuable! It is adviasable to map out some 80 meters from the platforms. Don't run roads right up to the rail building, doing so will rob you of choice development land and limit your options if and when you which to upgrade or replace the rail station!

Speaking of choice development land, be sure to "reserve" a bit of it for your own future developments by building nice cheap rail over any swath of land you don't want the AI cluttering up with its urban blight.


I have read conflicting reports on whether the size and type of a station influence ridership; nevertheless, keep your options open.

When placing rail stations, ensure as much of the influence area [preferably all] as well as a fair measure beyond covers level ground or +/- 30m in altitude. Avoid placing rail stations on water fronts as much as possible as they will seriously limit development later on. Use the Geo Tool very liberally to ensure that there is as much development space around your station as can be provided. Obviously, if it is your intention to have a scenic rural station that makes a little bit of money but is not intended to be an urban juggernaut, this can be avoided to some extent.

Do not fear the use of the Geo Tool, land values don't seem to apply to its use, so unless you are really moving mountains it is entirely affordable.

Tip: Be sure to level the terrain to your liking before placing objects, tunnels, subway etc. underground as you will no longer be able to lower the terrain on top of objects underground. This can be a supremely expensive mistake if you realize you want to level ground on top of a tunnel in an area with high land values!

If it is your intention to develop an area to a point that you will be providing an extensive number of trains, lay rail 4 wide before development. It will save you time, money and frustration in the long run. If in doubt, spend the extra dough while land is dirt cheap, if your development plans change or never come to fruition, it is inexpensive to remove track. Keep in mind that trains will reduce their speed around sharp corners, inclines, declines and junctions. Use them where needed, but avoid their installation where possible.

Now that you hopefully have some idea of how you want your urban areas to develop and have the early infrastructure in place, it's time to get some initial development with materials delivery. You're going to want to scout a location for your materials factories and Classification Yards [read: freight station] that will be cheap and central to as many areas of future expansion as possible. Avoid long freight runs! A short run to many areas is what you are looking for with freight yards!

At least 4 platforms with a length of 10 is highly advisable as you're going to want to minimize the amount of delivery runs as much as possible. Four platforms can service at least four developing areas with four freight trains! When placing your initial Yards you can cut the costs in half by setting the station option to No Station Buildings. Double the cost is a lot to swallow early on for aesthetic reasons. The station functions no differently!

Plop down two or three Small Materials Factories next to your Classification Yard and you're ready to start making materials deliveries. As with all stations, avoid road construction within 80m of the station itself and reserve some of the area in case you want to expand materials production.

Tip: Materials depots have an effective elevation influence of +/-30m. In areas that are at sea-level, the smart money puts materials depots underground at an elevation of -20m; however, if you are intending to develop hilly areas it makes the most sense to place them at the mid elevation. For example: Let's say I intend to develop at altitudes between 0m and 40m, the best elevation at which to place the Depot would be 20m as it would support elevations between -10m and 50m. The same applies for deliveries to the depot. The drop off point could now be at 0m, 20m, or 40m!

Tip: The size of a materials factory does not seem to dictate how fast the factory actually produces materials. In terms of raw production, four small depots will significantly outproduce one large one while maintaining the same footprint.

This gets its own section because this is important: the default freight trains for A-Train are absolutely atrocious. Do not use the CSX train user any circumstances as it is perennially bugged. Maybe one day they'll fix it, but until then avoid it like the plague, it delivers basically nothing and is slow to boot. The DC4 is just way too slow and the EC6 moves slowly in reverse! Fortunately for you, you can have the best of both worlds: enter custom trains.

Open the Custom tab, select and empty slot and click Create Freight. Select a Train Configuration of 10 and add an EC6 as your front locomotive. Add the Middle Car, Others that is immediately adjacent to the right of the EC6 locomotive as cars 2-9. You swap car selection by clicking the individual white boxes at the top of the Custom screen. Select slot 10, add another EC6 and click Flip 1 Car so that it looks awesome. Add any Pantographs you may or may not desire and click Enter Custom Train. You now have an awesome Freight train with excellent capacity that moves at a good pace in forward as well as reverse! Just remember to click on Custom when buying your freight trains!

