Idle Railway Tycoon Beginner’s Guide: Tips, Tricks & Strategies to Build a Railway Empire in No Time

Idle Railway Tycoon is a uniquely addictive idle clicker business sim game from DailyFun, home to the popular puzzle game, My Home – Design Your Home. Idle Railway Tycoon captures the simple yet addictive elements that fans of idle clicker games love and enjoy but also squeezes in unique gameplay mechanics that add to the fun and excitement.

There are plenty of idle business sim games on mobile that center around the transport business and there are numerous other mobile games as well that involve trains and train stations. Idle Railway Tycoon’s combination of providing a simplified train station management simulation and train collection and upgrade mechanics results in a perfect mix of gameplay train enthusiasts will surely love and enjoy. Idle Railway Tycoon certainly is not designed exclusively for train lovers as casual players, especially fans of the idle clicker game genre, will find themselves hooked into it fairly easily.

Just like conventional idle clicker business sim games, Idle Railway Tycoon ensures that you will continue to earn profits regardless of what you do. Investing in upgrades and all sorts of improvements on the train station ultimately results in an increase in those profits and higher ratings that unlock more upgrades to purchase. In this sense, there are no right or wrong decisions and you can go about managing the railway however you choose to do so.

Idle Railway Tycoon does come with a quick tutorial session at the start of your first dive into it. The controls and user interface are as simple and easy to understand as the gameplay mechanics, ensuring that even total beginners in mobile gaming will be able to pick everything up with no problem at all.

With profits continuously streaming even if you do nothing at all, there are neither losses nor game overs in sight. If you are the type who yearn for maximum speed and efficiency as far as progression is concerned, then you have come to the right place. Our Idle Railway Tycoon beginner’s guide is loaded with tips and strategies to earn more cash and perform all upgrades faster and more efficiently.

1. Keep The Profit Boost Active

Once the quick tutorial ends and you are left on your own free to do as you please, it becomes only natural to want to explore the railway station and check for ones you can upgrade. Additionally, there are menus and icons you have yet to peek into at this point, and curiosity as to what Idle Railway Tycoon has to offer in its entirety can drive you to venture into every possible corner before anything else.

There are as many ways to start your railway tycoon adventure each time you visit your virtual train station. However, we recommend to make it a habit early on to activate the profit boost before doing anything else. This can be done by clicking the cash icon at the lower left side of the screen. You will need to play a 15 to 30-second video ad to increase profits by 50% for the next 15 minutes. You can continue playing ads one after another to accumulate the maximum stack of 2 hours for the boost to stay active.

The profit multiplier ad boost works in such a way that you receive more minutes of boost as you watch more ads continuously. This way, watching 6 ads at the start of your dive into the game will net you the maximum of 2 hours’ worth of active time for the boost. Additionally, playing 6 ads will also earn you a special reward of 50 gems, which is a premium currency in the game. Note that the ad boost will remain active even if you are offline and away from the game, which makes it important to maximize it as well before you leave your idle business behind.

2. Let The Missions Guide You

With plenty of facilities to be unlocked in Idle Railway Tycoon, coupled with a plethora of items to upgrade in each one, it can be an overwhelming experience for beginners to narrow down upgrade choices and priorities. To be honest, there are no right or wrong ways to go about anything, especially given that you will even earn cash without doing anything. The challenge you would set for yourself, rather, is to find the optimum approach towards maximizing profitability with each passing second.

There are plenty of features in Idle Railway Tycoon as well as strategies that apply across loosely similar games that can guide you towards the best approach. In this case, the best one to go with is following the missions feature in the game. To access it, simply click on the task list icon on the lower right side of the screen. There will always be 3 missions shown at a time and new ones will pop up once you have cleared any of the available missions.

Missions can reward you with cash, gems, and most importantly, keys that can unlock crates and earn you new trains to add to your collection. In some cases, you may be able to accomplish some feats before the related mission even pops up on the missions list. Do not worry about it as it will still be considered cleared and you will be able to instantly claim the rewards for the accomplishment.

It is best to immediately claim mission rewards as soon as they become available to see the next missions and have it guide you towards your next target. More importantly, it is always better to claim rewards sooner than later, as cash, gems, and keys can be crucial to a faster pace of progression for your railway business. There will hardly be any instances that will prevent you from accomplishing all 3 pending missions at a given time. In case one of the current missions is beyond your reach, you can simply shift focus to the other 2 objectives.

In the event where all mission objectives are pended as a result of building times or lack of funds, which will likely happen after a long while, then that would be the best time to deviate from the missions on go on about performing other activities that contribute towards improving your railway business in any way.

