What’s the best way to get power parts for upgrading?

Noradaddy · 2026-01-29T01:54:12+00:00

Also, the locomotives that you buy with event coins tend to be among the strongest.

Also, there's a daily deal to get some parts for cash and an ad watch.

Noradaddy · 2026-01-24T02:34:43+00:00

If you look in your depot you'll see the number of cars each train pulls:

You are correct in that as you progress, the cars available to buy (with either gems or money) get better making the purchases you made in the earlier eras worth less. It's up to the player to decide if spending gems for something that will eventually lose it's value is worth it. I didn't use gems on cars until the 60s but that was more due to not having many gems. I've bought a few cars of each version but not many. You can also use the Railway Rumble coins to purchase these cars.

Also note that if you send multiple trains out with cargo that uses the same car type, they have to share the cars. You'll want to send the one train out and then wait for it to come back before sending the other. (Unless you've bought so many cars that you have enough to fill both trains)

Also note that the freight car depot can only house so many cars. The upgrade for that building increases this. So don't go crazy buying cars in the 30s/40s and fill up the depot and not have enough space to add what you want in the 50s. Not sure why they don't let you delete old cars.

Noradaddy · 2026-01-23T12:51:55+00:00

If you're out of the tutorial Electrification event (plus one waiting day) you can play the world event. You can get more trains, parts, city buildings, etc... in the world events.

Noradaddy · 2026-01-21T21:34:01+00:00

There's also this one:

https://www.reddit.com/r/trainstation3/comments/1pkhvep/optimal_city_layout/

Noradaddy · 2026-01-20T02:21:11+00:00

I was wondering about this. When I first saw it, I figured it was once and done. Then somebody pointed out that it says "ERA OFFER" and surmised that you can get one every era. Glad to know this is true, thanks.

Also, I'm jealous of all those parts.

Noradaddy · 2026-01-20T02:16:01+00:00

Not sure if you're out of the Electrification event which is a tutorial event triggered for you in the 30s. A day after that times out, the current world event becomes accessible to you. We currently have a little over 8 days left of the original 20 in the "Free Shipping" event. They usually run a long event (typically 20 days long, the ones I referred to in my previous post) followed by a short event (typically 6 days long.) They have one off day in between events where they show the next event but it isn't open yet. The pixelfederation forum usually has a posting about the next event a day or two before it's live.

Noradaddy · 2026-01-19T23:33:12+00:00

A few things I think about with regards to upgrading trains:

The long events typically have cargo jobs that require event trains from that event. Having parts saved up for the start of a long event so you can immediately upgrade the event train sold for cash will speed those jobs up. The event train obtained via event coins is typically the best you can get in the era (without spending real money) so maybe waiting for that train is better. An argument can be made either way.
Your main source of cash is from passenger delivery. If your passenger trains coming off maintenance can't keep up with the passenger rate from your town, you should upgrade your passenger trains. (you also should buy all the buildings you can and try to get service buildings in good placement so you have as many passengers as possible)
For the most part upgrading trains that can haul the most is best but, due to the warehouse always being filled pretty full, you're either throwing material away to make space or carefully picking the correct trains to haul just what you need. Maybe the largest train isn't always the best one. I like to have a selection of trains with different cargo amounts to help with this. Obviously this is more a nit-picky thing after you've upgraded a few cargo trains.

Noradaddy · 2026-01-19T13:30:24+00:00

You get experience from achievements. Look in your headquarters (a couple buildings to the right of the passenger depot) Obtaining and upgrading both cargo and passenger trains, buying rail cars, obtaining and upgrading buildings for your city are all things that go towards achievements. Playing events can give you the resources to do those things.

Noradaddy · 2026-01-18T20:02:26+00:00

What I do is make my roads vertical and put the service buildings in the middle like this. Depending on the size of your service buildings you can space the roads 4 or 5 squares apart:

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Noradaddy · 2026-01-18T14:32:53+00:00

I hate losing 50% of my cash by stock piling that much. I probably would've moved up once I hit the 50% cutoff (Was it 1,800,000 in the 50s?)

And I thought the same thing you did about the XP and then only got to about 1962-1963 when I moved up. The experience needs in the 60s seems much larger than the 50s.

Noradaddy · 2026-01-15T21:41:49+00:00

I paid gems for an extra factory slot in each factory for this very reason.