Open up the Train screen, make sure Train is selected, select an empty slot and click Buy. This will bring up a list of rolling stock available for your company to purchase. Because the default freight trains are awful we are going to purchase the custom freight train you made in the section above by clicking the Custom tab. Select the freight train you just finished customizing and click Confirm Purchase.

The train is now owned by your company, but has not yet been placed or scheduled. Pause the game, click Place and place it on the platform at your Classification Yard. Take note of its direction of initial travel which will be indicated by a blue arrow at the end of the train. If it is pointed in the wrong direction, simply click Turn Around.

Now that it is waiting patiently on pause at the platform, select Timetable assistant. The settings here are largely situation dependent, but we will create a simple timetable for now with the assumption that this freight train is operating at a Terminal style station which has entry and exit along the same direction. Select Departure Time as the Action Mode and set the top sliders to 0300 and 0400 with the bottom slider set to 0405. This gives the train an hourly depature with no departures permitted after 0405. Because the train will almost certainly take more than an hour to get to its destination and return, you have effectively scheduled one material delivery per day with this train. Select Reverse as the direction so the train turns around when it returns to the platform. Select Load as your Materials options and Every Month Weekdays as your service schedule. Click the X in the top right corner of Station Settings and unpause the game (you might need to fast forward a bit to get around to the next scheduled departure time).

As the train travels along the track, any switch it comes to it is going to prompt you for what direction you want the train to travel. Because the rail layout will differ by player it is impossible to give a precise walk through for this part. Suffice it to say at each junction you come to, select either straight or branch (the blue arrow on the switch provides a visual indication of the direction) and navigate the train to it's delivery spot.

When it arrives at its delivery location the Station Settings will once again prompt you for a course of action. Select Stop as the action mode and 00:10 as the time, Reverse direction, Unload materials and Every Month Daily as the service schedule. Close the station settings out again and navigate the train back to same platform from which it originally departed. Once the train has completed its entire course, click the blinking Close Timetable Assistant in the top left corner to complete scheduling. This train will now make materials deliveries in the early morning, Monday through Friday.

Once materials have been transiting for a week or two, you should begin to see some initial development springing up in the area around your materials depot. The most likely things you'll see are agriculture and housing, though a couple of businesses might pop up here and there. Now is the time you'll want to be considering placing a few subsidiaries while the materials are available and land values are reasonably low.

Shops are generally what you'll be looking to place for early development. You're looking for a few things when placing these subsidiaries: low cost of ownership and a reasonable return. The Supermarket, Pet Shop or Petrol Station are reasonably candidates for early placement and should scale well at least up until the time they are completely paid for and can be replaced with something a bit more lucrative. They are also a small footprint which keeps the cost of ownership down a bit.

There is another reason for placing these early subsidiaries and that is to gauge early game demand for passenger services! Coming from other games it may be tempting to want to buy a high capacity train to operate between your developments, but in A-Train this is the equivalent of fixing the cart before the horse.

The indicator that the time is right for intial passenger services is when the subsidiaries you just placed are no longer losing money. They may well still be in the red for the year, but if you keep their information up while fast forwarding, they aren't losing money (or are losing very little money) with each cycle. Now is the time to spur demand with passenger services!

This section is operating under the assumption that you have a reasonably planned out developmental strategy with two fledgling developments within a reasonable distance of one another that are both being serviced exclusively by freight for the time being. A couple of subsidiaries have been placed at both locations and the indications are good that a sufficient demand for passenger services exists between those locations.

Your first large investment is going to come in the form of a 10 car AR9 train that is going to be used for your initial passenger service. This pricetag in the early game is a bit of a shocker at around $230 million, but it has a high capacity of nearly 1,000 and when operating full can turn a very good profit on a daily basis. When operating this train on a line, it is absolutely critical that it be operating at or very near capacity for every trip it makes. Because it will for some time be the only train operating it shouldn't be too hard to keep it at capacity.