3. Keep As Little Idle Cash As Possible

One of the standard mechanics in idle clicker business sim games is that you will continue to earn cash by the minute regardless of what you do. To some extent, there is pleasure in seeing your capital grow over time and, sometimes, it can get to the point when you would rather see huge numbers just for the sake of it.

Unlike all other game genres, however, basic currency in Idle Railway Tycoon, much like all other similar games, are not meant to be kept idle or growing. Every expense you can utilize cash on are basically upgrade investments and lead to higher profits. Some of the items available for upgrades may not directly relate to an outright increase in income but it all boils down to the same positive results, which are also always guaranteed.

Given this scenario, it becomes ideal to never keep any idle cash as much as possible, as doing so would mean less profits over time. Considering everything, the only time for you to stop spending your cash is when there are no upgrades you can afford at the moment. Given that you will continue to earn more cash if you continue to purchase upgrades one after another, it may take only a short while before you can afford the next upgrade in line.

4. Follow The General Rule When It Comes To Upgrading

The upgrade system in Idle Railway Tycoon works in such a way that some items are locked behind an area’s level. An area’s level, much like the availability of some departments early on, are also dependent on other areas reaching a certain level. Considering the dependence of some upgrade items, which to some extent delimits choices for upgrades at a given time, there is also an energy system you need to constantly monitor to ensure that that your train station can generate enough power to keep everything operational.

Every structure in the train station consumes power and you will constantly need to put up additional, as well as upgrade, generators in the power room located at the right front side of the station. The current energy consumption of the train station as well as the total capacity of your generators can be seen at the upper right side of the screen. While the energy mechanics are delimiting, however, they cannot cause you any sort of harm. You simply need to add more generators or upgrade existing ones to increase the station’s capacity.

What is most important to focus on, as far as investing is concerned, is to ensure you get the most out of the cash you spend on upgrades. Surely enough, the impact of every cash invested in upgrades will not seem to vary much as any kind of investment contributes to improvement and leads to higher profits. However, higher cash disbursements in Idle Railway Tycoon do not necessarily equate to bigger profit increments.

As you explore all facilities within your growing train station, it is recommended to peek into available upgrades, particularly the effect of each upgrade and the cost. You will basically consider all upgrades available and initially disregard those lodged behind requirements. Even with the relatively fewer choices, you can classify these upgrades into 2 categories: ones that are very affordable, and ones that are expensive and may even require more earnings first.

Under normal circumstances, we recommend going for the affordable and the cheapest upgrades. We do understand that some expensive upgrade costs are significant for you to move forward. However, you should save purchasing those under circumstances where you come across large sums of cash. Logging back in after a long break will surely net you a lot of cash and there are ad boosts as well directed towards rewarding you with instant cash.

5. Spend Gems Wisely

Gems serve as a premium currency in Idle Railway Tycoon and are expectedly a lot more difficult to earn than cash. Gems can be used to purchase a wide variety of items from the shop as well as speed up cash earnings in some ways. While there are also several ways for you to earn gems for free, it is always best to spend every bit of what you have sparingly. Each of the options you can spend your gems on contribute to increase in profits but you should always consider using them on something that has permanent effects.

You have the option of spending 30 gems to double the amount of cash you earn from idle rewards. Alternatively, however, simply playing a short video ad when you log back in on the game will earn you an extra 50% cash. Evidently enough, spending gems on this as well as patronizing any other options that practically convert gems to cash is never a smart thing to do.

You should continue to save gems for Train Chests at the shop, most especially the Expert Grade ones that only reward you with blue and purple trains. Before that, though, we recommend spending your first 100 gems on the Retail Store under the Special Architecture section of the shop. Putting up this stall will have it earn extra cash over time although you will have to click on it to claim the earnings it has amassed. This is most definitely worth it especially if you spend time online often. The extra cash it earns may seem diminutive, but it helps you purchase more upgrades and ultimately increase profits.

6. Put The Right Trains On The Right Routes

There are numerous trains to collect in Idle Railway Tycoon and while they can primarily be categorized by rarity or color, which is green (common), blue (uncommon), and purple (rare), the more important classification lies in the train type. Trains fall within one of four types of trains as indicated by an icon on the lower left side of their portrait: long distance (red), business (purple), intercity (blue), or sightseeing (green).

