Guide to Cargo and Passenger Trains - Cities Skylines Tutorial 

Extra points: Trains have harder times with slopes than cars, so USUALLY its roads that move out of the way of railways and USUALLY trains slope really slowly. This doesnt matter in cities skylines and if you need the train to yield go for it, but making the road be the one that bends to go under its usually better :)

Appreciate the vid. There's tons of videos about stuff like this, but it takes FOREVER for the creator to just get to the point. Most people don't need 2hr+ vids on how a train works.

YUMBL! I love how excited you got when the train finally came in! 😂 Thank you so much for this beautiful and simple tutorial. I’ve only played a few hundred hours of this game, and one thing I’ve been procrastinating on is putting trains into my cities! I’ve been so intimidated seeing experienced player run double tracks all around their cities and doing complicated mumbo-jumbo between cargo and passengers trains. None of it made sense to me, but now I have a good starting point! AND! You showed that I can have isolated trains that run just for the people in my city that don’t connect to the outside! It never even occurred to me that I could do something as simple as have neat and tide trains running through just two or three trains within the city! 💡im definitely subscribing! Thank you!

4:15, "wye" is an actual railroad term which is used mostly like doing a K-turn in your car, for turning around a locomotive without a turntable or loop (termed a balloon).

That's nice, especially the cargo train part. I recommend Gareth Dennis, he talks a lot about railway engineering and played CS to show what it looks like. I don't know about you - and you probably already know this by now - but the example of a railway connection shown first doesn't make sense; a metro/subway in place of that would make more sense. Just like with roads, public transportation has a hierarchy: from trams and buses, to intercity and regional - which is what you have there in the beginning. Though I think it's more of a rule than an order. I think the hierarchy goes something like this - ranked from highest in stop frequency, and lowest in speed, capacity and range: 1 streetcar 2 bus 3 tram 4 light rail 5 metro/subway 6 regional 7 intercity 8 high speed rail Although you can simplify the hierarchy to: local (1/2/3), urban (4/5) and heavy rail (6/7/8); that way it works for vanilla CS. The hierarchy doesn't necessarily have to be strict - because, again, it's more like a rule. For instance: you can make the jump from bus to regional if intermediates are unnecessary or redundant, or have a tram serve two distant regions which is normally what urban rail is for.

I appreciate that your videos get straight to the point. I've been digging through most of C:S YT and almost every video I've had to watch for info, they buried the info I want around 20 minutes of whatever else in their city they're doing. Specific niche videos! Very helpful!

I've watched many how too videos when it comes to cities skylines, and you are the easiest how to content creator.

Really well explained. Exactly what I was looking for and definitely makes me excited to put trains in my growing city. Cheers

Well done with the road layouts and train lines

To be “more realistic” try to minimize elevated changes as much as possible, this mean instead of instant sunken track, you need instant sunken road instead, or elevated road over track. Also dig through the valley, create a path for the train.

And now I am in dire need of a more advanced tips about train lines. Especially on how to properly plan the layout, starting from small population (under 15K), medium (30K+), large (70K), and all the way to the mega population (over 100K). :") But still,great video nonetheless, your videos are always educating.

That fine road anarchy tool Yumbl told me about comes in handy with the train tracks.

i also wanna recommend that maybe you could do a review on your favorite vehicle/ship/train assets and also a review on every transit system.

Thanks for the tutorial Yumbl! I never tried BadPeanut's double track cargo station because I wasn't sure how it worked correctly. Now I'm gonna give it a go! Thanks again!

Hi, Another great video. i was going to type up that you do not need to create "routes" for cargo but you mentioned it right at the end. You mentioned a follow up - may i suggest that you place a cargo station near a commercial district as they will deliver from outside cities and internal industrial areas to commercial zone, thus saving on trucks Also the industries DLC can the combined sea freight / rail container terminal - i forget the exact word as i dont have industries DLC - same with airport cargo Oh, in larger maps i enure that i dont have mixed freight and passenger lines on the same tracks, eventually there is to much traffic, so i tend to use one incoming / out of city rail line for passengers and make up my passenger rail network, then pick another external rail link and use that for the cargo In / Out and ensure none of the 2 tracks are joined, sometime playing with limited money you dont have a choice but it help if rail networks are congested - they same as setting the first passenger rail station as "Allow Outside" connection and all the others are turned of - as many time there are far more train on the network and they seem to just drop of a few passengers to another normal station. Regards George