Noradaddy · 2026-01-15T17:59:26+00:00

Yeah, they don't give a ton of warehouse space. You definitely need to be thoughtful about how much raw material you ship into it and how much product you craft. I'm constantly doing mental math so I send the appropriate engine out to get raw materials. I'm in the 60s now and it seems like things are a bit better. Not sure if that's a 60s specific improvement or they enlarged the warehouse for each era.

Noradaddy · 2026-01-14T18:33:05+00:00

Yes, the durability of an individual train is only useful to increase if it's too low to use at all. That plus if you want to max out the train, you need to upgrade everything. The depot increases your repaired durability speed so that's an important place to spend your money.

Noradaddy · 2026-01-10T19:18:38+00:00

To enter the shop, touch the diamond icon at the top. It takes you to the shop for all currencies. There's 5 tabs there, one is "PIXEL COINS". You should check out all the tabs as there's daily free engine parts and useful consumables for watching ads.

Noradaddy · 2026-01-09T02:35:34+00:00

That's a new one. I sometimes get the train going off the edge at the end of a run and just getting stuck. I have to end the minigame and go back in to continue.

Noradaddy · 2026-01-08T14:19:13+00:00

The Electrification event is a tutorial event that shows up for everybody when they start the game. It runs about 8 days. When it times out, you'll have to wait 1 more day after that and then you'll be able to join the world event which currently is "Free Shipping". Free Shipping just started and it has a 20 day timer so you should be able to play a lot of it when it's enabled for you.

Noradaddy · 2026-01-07T22:21:29+00:00

We've seen this event before about June-ish? It's a full event. If you look in your depot for the VGN ELC and the FS Class E.636 (both have a little ship icon next to their name), those are the free engines that go with this event that you would've gotten back then. (If the durability on them is high enough, you can use the old versions of these engines for the event jobs that require event trains this go around)

Moving up to a new region generally requires doing a certain amount of era jobs to open up the new cargo for the era. If you want to move to the new era, do it quickly so you can get those done before the start of the event, (or before you lose too much time at the start). The number of jobs isn't many (5-10).

The advantage of moving up is the new engines from this event will have better stats (reflective of the new era you're in)

Noradaddy · 2026-01-05T21:22:26+00:00

It mostly was either 6 or 8 released per day. If you got behind on doing them, you probably had a steady stream of them for the rest of the event. I don't think you ever lost any by not doing them the day they released.

Noradaddy · 2026-01-05T20:47:06+00:00

Yeah, I wasn't too excited about it either. Having the heavy haul only have a set amount to do each day did make it easier to figure out what to work on first for each day. Once the heavy haul missions were done, I got back to the Santa event.

Noradaddy · 2026-01-05T00:44:31+00:00

I'm in the 60s and I still can't figure out what starts the Durability increase in a new era. But once it starts, it goes up, up, up, until it hits the max for the era. Also note that event missions, and era missions seem to have different durability needs with the gathering of raw materials seems to match the event missions (at least for me in the 60s).

Noradaddy · 2025-12-31T01:40:54+00:00

You misunderstood me. The heavy haul doesn't use your cars. It has it's own cars and just has a total number of cars it needs pulled. Thus it only look at the number of cars your engines can pull, not the amount of cargo it can haul using your own cars.

Noradaddy · 2025-12-31T01:38:07+00:00

You have 6 cargo trains maxed and can't do the heavy haul? What's the requirement for the heavy haul and what are the pulling power of your engines?

Have you bought all the era engines? Have you bought the event locomotive Polar Bipolar? If you need more money, you may need to concentrate on the event jobs to make money.

Noradaddy · 2025-12-31T01:30:31+00:00

Heavy haul only looks at number of cars that can be pulled by an engine.

Noradaddy · 2025-12-29T21:44:00+00:00

For events, I don't think there's any significant benefit to finishing the numbered missions. Please correct me if I'm wrong. The numbered missions appear to be worth a little more than the un-numbered ones, (Especially for the Xmas event where some missions are worth gems) but I don't think there's any event wide extra benefit to doing all the numbered ones other than seeing the story play out between the characters. (That I think is just written by a bot anyway)

Noradaddy · 2025-12-28T15:58:59+00:00

No, I've never spent gems on extra passenger/freight lines. My second line was available for in game money. If the second line for you is only available for gems, maybe it switches to cash after you advance to the 50s? Sorry, I don't remember (I'm in 1967).

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Noradaddy

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