While a train’s rarity or grade imbues them with higher potential to generate more profits per trip, scheduled time of deployment as well as railway line assignments can impact each trains profitability as well. Coincidentally, each railway line available for you have specific types consistent with the train types above. Milford, the first railway line available, for example, is a sightseeing type. Reaching higher ratings will lead to milestones that will unlock succeeding railway lines and you can expect the next 3 railway lines to showcase the remaining 3 types as well.

One task you should consistently tend to immediately, is set or make updates to the railway line assignments for each new train you acquire. The sooner they get their assignments the sooner they can generate more income for your train station. To initiate this, simply click on the railway icon at the lower right side of the screen. The railway lines page will show you all the lines you have unlocked as well as the rating and cash requirements to unlock the next one. Clik on the “allocate trains” button to start assigning trains.

The next page will show you unassigned trains at the bottom of the screen as well as railway lines to assign them to above. Note that you have to swipe right to move to the next railway line if you have already unlocked them. If you check the icons of the unassigned trains here, it becomes easy to determine where each train should be assigned to. Their types will appear visible if you are on a railway line that has the same type as they are. Simply click each train and try as much as possible to assign all of them here.

Temporarily, given that it may take a while for you to unlock all the first 4 railway lines, feel free to assign some trains however you see fit. It is still better to assign them on any route than to leave them idle. Just remember to re-deploy them to the right railway line later on, once the more suitable one has been unlocked.

After you click on the “apply” button, you will be taken to a timetable. This is where you get to assign each train as to which hour they will be scheduled to depart. Naturally, you will not have enough trains to fill the entire board and you will also initially be only able to deploy one train per hour. To increase the number of trains you can deploy per hour, you will have to upgrade the boarding area to the next level.

7. Upgrade Trains To Increase Profits

While Idle Railway Tycoon holds a wide variety of trains for players to unlock and collect, the gacha approach towards obtaining trains from the train chests in the shop can make it difficult to collect everything. Chances are that you will obtain copies of some trains early on, most especially the green or common rarity ones.

Obtaining extra copies of each train is actually not a bad experience as you will need several copies of each train to be able to upgrade them. Under the trains menu, which you can access via its icon at the lower right side of the screen, you can upgrade trains that you own with no extra cost. Upgrading a train requires a duplicate copy of it. You can easily see which trains can be upgraded by the green up arrow sign on their icons. The first upgrade to 1 star only requires one duplicate, and you need as many duplicates as the star grades each time.

Relative to this, clicking on each train gives you important details about each unit, including the perk bonus that activates when the train is assigned to the correct route type as we discussed earlier. Note that perks can be modified, which means that you will basically change the train’s type to make it suitable for a different route. This will cost 10 gems and we prefer you not spend on it and instead wait to obtain the correct trains for the routes you need more trains on.

8. Take Advantage Of Ad Boosts

Video ads are always expected to form part of free to play mobile games, most especially casual and hyper casual types. It is easy to understand why some players can be annoyed or turned off by the idea of seeing video ads in their games but it should likewise be understandable that these ads exist to ensure that the game will remain available for everyone to enjoy absolutely free.

There are actually plenty of video ads you may see as you play Idle Railway Tycoon. However, there are no ads that pop up without players consenting to it. Video ads in Idle Railway Tycoon actually categorically fall within the ad boost type, and each one holds perks that improve gameplay and very hard to turn down. More likely than not, enjoying Idle Railway Tycoon could mean actually wanting to see ads more often and reaping each one’s attractive rewards.

For starters, we already mentioned about the profit multiplier that should be kept active as it increases all profits earned by an extra 50%. Another huge help comes whenever you stay idle or away from the game. The idle profits you earn can also be increased by an extra 50% all for the cheap cost of playing a 15 to 30-second video ad. You will be spending a lot of time collecting trains even with the free keys you obtain as mission rewards. Idle Railway Tycoon gives you a free keys each day and you can quickly unlock free crates if you choose to play ads during the cool down periods.

While spending time on your growing train station business, you will easily notice other ad boosts that pop up from time to time. On the left side of the screen, a yellow bus icon will often appear and clicking on it presents you with an option to get a bus full of passengers for your trains. You can get the extra passengers after you play a short ad at this point. On the upper right side of the screen, you may also be presented with 2 unique ad boost opportunities. The first one will let you earn a fairly huge amount of cash instantly while the other will activate express access at the ticket center, ensuring instant entry of passengers and no waiting in line.

And that sums up all we have for you on our Idle Railway Tycoon beginner’s guide. We hope that the tips and strategies we presented will help you progress through your railway business adventure faster and more efficiently than you normally would. If you happen to come across some neat tricks and strategies that we missed, we welcome you to share them with us in the comment area!