There is going to be a lot of dead time in your city since it is far from having 24hour demand for anything. Without knowing the distances involved it is impossible for this guide to give precise advice on scheduling your first passenger train, but a reasonable timetable for this first train would be hourly departures starting at 09:00 and ending at 19:05 with an hour stop at its destination. Keep an eye on things and once you notice it at capacity for every trip it makes, that is the time to expand service for the train. Have it depart earlier, cease departures later or reduce the layover time at the destination station. Work an hour or two at a time, don't make huge adjustments to the schedule. This train, well managed and with a little bit of time should be generating a few hundred thousand a day for you-- not to mention the increases the bottom line of your subsidiaries.

It would seem that the fare paid by passengers is determined by locomotive type rather than passenger car type. Whether this is intended behavior is debatable; however, assuming you have no qualm with abusing potential exploits, it behooves you to make custom trains featuring your fastest locomotives with your highest capcity rail cars (Maglev + AR9com, anybody?) to maximize both passenger deliveries and profit margins! It is the sincere belief of the author that this is an oversight on behalf of Artdink at the very least, since commuter train cars were obviously never engineered to go 350kph. Until, if ever, it is fixed though, viva la exploit.

Alright, you've made your initial investments, you've got men and materials moving and you're profitable financially, albeit barely. This has probably left you with lots of upfront costs, red ink and preciously little available capital. You need capital to reinvest, but the capital coming in is basically a trickle at thie point. This is the make or break moment of your upstart company!

Look around your stations for profitable businesses that the AI has placed. You're looking for several things when looking at real estate: upfront cost, approximate yearly profit and the estimated time to pay off the property. The less time that is required to pay off the property, the more useful it is to your company. Anything that will require fewer than 10 years to pay off should be considered, but ideally you're wanting 5-7 years at this stage. Keep economies of scale in mind; an office building is almost certainly a better investment for your company than bicycle parking!

Tip: If you have a firm grasp of your financial situation you can make investments at any point of the year; however, for a new player it is probably inadvisable to buy local businesses out before paying yearly taxes, the last of which is paid on May 1st.

Tip: Use the Economy Graph on the Markets screen to get an idea of overall market health as it represents property values as well as stock prices. Wait for a good red dip, pause the game, and look for good bargains.

Tip: Always keep an appropriate account balance on hand to pay monthly expenditures. When starting out this can be as low as $10 million, but as your company grows so do the requisite expenditures.

Probably the easiest way to make money in your first couple of years, and will provide much needed capital injections to expand infrastructure or buy subsidiaries! I've written another guide on the subject which I will link here when I'm not busy being lazy. Suffice it to say, you're looking to buy low and sell high. Wait for a very good market dip and buy those stocks up when they hit the $4.xx/share range, $3.xx/share is exceptional but won't come around very often. You can turn a very good profit in the $4.xx/share range. Fast forward and wait for the share prices to go north of $15/share and you will have turned a very tidy profit.

Tip: Do not drop below your outstanding total debt sans loans + $10m when buying stocks early on! You can always repeat the process, but keep in mind that as montly costs increase so too must your float.

Tip: When reinvesting stock gains into infrastructure, subsidiaries, trains etc. keep some extra cash on hand come the new year as your capital gains will be subject to income tax! You may receive an unexpectedly high tax bill!

Tip: As the city grows and becomes more profitable overall, the opportunities for buying stocks at firesale prices become fewer and fewer! Do not rely on this method to keep your company in the black as the city grows.

Tip: Busses are useful for extending the area of demand around a rail station. While the properties serviced by busses will never generate the amount of wealth produced by rail-serviced juggernauts, they will produce enough to be economically viable. Their use is far greater in extending /away/ from the station as opposed to a route entirely within the influence of a station.

This process can be repeated for a couple of years, but eventually development of your city will stall. The AI will continue to place its blight around developing areas but the meager population they provide will not be enough to run profitable trains between them. In my experience this usually happens somewhere around 30,000 population (though it is admittedly map dependent). This is the point that you're going to want to start investing in Apartment buildings to grow the population.

