Driverless passenger trains with set schedules could combine someone else’s post of “cultural tourism” with votes boosting culture and also providing an easier method to purchase things like clothing, quick 1 stack of fuel, nails, mortar, and prolly the biggest one, food.

The more I think about it, the best way of doing freight trains is combine it with another post of intermodal tractor trailers and container ships. Make contract boards permit a person to have permissions to “pickup” the trailer with the truck, but not to enter int’s contents. Better yet, make them pay a fee to allow the permission and will be returned to the delivery person plus delivery fee upon arrival. This “container” is really just a mobile stockpile without access except to those intended to have it. The crane could use some love by being able to have “transfer stations” or “intermodal facilities” by being able to transfer containers from container vessels (max of 4 containers) to trucks (max of 1 container) or to trains (max of 2 or 3 containers (scalable to levels?) containers would serve to make contactable services… which factor in transportation costs already to the shipper and actually incentivizes trade when a lot of people price match over insane distances. This also creates an actually beneficial advantage to having trains and now game mechanic incentivized commercial hubs like rail-truck, rail to ship, ship to truck or all three in one. I know a lot of folks want to actually drive trains and want different car types, but I think automated trains are how they’d be the most practical. The containers could simply be the size of a normal plain stockpile, but each vehicle type can carry more or less of them. This doesn’t replace trucks, or roads being built, or makes something not necessary anymore but actually creates an environment where we could see trains.

Just throwing this out: What if you had different cars available for the trains, such as ore cars that hold ores, logging cars for wood, passenger cars for hauling people (with inbuilt billing of course) and the list goes on!

Considering the scale of the game map, I think the best case for trains in Eco would be something like narrow gauge - the earliest tiers could have simple push-carts, then move to horse traction, then steam locomotives, and eventually diesels, perhaps with different tiers of steam locomotive which could take smaller turns, or operate at higher speeds. This would be a lower-emission transportation network than cars, while not mandating being built near a shoreline, and potentially could hook into factories as a bulk loading/unloading system.

Could also consider doing Draisines. it would be a good starting step. Draisines come in all sizes, but generally pretty small compared to proper trains.

Bicycle powered draisine could be the first step, can be made in wood or metal. Depending on which tier/technology you want to introduce them in.

Then perhaps have a small early industrial steam engine as the first proper train which can haul a variety of wagons to the users liking. like Cargo, passenger, liquids, foods. but keep it small at 2-3 wagons.

From there it could move up to bigger draisines with cabins and diesel motor power. that would pull smaller open carts but at faster speeds and more torque to go up sloped ramps easilier. It doesnt need to be a big train. This would fit the eco world size surprisingly well, whilst also offer a better transport capacity than trucks. all in all, keeping it small and more technological advanced than a steam train.

And here we go again. Anyone remember trains being #1 voted on the original devboard years ago?

Developers, if you are reading this, please keep in mind that it's about far more than just higher volume transport. This is about capturing one of the most iconic and perhaps significant elements of the industrial revolution.

Sure, a semi-truck can also fulfill the player's desire for higher volume transport. And yes, full scale trains are not exactly practical on the default world size. But why then do people keep requesting them? A bigger truck will never appeal to the same degree as an iconic and majestic locomotive.

Quite honestly I'm willing to bet that people would prefer the challenge of constructing an expensive and fixed position railway, as opposed to yet another highway. Some parallels with real world progression simply cannot be ignored in a game about emerging and evolving societies. The locomotive, and by extension railroads, are no different in this regard.

I fully understand that the potential benefit versus time required to implement the feature, opposed to other potentially more useful features does not add up to a positive gain. It is understandable why it has been pushed back into a long term feature. However keep in mind the massive support this feature has had over the years. People want their trains, even if it is in a basic capacity at first.

Or even Mine Carts!

Trains are used for long distance, high capacity transportation. I can understand the need to move a lot of good, but distance in Eco is very limited. They could work on large worlds, but I don't see them to be relevant on medium to small worlds.