Thank you thank you thank you! U’ve showed me a lot of new basic tricks I didn’t know, I’ve just started playing it, didn’t have a clue how to do what. Very nice explained

Avoid all instances of "trains crossing" - go under or over the other road or train track. This means that any train that will need to exit the double-track and do so on the left side of the track, needs to be given a one-way track that exits to the right side, and goes over or under the track, to the left, and then always have that one-way track merge with the other track on that track's right side, unless it's a one-way track too. In my experience, any possibility of a train causing a traffic jam has only to do with this one concept. The bit that you pointed out, where the tracks didn't connect is PARAMOUNT to the success of your tracks. If you suddenly find it that you're being bombarded by a steady line of incoming trains, or if outbound trains seem to be stuck beyond where you can see them, the chances are that one of your track connections haven't connected.

"Transit is beautiful" needs to go onto a T-shirt! Nailed it with three words!!!

I have not added trains yet, this is perfect. Great tip on the bypass and the double line station.

Great video for starting with trains! I would love if you record a bit more advanced tutorial, because my cargo stations always have A LOT of traffic of trucks delivering the goods and I don't know how to solve it properly. I usually do a road as buffer but maybe there are better options :)

I finally found a comprehensive cliff notes for Trains. Thank you. I couldn't find one before that helped enough. You've inspired me to revisit my largest cities to redefine the traffic with trains. Thank you!

I love letting the cargo just go by car. Gives a challenge and fills the otherwise empty roads.

great video, dint know about the double train stop cargo ill get that, should of done a cargo stop at your commercial save even more traffic

The pure excitement when the intercity train line pops up is amazing 😂

I wish all the bridges where i drive were 8m high! Everything here is 4.3m standard. Thank you for this video you explained everything in great detail.

Love the excitement at 8:15 when you see the train spawn lol

Exactly what I've been looking for! Thanks!

Great Tutorial! Very helpful. Although some Parts of the Layout are not realistic. I'm working as a Dispatcher for the german Railway Company. Trains can go up a Pitch of 30 ‰ which is only 3%. That's not much. It's because Trains are heavy and it'd need too much Energy/Fuel for them to go up a bigger Pitch because Trains are too heavy. There are very heavy Trains (about 5k Tons) transporting Ore which ain't allowed to stop at certain Areas. Starting up these Trains would need enough Electricity to power two Houses for a Year and it would literally mill cut the Tracks. Please don't see this as Lecture. :) I know it is just how the Game works. Let's say there is a bit Lack of Realism here and there which is totally fine.

For cargo, I hear using wearhouses is a good idea

i think the most important thing to learn is the little grey metal things over the tracks. trains will stop at them if there's a train on there other side of it. use two lane, one way track in each direction as well. imho.

Thank you so much! I finally know how trains work

I love doing single track one way lines. If you do 2 outer freight lines and 2 inner passenger lines it's makes a neat set up.

Lol love it, "THERE IT IS! WE DID IT!"

been watching a ton of your videos... great stuff!!!! My favorite part is nowhere in the video do you say "and I'm city planner" or some such nonsense like that :)

Super useful introduction. Thanks for making it!

Great tutorial, thanks Yumbl! I've a question. Is the cargo station carry also the product to the commercial zone in your own town? Thanks!

6:49 It's 11 foot 8 inches! (plus 8)

Someone's gotta do a more detailed video on dealing with train traffic in large cities. It's all well and good when you get started with trains but once you lay down a few stations, you start getting long backups. I wonder if it's better to keep passenger train line completely separate from cargo line. Or maybe use one way tracks to force the trains to go where you want. If I lay down several parallel tracks, like lanes on a highway, will the train ai do the same bullshit of backing up on one track and not using the other tracks?

Instead of doing "Y" intersections with the train tracks it can sometimes be a better idea to do an interchange, like a trumpet or "T" interchange or if you're feeling fancy, a weave stack.

