Basics

TTDX is quite biased towards railways in general. Trains can simply carry the most cargo at the highest speed, compared to ships (too slow), road vehicles (too little capacity, too slow) and planes (too little capacity). Therefore, trains will be the backbone of any transporting company in the game, unless the map consists entirely of small islands.

Even though using trains is quite straightforward, a lot of knowledge and planning is needed to make railway networks that are both realistic and efficient. This makes the game challenging even after years of experience, especially since one is quite free in the ways to create a transport empire. The additional features of TTDPatch and OpenTTD have further increased the gameplay possibilities.

The main reason for the existence of this web site is the feature, which makes Transport Tycoon stand out from all other similar games: The possibility to build complex railways networks, on which trains are controlled via signals. On the other hand, these signals are a frequent source of confusion and frustration, especially for players new to the game. Therefore I tried to keep explanations as simple as possible.

To understand the concepts of these pages a bit better, a short explanation of the symbols is helpful:

Background information, which might be interesting, but not necessary for understanding, is given in such a box.

Things, that are potentially dangerous, which are done wrongly quite often or that could cause major problems, are shown in this box.

Various features may only be available in TTDPatch or OpenTTD. This is marked by these little boxes. Unavailable features are shown by a greyed box.