A railway you build, signal and operate Iron Trails starts you with an empty valley: terrain, a few interchanges, and industries waiting on their spurs. Everything between them is yours to survey, grade and lay. Then you have to make it work — as the dispatcher lining routes, and as the engineer with a hand on the brake. Lay track that respects the ground Track is surveyed to the natural ground, cutting through high spots and filling hollows, with a 3% ruling grade you cannot cheat. Curves are measured, not guessed: the radius sets the speed, and the layout check tells you where your railway will slow trains down. Raise, lower, flatten and smooth the terrain with brushes, with contour lines so you can see what you are doing. Turnouts come with their frog number, switch points, lead radius and clearance point worked out for you — build a No. 14 and it behaves like one. Signal it properly Controlled home signals at every turnout, automatic intermediates between them, diamonds and crossovers with their own protection. Request and release routes, throw points, and watch aspects step down block by block ahead of an occupied section. An intermediate at its most restrictive shows Restricting on staggered heads with a number plate — stop and proceed at restricted speed, not an absolute stop. A CTC control board lists every turnout and signal on the railway, so you can dispatch without chasing the camera. Run trains that weigh something Air brakes with a real brake pipe: reductions take time to travel the train, and a long train takes far longer to pull up than a short one. Coupler slack runs in and out. Start a heavy train badly and you will hear about it in the drawgear. Tonnage, grades and tractive effort decide what your locomotive can actually lift, with multiple units and distributed power when it cannot. Speed supervision draws PTC-style braking curves to signals, speed restrictions and anything standing in the way or switch it off and drive it yourself. Work the industries Grain elevators, lumber mills, factories, coal mines and power plants, each loading and unloading the cars that suit them. Every car carries a waybill. The switch list tells you what is billed where, what each shipper is short of, and what you have earned. Interchanges hand in the cars your industries asked for and take away the ones you deliver, including intermodal running through from one end of the map to the other. Crews that know their place Hand a job to the AI yard crew: click the cars you want, in order, and it plans the moves, sets the hand-throw points and makes the switchback when the car can only be reached from the far end. It will not line a signaled switch or clear a signal for itself. It runs up to your signal and waits, and you decide — line the route, or let it by at restricted speed with one button. Several trains can work the railway at once, each with its own crew, while you take the cab of whichever one you like. A valley that lives around the railway Towns grow beside the industries, with streets, blocks of buildings and a highway down the valley. Cars, pickups, vans, buses and semis drive the roads, stop short of the gates when your train is coming, and run at night on headlights. Every road crossing is built for you: planks, crossbucks, flashing lights and gates that come down in good time and lift when you clear. The sun rises and sets on its own clock. After dark your headlight and ditch lights throw real shadows down the ballast, and the end-of-train device blinks away at the back of the train. No timers, no score Build a branch line across the hills, or a yard you can switch for an hour. Save the railway and come back to it — track, trains, waybills, earnings and all.
