Train wagons absurdly expensive to buy/maintain

[Dr. Proply]

It seems like the cargo wagons/passenger carriages cost an order of magnitude more than they should: when starting at 1850 each wagon costs more to buy and maintain than the train engine itself. EACH wagon! That makes no logical sense whatsoever, did someone forget a decimal point somewhere?!

[GeneralGeldenhuys]

Yeah, fully agree. They should balance it out and make the wagons cheaper! I can't spend $2 mil on a train in 1850!

[Krischan]

Start small then! You can easily buy your first train for 400-500K and run a passenger line. Once you earned enough you can buy a second train, maybe a little bigger. And later on you can always add more wagons to the existing trains.

[Carnessa]

In my opinion it's better than what was in train fever. High engine price with cheap wagons won't allow you to run low capacity trains later in thw game, since they can't make enough money for their replacement train.

[Nicky]

A big big problem with the wagons is that slow, cost effective locomotives are a bit obsolete from the start. You need to buy more wagons to compensate for their slower speed and that translates into more purchase/running costs and that means that the slow train has no distinct advantage over the fast train.

[F4lc0n]

I was just about to post a topic on this as well. In my opinion trains are completely worthless in this game. You only make money when transporting passengers, then you can make millions. Provided, you use cheap trains. Something like the TGV, even when full, will not generate much income, if any at all.

Cargo Trains are barely making any income at all. An engine costs like 16 Million now (around 1980). Now let's compare this to a passenger ship...oh the most expensive ship for this time costs only 1 Million! This is completely wrong in my opinion.

If you want to transport goods, I only use trucks. Even if they drive across the whole map they will still generate income. Just put 20 trucks on one line - much more income then with trains. This is really sad.

Even the first game was a bit broken, but since you basically only transported passengers and nothing else (due to limited factories) it was not as obvious as in this title.

[L.Z]

Agreed. This game should be called "Truck & Bus Fever".

[alphaprior]

I use trains to transport both passengers and freight. some cargo like oil pays high like 1mil. and more each trip. And of course if you don't trasport freight cities won't grow. Trucks are good only for short distances and cannot compete with trains.

It's trute that trains and especially wagons are overpriced and super high maintanance costs especially the faster ones. But there are some cheap and slower trains that are ideal for cargo you don't need them fast just enough power to transfer the cargo from a to b.
I have about 20 train cargo lines and 4 passenger lines and making millions, trucks only a few.


Surely developers must fix the prices and maintanance costs on some trains, untill then you can work with cheaper engines/waggons and download mods, there are some good trains out there already.

[Ser_Bunnylot]

I think the price and maintenance cost is fine. The problem comes in when you have to micro manage each train and its wagons.

Each wagon will make enough money to cover it's expenses. It's when you run empty wagons that you start making a loss. You can have a line with plenty of trucks and if some of them run empty your line still makes good money. Trains just can't really afford too many empty wagons.

Wish there were a mod that let you manage trains on wagons without manually sending them to the depo. I like the "sell all" feature on line management but it would be good to do more, such as customize trains while everything is running and them them automatically stop by depots/stations to implement your changes.

For long distance though nothing beats trains. It's very satisyfing to see 20mil+ paydays per trip.

[ohn]

Weird i make millions using cargotrains.

[_THEpodge]

Originally posted by Ser_Bunnylot:

I think the price and maintenance cost is fine. The problem comes in when you have to micro manage each train and its wagons.

Each wagon will make enough money to cover it's expenses. It's when you run empty wagons that you start making a loss. You can have a line with plenty of trucks and if some of them run empty your line still makes good money. Trains just can't really afford too many empty wagons.

With there were a mod that let you manage trains on wagons without manually sending them to the depo. I like the "sell all" feature on line management but it would be good to customize trains while everything is running and them them automatically stop by depots/stations to implement your changes.

For long distance though nothing beats trains. It's very satisyfing to see 20mil+ paydays per trip.

I don't see an issue with the pricing. Yes the outlay is expensive (regardless of when bought in game), but the yearly running costs are ultimately offset 10 fold with each successful cargo/passenger delivery. I have multiple cargo lines with 20+ wagons making millions...

Patience and micro management is key, expand to aggressively you're ultimately going to fail...

[Allusion]

The final train costs over 50 million but can easily make a massive profit.

[Rostan]

Cost structures make no sense. A few passegers cars late-game cost as much as a base tunnel. IMO train carriages should have their prices slashed to at most half, and tunnels should cost 3-4 times as much (to encourage building according to landscape layout). Bridges should be more expensive too.

[joshb91]

Personally also don't have a problem with the costs of bridges and tunnels. yes late game you can make hugh profits from only a few trains which is fun to set up.

but early to mid game ie 1950s you can finally start to use trains effectively ... it would be extremly difficult to get the train fever achievment by only using trains

[Stealthy]

With trains you have to think big. You can't use them on short distance runs. Trains are for full train haulage over long distances. My cargo trains make millions of profit, but they go long way. And what comes to the balancing, i think this is better than train fever, as now it is harder to get billions of money what was easy even at medium level in Train Fever.

Besides, remember that maintenance costs include all the salaries and are not just maintenance of the vehicle. And in that light, trains are about right but trucks and buses are way too cheap to run.

[SteveUK]

Fully agree with the OP. To think that rolling stock would cost more than the engine to pull it is absurd and spoils any semblance of realistic costing.