Train games

Three ways to play with trains

Train games tend to come in three flavors, and Grant Central Station has all of them in one place. The big one is the railroad tycoon: a map full of farms, mines, mills and towns, and you decide where the track goes and what the trains carry. The second is driving, where you work the throttle and brake and try to stop right on the platform mark. The third is dispatching, where trains pour into a station and you throw the switches so each one finds an open platform.

The tycoon is the part you come back to for weeks. The driving and dispatcher modes are short sessions that pay money and fame back into your railroad, which keeps running while you play them.

How a railroad tycoon works

You start in 1852 with $520K, a wooden depot called Grant Central and a continent with no rails on it. Tap a place, tap Build track and tap a second place, and the game finds a route and shows the cost before you pay. Hills and rivers cost more, mountains and water crossings cost the most. Then add a train: the game suggests an engine you can afford and cars that suit the cargo, and shows what that train should earn in a year.

Every delivery helps a town grow, from village to town to city to metropolis, and bigger towns want more. Cargo chains are where the money is. Grain to the mill and food to the town is the first one. Logs to the sawmill, iron ore and coal to the steel works, and steel plus lumber to the factory make goods, which pay best of all.

There are no signals to set. Long single tracks get passing loops on their own, so trains wait their turn, and double track lets them run both ways without stopping.

Real engines, from steam to maglev

There are 26 engine types, each a real kind of locomotive with a generic name and a true fact attached: the 4-4-0 American, the 2-8-0 Consolidation, the 4-8-4 Northern, the giant articulated 4-8-8-4, streamlined diesel cab units, a boxcab electric, a city tram, a bullet train and a maglev among them. They unlock one by one as your deliveries earn money, across seven eras. They really play differently: some are cheap to run, some haul long trains, the rack engine never slows on a hill, and electric types need electrified track along the whole route.

Train game tips

• Check the forecast before you buy. The train card shows the profit you can expect each year. If it's red, change the stops first.
• Distance pays. Very short lines struggle to cover running costs. Link places a fair way apart.
• Follow the warning signs. A train losing money gets a warning in your fleet list, and its card tells you why, with a one tap fix.
• Duplicate what works. When cargo piles up at a station, duplicate a train that's already making money. Same stops, same cars.
• Brake early in the cab. Heavy steam takes a long time to stop. Start braking well before the platform marker.

The full Grant Central Station guide covers every station tier, the daily contracts and the hands-on modes in detail.

For young train fans

Grammar Train is one of our learning games for kids. A fox engineer runs a little railway where every car carries a word, and your child couples the cars into sentences and picks the right caboose to end each one. Like all our learning games, it has no ads, no accounts and no tracking.

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