The 40x40 (low-rise) and 80x40 (mid-rise) apartment buildings offer good bang for the buck without being a huge investment liability, start pushing population growth with these around key stations. Remember to buy out the cheap housing before buying out local businesses!

Build up an area as demand grows, don't simply place high rises and hope for the best. Develop in stages. Start with low-rise apartment buildings and extend out. By the time you're looking to replace them, they should be paid for. Replace them with mid-rise apartment buildings and extend out.

Tip: AI placed trees will cause snapping issues. If a building won't snap to existing construction and/or roads and there are trees in the footprint, remove them!

Different developments have different times of day at which they generate passengers! Avoid exclusivity of building types around rail stations to ensure you have adequate ridership at all hours of the day. Passengers in A-Train have no destination, they are simply generated. The more variety of establishments you have in the area of a station, the more overlap you will have on passenger production. This isn't to say you can't segregate businesses to some degree for aesthetic purposes, but a mix of residence and office will be better for ridership than residence or offices alone.

Subsidiaries come in a myriad assortment of types and subtypes that all generate passengers in different quantities at different times of the day and influence the nearby area. Understanding the interoperation between different subsidy types is key to building a successful transportation network and real estate empire, yet very little information is offered by the game on the subject.

Encourages: Other Apartments and Residences
Supports: Shops and Commerce
Peak Ridership: 07:00 - 09:00
Some Ridership: 10:00 - 19:00
No Ridership: 20:00 - 09:00


Encourages: Office, Leisure, Culture
Supports: Office, Leisure, Culture
(day) Peak Ridership: 11:00 - 13:00 & 19:00 - 21:00
(day) Some Ridership: 09:00 - 00:00
(day) No Ridership: 00:00 - 09:00
(24h) Peak Ridership: 12:00 - 13:00 & 19:00 - 21:00
(24h) Some Ridership: 24h
(24h) No Ridership: N / A


Encourages: Other Offices?
Supports: Hotels
(mid) Peak Ridership: 20:00 - 22:00
(mid) Some Ridership: 09:00 - 00:00
(mid) No Ridership: 01:00 - 08:00
(high) Peak Ridership: 18:00 - 20:00
(high) Some Ridership: 09:00 - 00:00
(high) No Ridership: 00:00 - 08:00
(sky) Peak Ridership: 21:00 - 23:00
(sky) Some Ridership: 24h
(sky) No Ridership: N / A

It is of the uptmost importance that you don't simply neglect the financial screen of A-Train as it not only provides you with your tax obligations but also information of overall corporate growth and trends. Pertinant financial and economic information can be found under the Report tab.

Contains overall useful information on the general status of the city. Population, growth trends, industry ratios and a count of all owned traffic facilities. You may also rename the city from here if you wish. Because of the symbiotic nature of many subsidiaries in this game this screen may give you a good idea as to why the performance of certain category of subsidiary may be lacking. A balance is important to some degree. It is also imporant to note that population effects overall ridership!

Contains a more detailed breakdown of your road and rail network. Distances, junction counts, switch counts and number of vehicles owned. You may also see how much infrastructure has grown year over year from this tab or rename your company. There isn't an abundance of overly useful information in this particular report.



One of most important pages in the Report, gives you a categorized breakdown of what it making money for you and what is not as well as a visual indicator of profits over time. Keep a keen eye out for large red numbers, if you are bleeding capital this is the first place you should look for some indication of what it is you need to correct. While the graph gives some idea of overall trends it does not scale well, losses of a few million can look more intimidating than gains of several billion.

The single most important page of the Report. It gives you a breakdown of costs, expenditures and debt obligations as well as a visual display of company performance year over year. Be sure to understand your debt obligations when entering any new calendar year so as not to overspend, especially in the first quarter of the new year! The capital estimates are useful as the end of the calendar year approaches for estimating next year's property taxes. You can also cycle through the balance sheets of prior years too view year over year performance.