This tutorial works if one wants to get started with trains. But it has a painful potential. 1) Double track Cargo Station IMHO it is one of the greatest assets. But for me I cannot get it to work properly. E.g. one track will only spawn out-going or incoming trains, but not both. As I usually used it to separate inside and outside connections - things break. 2) Many connected cargo stations increase the risk of deadlocks The game does not compress cargo trains. So if a 100% Cargo train starts it keeps going until it is empty. This can lead to 20 1-5% Cargo trains on a track - Leading to a deadlock as the trains occupy every free piece of track. 3) outside connection can break In long running games It can happen that a passenger train spawns and blocks the outside connection - it does not leave, but prevents cargo trains from leaving - As Cargo trains can freely get spawned by city train stations this leads to the train tracks getting blocked. One needs a bunch of addons to see the offending connection and delete the offending train and then wait for the stuck trains to despawn. 4) Treat train connections like Highways - don´t use left turns Left turns have the risk that a train can block the through connection (by congestion, bad design, bug, ...). Designing train tracks like high-ways makes it harder for a train connection to dead lock. 5) You can use Vanilla Cargo Train Station and Ship-Train-Cargostation(?) as a Double Track with TPME You create two loops around the station - one clockwise - one counter-clockwise. This means that trains entering the station have different moving directions. With TP:ME you can edit the nodes at the train station that the trains from each loop only can continue straight through. The advantage of this design is that you can separate internal Cargo traffic from external - or even split internal traffic in smaller clusters. The game itself handles all exchange between individual tracks, streets and Cargo ships. 6) There is only one Intercity connection(?) In the past only one outside (the first that gets connected) will spawn passengers (city folk/tourists) - whilst all connections spawn and accept Cargo. I believe this is still the case.

The thumbnail is a train from my country btw. I noticed it’s a velocity set from Victoria, Australia

Hi! thanks for your great videos. I have a doubt, do the cargo station will actually exchange goods in the same city? Thank you!!!

Super cool and informative! Great video.

I realy like your videos. Heres a critic: Sometimes, you knew like, especialy in parts of this, you knew like, when you explain something, you knew like, it will all make sence in a Minute. 1) Your pushing your (otherwise) excelent Contend in lengh 2) your repeading yourselve with, you knew like, useless filler. 👍😁

Does the city gain anything major from imports/exports via train lines? I'm guessing this will create less traffic on the road as trucks go to your train depots to dump off cargo to be exported instead of taking it themselves on the highway, but is there any demonstrable revenue generation from such an action? Not necessary for my purposes, I do like the idea of having a functional train system within and around the city I'm working on.

I would love to see how you handle other types of transit, e.g. buses. I usually always create pairs, e.g.: 1I (for Internal, counter clockwise), 1E (for external, clockwise), 2I, 2E, 3I, 3E etc. So that I always have buses that go in opposite directions. Paris bus lanes inspired this concept a bit.

This intersection has another downside: tracks are crossing, so traffic jam may occur if you have a lot of industry or tourists. But it works just fine otherwise.

This helped me a lot thnks

I love your vids & subscribed. You inspire me. But can you tell us WHY and where you want to lay train stations. Like does this help generate more money? It obviously helps free up road congestion....but would you want cargo trains in industrial areas or commercial or what? I commented before watching til the end lol...you helped a lot. Ty❤ I have been playing on my ps5 which doesn't allow for this much detail but I also have this on pc.

Been working through your past videos, and I was wondering...do the characters ever not obey the train intersection? Like, are there mods that have daredevils?

I recently moved my industry into an entirely new area far away from the main city since I make Towns between but since I moved it I'm having a not enough goods issue with commercial and I have trains but they're not efficient I don't think. I am watching.

what about a back and forth play through in the game rewind and forward or record screen captures?

Actually using TM:PE, you can allow a passenger train passing over in a cargo track and vice versa, other than creating a by-pass track. I just discover it recently...

Good explainer for starters, however you havn't told people how to fix the mental goods/industry train traffic thats clogs tacks up to the edge of the map when your city gets quite large ;)

your tutorials are greats.

Thank you for the explanation 🤩

Awesome episode and advice, keep it up 🙂👍

Thanks for this video!

i saw that some other youtubers suggests to create an internale close track for importing goods from cargo terminals and they should import them by a singol cargo terminal and goods are transfered to the internal system via trucks. does it make sense?

