Business simulation
Railroad Tycoon vs Railway Empire vs Transport Fever
Railroad Tycoon, Railway Empire and Transport Fever put transport at the heart of a business. Compare company strategy and railway expansion with the broader challenge of running several modes of transport.
Compare the three games
| Game at a glance | Railroad Tycoon (II / 3) ↗ | Railway Empire (1 / 2) ↗ | Transport Fever 2 ↗ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vehicles | Trains, and only trains — the company is a railroad. Railroad Tycoon 3 alone carries over forty locomotives, from early steam to bullet trains. | Trains, and only trains — the company is a railroad. Railway Empire 2 carries sixty historically modelled locomotives, from 1830s steam onward, and you paint and name each one. | Trains, trams, buses, trucks, ships and aircraft — over 200 vehicles in Transport Fever 2, plus a large Steam Workshop of mods. |
| Building | Track dragged across a continuous landscape rather than stamped onto tiles, with grades, tunnels and overpasses priced by what the terrain costs to cross. | Free-form track dragged across a fixed landscape — there is no terrain sculpting. Signals are placed for you, bridges and tunnels carry up to four tracks, and a station grows to as many as eight platforms. | Free-form: curves you place yourself, full terrain modification, and modular stations, harbours and airports assembled from pieces. |
| Towns and cities | Simulated, and the reason the map exists: towns and industries produce and demand more than thirty-five cargoes, and a well-served town grows. | Real places, not tiles you zone: 269 cities across the two continent maps, each demanding its own goods and growing as your trains serve it. You never found a town. | Simulated. Towns grow and re-zone into residential, commercial and industrial districts as your network makes them reachable. |
| Economy | The deepest here by some distance. Cargo economics, bonds, dividends, mergers and a full stock market — you can win by running a railroad or by playing its shares. | A business, not a budget. Freight and passenger revenue, bonds you can only issue three of, warehouses and industries to buy, and a share market where taking 100% of a rival absorbs it — and losing your own stock ends the run. | Yes — more than ten production chains with factories and goods, running costs per vehicle and line, a campaign across three continents and a free-play mode. |
| Price and platforms | Still sold and cheap: Railroad Tycoon II Platinum, Railroad Tycoon 3 and Sid Meier's Railroads! are on Steam and GOG. They are Windows games from the 1990s and 2000s, with the compatibility patience that implies. | Railway Empire 2 is $49.99 on Steam for Windows, and sold for PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Series X|S — where it is also on Game Pass — and Nintendo Switch. No macOS or Linux build, and nothing on mobile or in a browser. | A paid download on Steam, GOG and Epic for Windows, macOS and Linux, plus a Console Edition for PlayStation and Xbox released in March 2023. Transport Fever 3 follows on 29 September 2026 on PC, Mac, Linux, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. No mobile or browser version. |
This guide is published by the creators of Rail Island. We are not affiliated with the other games featured here. Details are based on official websites and store pages; features, prices and availability may change. Spotted a mistake? Let us know at info@railisland.com.
Which game should you choose?
Choose Railroad Tycoon for classic railway business strategy, including Railroad Tycoon 3's stock market. Choose Railway Empire for railway expansion through historical campaigns and scenarios. Choose Transport Fever for free-form construction and production chains served by more than trains.
Which Railroad Tycoon
The name covers several games, and three of them are still on sale. Railroad Tycoon II Platinum is the one with the reputation — sharp, fast, and the favourite of most people who played it at the time. Railroad Tycoon 3 is the fullest: a 3D landscape, over forty locomotives, more than thirty-five cargoes and the most developed economy of the series, at around $9.99. Sid Meier's Railroads! (2006) is the lightest and most approachable of the three.
They are sold individually and as a collection on Steam and GOG. For the full experience, Railroad Tycoon 3 is the one the rest of this page describes.
Track over real ground
Railroad Tycoon dragged track across a continuous landscape long before that was normal. You pull a line from A to B and the game works out what it costs to get there: grades slow trains and cost money, tunnels and bridges are priced by what they cross, and a route that follows a river valley is cheaper and faster than the straight line over the ridge.
That makes surveying a real part of the game. The cheap route, the fast route and the route that serves the most towns are usually three different lines, and choosing between them with a limited budget is the decision the whole thing is built on.
The deepest economy on this list
Cargo is where the money starts. More than thirty-five commodities move between industries and towns in a dynamic economy where prices respond to supply and demand, so a route that was profitable last decade may not be this one. Industries can be bought, and a railroad that owns the factory it serves is playing a different game from one that just hauls for it.
Above that sits the finance layer, and it is the reason the series is still talked about. You issue bonds, pay dividends, buy shares in rivals, take them over, and manage a personal fortune that is scored separately from the company's. You can lose control of your own railroad in a hostile takeover. Nothing else in this genre has ever gone this far into the boardroom.
The locomotives
Railroad Tycoon 3 alone carries over forty locomotives spanning the whole history of the railway, from early steam to modern high-speed stock, each with its own speed, pulling power, reliability and running cost. Choosing the right engine for a grade and a consist is a genuine decision, not a cosmetic one.
Campaigns and scenarios
The series is built around scenarios as much as free play: historical situations with objectives, on real maps, with a time limit and a bar to clear. They are the best of the games for a lot of players, because a Railroad Tycoon problem with a deadline is a much sharper thing than a sandbox.
What it costs and where it runs
Cheap — Railroad Tycoon 3 is around $9.99 and the others are comparable, often less in a sale. All three are Windows games from the 1990s and 2000s. They run on modern machines, but with the usual caveats of software that age: resolution options from another era, occasional patience required getting them started, and community patches worth looking up before you begin.
Who it is for
Railroad Tycoon is for people who want the business, not just the railway. If the idea of financing an expansion by issuing bonds and then quietly buying your competitor is appealing, nothing newer has replaced it. If you want a modern interface and a game that looks like this decade, start somewhere else and come back for this one later.
Frequently asked questions
- Which Railroad Tycoon game should I buy?
- Railroad Tycoon 3 for the fullest version — a 3D landscape, over forty locomotives, more than thirty-five cargoes and the deepest economy, at around $9.99. Railroad Tycoon II Platinum if you want the sharper, faster classic that most long-time fans prefer. Sid Meier's Railroads! if you want the lightest of the three.
- Can you still buy Railroad Tycoon?
- Yes. Railroad Tycoon II Platinum, Railroad Tycoon 3 and Sid Meier's Railroads! are all sold on Steam and GOG, individually and as a collection, and they are inexpensive.
- Does Railroad Tycoon run on modern Windows?
- Generally yes, though these are games from the 1990s and 2000s and behave like it — dated resolution handling and the occasional start-up problem. The GOG releases are packaged for modern systems, and community patches exist for the older titles.
- Is there more than trains in Railroad Tycoon?
- No. The company is a railroad, so trains are the only vehicles. The depth is in the cargo economy, the industries you can buy and the stock market you run the company through.