• Income Tax is collected on the 1st of April and is calculated at 10% of gross profit as of the 31st of December of the previous year.. If you take a loss for the year, you will effectively pay zero income tax. If you are going to sell subsidiaries, a good time to do it is when you're in the red for the year
  
  
• Property Tax is collected on the 1st of May and is calculated at 5% of all owned property investment value as of the 31st of December of the previous year. Included are all subsidiaries, power plants, factories and depots.
  
  
• V.A.T. is your Christmas bonus being flushed down the toilet and is collected on the 1st of January.

Tip: Only sell off your Subsidiaries if you are absolutely going to go broke otherwise. If you are aleady profitable for the year, selling them off will add to your income tax bill while simultaneously removing capital influx to pay for it. Unless your subsidiaries are underperforming they will make more than the property tax bill.

Tip: You can force the game to pause on the 31st of December by selecting the option to pause a day before the annual balance found in the Time tab under Options.

Capital in the bank is capital being wasted! Ultimately the winning condition of any scenario is to generate capital in excess of a given amount. However, in order to do that in the shortest amount of time possible you're going to want to reinvest profit into infrastructure and subsidiaries. You should have some notion of how much you are generating in profit in a given month. If not simply take note of your balance on the first of the month and fast forward to the next month and note the difference in balance. The number you come up with x12 is going to be your approximate yearly profit. Subtract from this number any outstanding taxes (or an estimate of next years taxes based upon the previous years + 5-10%) and you have the amount of money you can reinvest! Aside from making you feel good and being the ultimate win condition, money in the bank does nothing for you!

Scout around the map and find examples of urban blight in high traffic areas! It's cheap to buy out the blight and well placed subsidies will increase your bottom line. Always buy out the blight first when given the option! Use up that excess capital on sound investments and you'll find yourself with more capital to reinvest the following year.

Tip: If clicking on the building does not bring up the option to purchase the building, it is urban blight. It gives your city the feeling of being alive and growing, but does next to nothing for it. It's acceptable to leave it in low traffic areas, but never in prime development land.

Eventually population and demand will grow high enough that you will see the AI start to build high-rise buildings; this is a good indication that the demand in that area is good enough for high-rise apartment buildings. These buildings are both expensive in terms of capital cost and material investment. Ensure you have an adequate supply of materials on hand for construction. Any area you intend to develop into high-rises should have at least three (3) large material depots storing materials. The smallest high-rise apartment building will consume 250 materials, which is 6 short of two large material depots fully stocked. Others are 300 and beyond!

While you may balk at the cost of investment, when properly placed these buildings will pay for themselves in short order and the population boosts will increase demand on local businesses and rail lines.

Tip: Skyscrapers are very intense in terms of total materials consumed for construction; however, they do not require the entire amount at the time of construction. 128 should be more than enough to place it down and construction will consume materials monday-friday as the building is constructed!

Tip: Sooner or later the area in the development vicinity of your material depots is going to become maximized, at which point there is no point in paying the property tax (which will be sky high) on them. Remove them and shift development to surrounding areas that are not yet maximized!

It is important to not go overboard and overextend yourself with early high-rise placement! Don't go broke doing it! Your income is probably good enough to construct them; but not good enough to spam them at every location. Never stop looking for good purchases of real estate! A good buy on an AI-placed business is as useful as any construction. Always be aware of dips in the market and looking for good opportunities! Department stores and large screen buildings located in high-traffic areas are ideal!

You should also be looking at your inital commercial development, which at this point should be paid for and considering replacing them with more profitable subsidiaries with the same footprint. Replace those pet stores with department stores! Be aware of the percentages of various development. Don't starve the city in terms of leisure, sport or culture. As the city grows, residential developments will take up a larger and larger percentage of the overall city, so it is important that all those residents have reasons to use your rail lines.

It is also around this time that subway will become a far more attractive investment to above ground rail as it will simply be too expensive to construct over established businesses and high land values! Do not frivolously lay subways, they are very expensive to construct. Have a very good idea of how you want your line laid out before any construction being sure to note any existing underground facilities that might hinder it! Even a short subway line can cost well over a billion dollars to construct! Save before placing subway as mistakes can be costly!