What type of road did u use? The black road with white pedestrian

I maybe missed it but why there is no electricity cable over the train line? I tried to avoid the electricity line for so long but no luck.

i have a really hard time with trains, but it seems to be some type of bug. Intercity trains will spawn WAYYY to frequently. nearly every time i start a project and get focused on something, i will finish, zoom out and suddenly my ENTIRE train system is locked up with trains. I click on these trains and there's only a handful of passengers on each one. same with trains spawning from my station. sometimes it works ok but other times trains will just spawn one after another with next to no passengers! i cant seem to figure out how to fix this. the bug seems to be with cruise ships as well (except they dont lock up). my cruise ships spawn one after another and clip into each other while docking because there is an endless line of them spawning in. is there a mod to fix these things or some sort of strategy im not using?

I can’t seem to find the map you play on, I love how it looks! Especially with your city on it!

thank you for this :)

when will u stream next on twitch? ps: love ur vids btw :)

same energy when I saw my train station got a pick line 8:16

When would I use a metro and when would I use a train for inner city travel?

simple map!! this is where I am getting so lost! Ive have zero town planning knowledge!

@YUMBLEtv Question, i see that you are using railroad crossings, but not matter what i try, i dont seem to be able to get any railroad crossings. the game keeps telling me i cant cross road and rail tracks. Is this a Mod?

Trucks in my city are flooding Cargo stations. I'm getting huge traffic jams because trucks can't go in and out fast enough. How Can I speed this process up, so I don't get 60% traffic flow?

Hello sir. How do you get your roads dark black like that?

They this guy "Mr. City Skylines" in France because he practically invented it.

How did you make a straight overpass on the roundabout from the center of the road?

In the UK we call it a "level crossing".

What about trains to boat transfers? Worth a video?

I saw the thumbnail was a Vlocity train so I clicked

This might seem like a silly question but how do you access the move it mod? It doesn’t show up on my taskbar.

3:04 I'm not seeing that Precision Engineering Control pane (I guess it's P. E.). How do I get it to display? edit: I don't see that control interface pane when I look at Precision Engineering vids. hmmm

Thanks for the tips - whenever I connect cargo trains to the external train connections I end up with complete train gridlock across the whole map - any ideas?

I think something else that's worth mentioning is that cargo trains can also be used for commercial imports. It's of questionable utility most of the time since truck density to commercial is generally much lower, but you can use it in a select few high density commercial districts to split traffic between highway connections and rail. It can sometimes be a good idea to link your largest commercial zones into your cargo grid because of this.

Can you make stations underground?

Is there a mod, that give you a first person look for people and cars in tunnels like Metro-overhaul?

How do you make the tracks go under the highway on vanilla???

How do you go over highways?

Question doesnt random trains going arround the map wih passengers stop in my station so why do i need 2

Ow wow, how do you remove the blue fog on the end of the map?

What if I dont have railway connectivity and decide to build train station and cargo station?

Where was the electric train wires over the track?

7:49 at 1.5x speed sounds like ben shapiro lol

17:38 What's that train traffic info pane?

why my passenger trains go bananas when accepting external cities tourism? it really, really makes it impossible for me to use (aswell as festival/concerts) with going bananas i mean cars and citizens spawning nonstop or 700 people waiting at the closest bus/metro stop

u have drawn connection between cargo train station. i didn't understand actually why did u say they don't need to be drawn 😯

Refused to conenct when trying to connect train lines. Why?

I really want to focus to the train but that single point parclo is kept on drawing my attention

The heavy use of at-grade crossings is (in realism terms) very American. They're not safe and, I suspect, they make people dislike trains, thus providing an excuse not to fund them :-}.

2:15 flat earth theory confirmed

Im here because the city i built... now has 6 fuckin track sets, all separate going to their own stops for cargo or metro... they link to the outer line... theyre stilll backed up 4 land blocks... to a grid lock... its stupid and making me mad. I need to get to a square on the edge so i can have 6 lines going to the spawn. . . But the larger intersections might help dramatically. All my junctions are short.

thanks guided

What’s the name of the map?

My train lines are not showing up