A CIRCULAR FROM THE RAILWAY BOARD Tycoons! This one is repairs, end to end: we ran an audit of the whole railway — from the cash desk to the job board — and closed everything we found. • The books for your absence are kept properly. Costs for all the missed days used to be taken at once, before the first ruble of takings — a sound railway could return to an empty treasury and a scattered staff. Now takings first, then the bills, day by day, just as when you are here • The treasury never goes below zero — not when you decline a job, not when you pay off a loan. The gifted train No. 444 can no longer be sold for four million • The mechanic leaves the crew with the man, rather than servicing the train from beyond the grave. Hiring counts three required places and adds a mechanic when it can, and a full crew in a city with a depot has an "Add a mechanic" button • Honest building. The menu and the build itself finally agree on one price: the first building of a kind in a city needs no materials, each next one costs a tenth more, and the depot costs the advertised three hundred thousand. A demolished station can be built again — a city used to be left without one for good • Electricians work on site: no bus carries them, and no "not getting to work" alert is raised over them • The diamond mine: unpaid, it stands until you pay; fix the city's troubles and it starts at once • The job board no longer freezes: untaken offers expire, and a "three-day" deadline lasts exactly three days. The bank grows to level five, as do its rates — the "Upgrade the bank" job is doable again. At the market a lot can be bought in parts, as long as you can afford a single unit • Words now match deeds: leisure houses bring 7,200 per level, which is what it says; an empty cinema raises an alert; an unpowered building says "unpowered"; the workshop descriptions quote the real norms • The clock. The notification shade and the app switcher no longer count your seconds twice, and turning the system clock forward no longer gifts a month of mining • Small things: a leaderboard name with an underscore is no longer reported as taken; the tutorial can be restarted right from the map; the store opens over any window; a bus with a dry tank draws its lines gray Steam is up. Your move, tycoon.

A CIRCULAR FROM THE RAILWAY BOARD Gentlemen tycoons! This issue is repairs from end to end: one fault was pointed out by a player, three more turned up while we were tracing it. • The railway works again while you are away. Returning after a long absence, you could find your stores untouched: no raw material at all, though wages and upkeep had been charged for every day. The order of business was to blame — the buses spent their whole range before the office counted who had come to work, and by those dry machines it appeared that nobody had. Now the shift is counted before the buses set out, and the workshops are credited with exactly the time the buses could cover • The power station is now within a city's means. Last issue we made power compulsory and misjudged the measure: a station fed one building per level, while a city holds a dozen and a half. Where stations stood without an electrician, the city stopped altogether. Now one station feeds five buildings per level, and in older games the capacity is recalculated by itself • The ghosts are gone. In long-running games, places at your buildings were held by people long departed: the office could not find the building's record and never freed the place. Those ghosts counted towards city power, police and medical coverage and the takings of your leisure houses — in your favour, but untrue. Places are now recounted against the living when you enter the game • Retirement no longer takes you unawares. A shift hired all at once used to retire all at once, and a city would crumble in a couple of days without a word of warning. Now notice comes a week ahead, and the city panel holds a line reading «Retiring soon» until you hire a replacement The engines are under steam. Your move, tycoon.

Gentlemen tycoons! This time we saw to two things: your fleet, which had no way to grow, and the handbook, which — we confess — the railway never properly had. • The handbook. Five books, nineteen sections: rules, the city, people, industry, the railway. Workshop norms, building prices, market rates, the cost of a line — all of it is read straight from the game's own mechanics rather than from separately written text. So it cannot lie: change the balance and the handbook changes with it. It opens from the start screen and from a button on the map, because questions arise mid-game, not before it • Train upgrades. Wagons — up to five, each adding to your freight. And three branches of three grades: running gear for speed, body for capacity, endurance against wear. What you invest goes into the machine's price, so daily return, upkeep and resale value all rise with it — an upgraded train is honestly dearer to run • The depot. A new building, one per city. Without it there is nowhere to upgrade, its level caps the grades, and repairs in a city with a depot cost a third less • The mechanic. Fourth in the crew, hired only where a depot stands. Optional, but with him a machine lasts markedly longer: together with a specialist driver and the endurance branch, wear drops almost fourfold • A train sitting in the depot no longer asks for money: upkeep is charged only to those on a route • The leaderboard is now our own. Game Center is gone entirely — no sign-in, no borrowed interface. The shared list shows the name, kilometres of track, cities and people; you choose the name yourself, and no two tycoons may share one. The railway board may grant a tycoon a gift — it arrives straight in the treasury • The power station has stopped being an ornament. Short on power and the surplus buildings go dark and stand idle, rather than merely denting the rating. Power now shows in the city panel, and every darkened building raises an alert • The diamond mine was far too large: fifty places ate almost its whole output in wages. Now fifteen — the mine has become a reward for a city brought to perfection, not a second job • No more than three leisure houses of a kind per city: beyond that it pays better to raise a level than to multiply small ones The engines are under steam. Your move, tycoon.