Around the time you're pocketing several billion a year (after taxes) you should strongly consider a Shinkasen Station. They can only be built at ground level and the supports of the station itself cannot cross roads. Because the track and station itself will almost invariably have to remove existing developments, a budget estimate of $2.5 billion is not to be unexpected. Place it wisely in an area that already has high demand and is serviced by one or more high traffic stations! Avoid running it through Skyscrapers and High-Rise apartments wherever possible or the budget to build it will be enormous! The bonus of this station is two fold: It brings a large volume of passengers into your city, and it allows you to build Super Express trains for your existing lines. Any AR9(exp) trains that are constantly running at capacity should be immediately replaced with the 500 series Super Express.

The International Airport is the second most attractive megaproject. It too will bring in a good chunk of traffic and strongly influence growth around it. It is also generally cheaper to construct than the Shinkasen and is a license to print money once the area around it becomes strongly developed. The drawbacks are the enormously large footprint and the arrival and departure patterns, which generally prevent it from being placed smack in the middle of an already heavy travelled area allowing profits for its placement to be more immediately realized. Once you factor in the cost of running a good amount of rail lines to the airport and the development of the land around it, the cost is usually comparable to that of the Shinkasen station. Be sure to strongly develop the area surrounding the airport as rapidly as possible keeping in mind to support 24 hour traffic.

Tip: The arrival and departure patterns for the airport are not the same. The glideslope for arrivals is much shallower. Any time you can bring arrivals in over water while keeping the airport itself sufficiently inland you should do so. Low-rise development can begin some some 260m from the end of the runway on the departure side, small apartments around 440m.

Very little has been documented about the cap breakers of A-Train.

Ridership is governed and ultimately capped by a percentage of city population. Since the AI is generally very liberal with placing businesses the odds are that it's a housing problem if you notice your trains are no longer running at capacity.

Shrines, Temples and Churches are known cap breakers for Residential growth. If you notice yourself putting down apartments and the population not growing, try placing some of these in key traffic areas. Shrines have a very good return on investment in high traffic areas!

As your city grows into a Metropolis you're going to want to strongly consider investing in a Shinkasen station. Not only will it bring an enormous amount of tourist traffic to your city, but it will also unlock an assortment of high speed trains to use throughout your city. I prefer to use the 500 Series Super Express which has a good passenger capacity, operates at very high speed and costs next to nothing to purchase! The project itself will give you no income as it operates autonomously, but the project is worth the investment for the trains alone. It's a strong consider once a good amount of high-rises are going up with a city population in the low to mid 100,000s.

• Sometimes it just won't fit. The ground is level, there is adequate space, but it wants to delete expensive buildings to place something that /should/ fit. Sometimes using the ctrl-key and moving the mouse around a bit will get it to line up, sometimes if you simply come back and try again later it will line up. If you run into this situation you should probably save before attempting to spam dose clicks.
  
  
• It is the belief of the author that the measurements on some buildings actually exceed their listed dimensions. I've seen several instances in which a 40 x 80 building could be demolished but not replaced with two 40 x 40 buildings. When rennovating any urban, high value area... SAVE FIRST.
  
  
• Occassionally a Skyscraper will stop pulling materials from the local depot and construction will stall indefinitely.
  
  
• Sea based harbors/ports do not seem to function if placed in excess of 50% of the map's width or height too far from deep (80m) water.
  
  
• When reordering your train lists with move up or move down the switch and platform settings do not necessarily change with the train number. Be prepared to timetable assist after moving trains in the list and use caution!
  
  
• Lots of precisely timed high speed rail operating on the same line with time compression on has an interesting habit of going off its route. I've seen it not reverse at stations, I've seen it not branch at switches. Either way, it generally creates a traffic jam and costs you money. Be aware!
  
  
• Grossly excessive power generation will make your city glow in the dark to an unbelievable degree. It looks neat, but you're probably losing a lot of money on electricity production for no reason other than aesthetics.

