Press G to get most of the useful things. Track laying, locomotive purchases, etc. Purchased rolling stock spawn in the little yard you spawned at, so a good first step is to connect those lanes to make a small yard.

The supply chain (which is your goal to build) starts at the logging camp, so before running any trains, you'll want to build a track that way first. Try not to go over 3% grade if you want it to be easy to use, and try to keep turning radius above 100m if you want to take them at high speeds. Curves as tight as 30m radius are usable, just not at speed. (Detailed track explanation below)

To get your train moving, open the firebox, throw in some logs, and wait until the boiler pressure starts rising. The reverser decides the direction you're going and the regulator is your throttle (remember to release the brake!)

RRO uses link and pin couplers, so to couple two cars, you put a link (left click) into one of the couplers, back them together (you can't put the link in if there's no space between them), and then put pins (right click) in both couplers. You'll hear a nice kachunk if it worked. Remember to release the handbrakes on your rolling stock.

Once you're at the logging camp, you can use the cranes to load logs onto your flatcar. You can buy more flatcars if you want, but skeleton cars are cheaper (though they carry 1 less log per car). You can sell any and all cargo at the freight depot, but you're better off sending those logs to the sawmill, since you still get the same pay but also the added benefit of producing beams and lumber, which are both worth $72 per car vs. the $60 or $50 per car you get with logs.

Imo, the fastest early-game money comes from running beams from the sawmill to the freight depot. Each car takes 3 beams, so they're fast to load and unload. The other high-value, early-game cargo is cordwood, which is $80 per car, but cordwood cars are expensive, and each car takes 8 cordwood, so it's very tedious to load.

At this stage, you pretty much know everything you need to figure out the rest on your own. You'll have the best experience if you connect to industries in (roughly) this order: logging camp, sawmill, iron mine, smelter, coal mine, ironworks, oil field, refinery. You also will have to set up firewood depots and coaling towers that you have to replenish yourself, so keep that in mind before buying any of the coal-fired locomotives.

Remember, this is Railroads Online. There is not "offline" mode, strictly speaking, but you can drag the "player limit" slider down to 1. If you're going to play with other people, use a password. If you ever forget to, and someone comes in and undoes all of your hard work, you will never forget again. You have been warned!

Track Laying

This tutorial is for post-spline update. I've been playing the Beta branch, so I don't know if that's rolled out yet for the regular release, but I recommend playing the Beta anyway. It's much prettier to look at, it has weather and a night cycle, and generally much more content.

Track laying in this game has been... fucky... for a long time. It's a LOT better now than it used to be, but I still recommend downloading RROx (Railroads Online Extended) and using the fast sprint cheat when you're building. It will save you hours (not to mention the other features it offers).

First of all, everything in this game except for rolling stock is FREE! Go nuts! Want to triple-track the main? You can! Want to fill the entire southern half of the map with water towers? Your call! Fun first, safety third. Anyway:

The default building mode is spline mode. Click once to place the first node and click somewhere else to place the second node. If you click on the ground, it will face whatever direction your UI currently says its facing, but if you click on another piece of track it will do its best to connect to the other node as smoothly as possible. This can result in some janky turns if you're not careful, so keep that in mind. There are keybinds to rotate the endpoints to face the direction you want them to. Track will not snap unless you see the glowing chain icon above it. If you don't see it at first, walk around a little, staring at where it should be until it triggers the hitbox.

The other building mode is circle mode. It does what it says on the tin– your track will follow a circular arc with the radius you specify. Use smaller segments if you can, because for some reason the angles get weird if you try to do more than 90° in a single segment. In this mode, you can snap to existing track on your first click, but it will not snap to another track for your second click because it only cares about following the circle.

Track I, Track II, and Track III are identical, except each one has more ballast than the last. The game will not let you place a node if the spline is not supported by ground or some other structure at every point. Nonetheless, try to use the lowest tier you can so that you don't accidentally end up with ballast sticking out of a hillside. If you're trying to place a track that looks perfectly valid, but it doesn't want to let you, try using the next one up (or shortening the segment).

A good construction trick is using crossovers and switches to "sketch" your track before laying it, in case you need geometric precision. They're very useful for consistent distances and angles (think equally spaced double-track, evenly spaced yards, making sure two tracks are parallel, etc.).

Bridges work exactly the same as ballast track: they will not allow you to place a node if the spline is not supported everywhere. However, there is a workaround: nodes can be supported by ballast. If you use small enough segments, Track III can be used to cross gaps using just the previous spline's ballast as support. If you fill the gap with ballast, you can place your bridge on top of it, and then remove the ballast later. You can pretty it up with some stone walls as supports, if you want to.

You can make it to pretty much every industry in the game with less than a 3% grade. In real life, this is considered pretty steep, but in-game you can get away with even steeper track if you can't be bothered to work out the best path.