A CIRCULAR FROM THE RAILWAY BOARD Gentlemen tycoons! A railway, as everyone knows, is ruined not by building but by upkeep. Upkeep is what we saw to. • The treasury can no longer fall below zero. Costs used to be taken with no regard for the balance, and a tycoon returning from absence found a hole in the till of unknown origin. Now only what is there gets paid, and in a sensible order: upkeep first, so the workshops keep running, and wages last. Short on a building, and it stands idle until better days. Short on wages, and your people wait three days before leaving to find another master. Every such case is reported to you, and an empty till glows red • A train sitting in the depot no longer asks for money. No. 444, granted to you on taking office, was eating twelve thousand a day without once moving. Upkeep is now charged only to what runs on a line • That same train claimed the "Depot" award in your first second of service — the depot now counts only what you bought yourself • The market brings what you are short of. Lots used to be drawn at random, timber included, of which you already had a million. Now the trader looks at your contracts, assignments, the daily appetite of your workshops and your track stock, and offers what you cannot cover. And all five slots: a first-level market, opened first that day, used to leave the rest empty until tomorrow • Welcome cards: five pages on what all this is for — join the map, build your own chain, raise a city, take a contract, and walk away while the trains keep running • The guide no longer pushes a contract at you when there is nothing to haul it with. It comes after a train is put on a route, and a look at the board is enough — nobody forces you to sign under penalty • On a fresh install the button honestly invites you to play, rather than to continue what does not exist The engines are under steam. Your move, tycoon.

Gentlemen tycoons! This time we did not rebuild the road — we went after everything on it that creaked. • A guide for newcomers: it walks you from your first station to your first contract, notices what you have done by itself, and never stands in your way • Hiring is finally a decision. A worker's experience always showed in his price but did nothing for output — now it does. A master produces more and asks four times as much: cheap hands pay off at the mines, masters earn their keep in the workshops • Trains now wear by time on the line, not by number of trips. A fast engine on a short run used to eat itself in repairs and operate at a loss; now every machine returns the same share of its price on any route, and a dearer train is honestly the stronger one • Fleet upkeep more than halved • The power station works. Its electrician had nowhere to travel to — no route could be laid to the station, yet the journey was still required of him. City capacity therefore always read as zero, ratings could never climb past half, and the diamond mine would not open however hard you tried. Now it does • Workshops and factory now balance exactly: a day's output from the shops is a day's work for the factory. A first-level factory used to produce a third of what it should, leaving stock piling up dead • Coming back after a long absence no longer hangs • The game no longer closes itself if a save fails Your move, tycoon.

A CIRCULAR FROM THE RAILWAY BOARD Gentlemen tycoons! We took the game apart down to the last rail and built it anew — from the map to the ledgers. • A new look: a dark map of the real world, city tokens, 395 destinations • New windows: station, market and bank — one tap, no extra screens • A new economy: a 30-minute day, steady production, and a road that earns while you're away • A new workforce: every worker has a trade, and a master at his own bench is worth one and a half • New achievements: more than twenty, each with several tiers • Dispatches from the line: a stalled bus or a finished track — you'll be the first to know • A new guide: all the rules of the road in one window The engines are under steam. Your move, tycoon.