Speed: 65km/h
Capacity: 2848
Cars: 10 Max
Cost: $3,366,000.00
Fare / km: $3.60/person
Cost / km: $1,295.00/km
Cost / hr: $13.00/hr


Speed: 85km/h
Capacity: 1170
Cars: 5 Max
Cost: $6,240,000.00
Fare / km: Untested, Low?
Cost / km: $796.50/km
Cost / hr: $8.00/hr


Speed: 75km/h
Capacity: 2848
Cars: 10 Max
Cost: $5,814,000.00
Fare / km: $3.60/person
Cost / km: $1,260.60/km
Cost / hr: $12.60/hr


Speed: 85km/h
Capacity: 4352
Cars: 10 Max
Cost: $144,420,000.00
Fare / km: $3.60/person
Cost / km: $2,251.00/km
Cost / hr: $22.60/hr


Speed: 100km/h
Capacity: 2887
Cars: 10 Max
Cost: $11,016,000.00
Fare / km: $5.40/person
Cost / km: $2495.00/km
Cost / hr: $25.00/hr


Speed: 115km/h
Capacity: 2491
Cars: 10 Max
Cost: $10,192,000.00
Fare / km: $5.40/person
Cost / km: $2328.30/km
Cost / hr: $23.40/hr


Speed: 120km/h
Capacity: 2451
Cars: 10 Max
Cost: $11,232,000.00
Fare / km: $5.40/person
Cost / km: $1794.60/km
Cost / hr: $18.00/hr


Speed: 105km/h
Capacity: 2815
Cars: 10 Max
Cost: $32,640,000.00
Fare / km: $3.60/person
Cost / km: $888.20/km
Cost / hr: $8.90/hr

• 80km/h
  
• 1017 Passengers Max
  
• 6 Car Max
  
• $3,136,000.00
  
• Low? Fare
  Operating Cost: $1,300.00/km

• 55km/h
  
• 883 Passengers Max
  
• 6 Car Max
  
• $1,860,000.00
  
• Low? Fare
  Operating Cost: $1,340.00/km

• 75km/h
  
• 1344 Passengers Max
  
• 10 Car Max
  
• $4,600,000.00
  
• $5.40/persom-km
  Operating Cost: $1,890.00/km

• 70km/h
  
• 1075 Passengers Max
  
• 6 Car Max
  
• $4,830,000.00
  
• Low? Fare
  Operating Cost: $1,126.00/km

• 60km/h
  
• 1219 Passengers Max
  
• 6 Car Max
  
• $2,304,000.00
  
• Low? Fare
  Operating Cost: $1,888.00/km

Speed: 110km/h
Capacity: 1836
Cars: 10 Max
Cost: $8,528,000.00
Fare / km: $5.40/person
Cost / km: $2,520.00/km
Cost / hr: $25.30/hr


Speed: 110km/h
Capacity: 2553
Cars: 10 Max
Cost: $48,960,000.00
Fare / km: $7.20/person
Cost / km: $4,751.00/km
Cost / hr: $47.70/hr


Speed: 125km/h
Capacity: 465
Cars: 9 Max
Cost: $11,858,000.00
Fare / km: Low?
Cost / km: $3,273.55/km
Cost / hr: $32.90/hr


Speed: 120km/h
Capacity: 667
Cars: 9 Max
Cost: $12,400,000.00
Fare / km: Untested, Low?
Cost / km: $3,844.70/km
Cost / hr: $38.60/hr


Speed: 115km/h
Capacity: 189
Cars: 7 Max
Cost: $10,640,000.00
Fare / km: Untested, Low?
Cost / km: $3,484.25/km
Cost / hr: $35.00/hr


Speed: 100km/h
Capacity: 484
Cars: 7 Max
Cost: $13,760,000.00
Fare / km: Untested, Low?
Cost / km: $3,892.20/km
Cost / hr: $39.00/hr


Speed: 100km/h
Capacity: 528
Cars: 9 Max
Cost: $13,356,000.00
Fare / km: Low?
Cost / km: $4,860.25/km
Cost / hr: $48.70/hr


Speed: 105km/h
Capacity: 662
Cars: 10 Max
Cost: $8,153,000.00
Fare / km: $12.60/person
Cost / km: $3,393.20/km
Cost / hr: $34.00/hr


Speed: 160km/h
Capacity: 633 Passengers
Cars: 9 Max
Cost: $22,656,000.00
Fare / km: Low?
Cost / km: $6,566.70/km
Cost / hr: $66.20/hr


Speed: 135km/h
Capacity: 1459
Cars: 10 Max
Cost: $74,880,000.00
Fare / km: $18.00/person
Cost / km: $9,202.00/km
Cost / hr: $92.30/hr


Speed: 150km/h
Capacity: 960
Cars: 10 Max
Cost: $112,320,000.00
Fare / km: $23.40/person
Cost / km: $6,082.50/km
Cost / hr: $61.10/hr


Speed: 160km/h
Capacity: 633 Passengers Max
Cars: 10 Max
Cost: $191,360,000.00
Fare / km: $32.35/person
Cost / km: $5,197.40/km
Cost / hr: $52.00/hr


Speed: 160km/h
Capacity: 902 Passengers Max
Cars: 10 Max
Cost: $228,800,000.00
Fare / km: $34.15/person
Cost / km: $8,311.70/km
Cost / hr: $83.20/hr


Speed: 180km/h
Capacity: 691
Cars: 10 Max
Cost: $168,480,000.00
Fare / km: $30.55/person
Cost / km: $5,584.40/km
Cost / hr: $55.90/hr


Speed: 100km/h / 60km/h
Capacity: 202
Cars: 10 Max
Cost: $15,920,000.00
Fare / km: $43.15/person
Cost / km: $2,868.50/km
Cost / hr: $28.80


Speed: 105km/h
Capacity: 681
Cars: 8 Max
Cost: $3,780,000.00
Fare / km: Untested
Cost / km: $2,526.20/km
Cost / hr: $25.30


Speed: 120km/h
Capacity: 424
Cars: 6 Max
Cost: $9,180,000.00
Fare / km: Untested
Cost / km: $2,251.10/km
Cost / hr: $22.50

Speed: 210km/h
Capacity: 1001
Cars: 10 Max
Cost: $6,496,000.00
Fare / km: $30.55/person
Cost / km: $12,610/km
Cost / hr: Unknown, $126.00?


Speed: 300km/h
Capacity: 836
Cars: 10 Max
Cost: $39,000,000.00
Fare / km: $35.95/person
Cost / km: $14,125/km
Cost / hr: Unknown, $141.00?


Speed: 300km/h
Capacity: 968
Cars: 10 Max
Cost: $27,872,000.00
Fare / km: $35.95/person
Cost / km: $11,850/km
Cost / hr: Unknown, $118.00?


Speed: 285km/h
Capacity: 794
Cars: 10 Max
Cost: $22,360,000.00
Fare / km: $41.35/person
Cost / km: $13,350/km
Cost / hr: Unknown, $135.00?


Speed: 240km/h
Capacity: 451
Cars: 10 Max
Cost: $326,716,000.00
Fare / km: $39.55/person
Cost / km: $17,830/km
Cost / hr: Unknown, $180.00?

Speed: 360km/h
Capacity: 783
Cars: 10 Max
Cost: $168,480,000.00
Fare / km: Unknown
Cost / km: Unknown
Cost / hr: Unknown

*Fare measurements include acceleration and deceleration at full capacity and maximum train length over a 1km track. Cost/km measured over a 2km track with time related costs subtracted from the total. All measurements taken on non-scale maps with default speed.

To Artdink as well as Degica who despite some of their PR shortcomings have brought this wonderful city builder to western audiences.

To Doc Clarke who has been wonderfully tolerant with the A-Train community at it hurls abuse at him as a result of some of the afformentioned PR shortcomings of Degica.

To the owner and maintainer of the A-Train 9 fansite[a-train9.uk] (Harold, is it?) which is an enormously useful repository of information regarding A-Train subsidiaries. Seriously, use it.

To Kazeoku whose YouTube videos on starting out in A-Train 9 kept me from throwing my computer out a window. Seriously, watch them.