Once you have built your track and trains, you can't just walk away. Running trains in itself is part of the game, if you don't, you may get by for a few years, but if you ignore your trains, eventually your company will head for liquidation!

There are three station buildings to consider - Water Towers, Sanding Towers and Roundhouses. You will need to build these every time you extend your rail network, or when creating it for the first time. Below is an explanation as to why these are important.

• Water Towers: These are only relevant to steam engines. A steam engine without water will run at severely reduced speed. When a steam engine passes through a station it repleneshes a steam engine's water levels. Be very careful, when running at reduced speed, the engine may well start making heavy losses. It is therefore essential to build water towers before running trains, to make sure you aren't caught out later when you can't afford it. Keep an eye on all your locomotives, if any lcoco is running without water click on it and find out the nearnest stations and put water towers there.
• Sanding Towers: Trains use sand to give them better grip when negociating uphill gradients. If they run out of sand, gradients are twice as hard to overcome. How quickly your train uses up sand is related to the steepness and quantity of gradients encountered. Generally speaking, sanding towers are not as nessacary as other buildings, although it depends on the terrain. Unless you are building in areas where grades are over 4%, I would build the occasional sanding tower on a very sparse basis, and then whatching out for trains running out of sand, and building sanding towers whereever trains run out of sand
• Roundhouses: These are very expensive at $120,000. They replenish your locomotives' oil levels. It takes a few years to run out of oil, but once a locomotive does, the breakdown risk greatly increases and maintenance costs go through the roof, making it very hard to make any profit. Roundhouses are essential. Because they are so expensive try to build them in stations which a large number of trains pass through. When starting the game, you have a couple of years before roundhouses become essential, so you might choose to spend all your money on trains initially as that will give you a higher return. This is risky, because you need to make sure that two years down the line you will have enough money for the roundhouses, so bear this in mind.

It is important to keep an eye on all your trains regularly. Go to the train consist list and look for where trains are making operational losses. Trains making profit can be ignored unless you think you can squeeze any more profit out of them. Look at last year's and the year before last year's profit. It won't help to look at this years profit because it is possible that the train hasn't completed a full journey, or its possible it just finished a journey as the new year came in, as a result, this years profitability isn't a very good measure.

Some trains will start making losses when they become old. Maintance costs increase, breakdowns increase, and speeds decrease. If a train is over 15 years old and making a loss, replacing it will probably solve the problem. Be careful though, look at the trains lifetimes profits. In its lifetime it should have made at least as much money to pay for itself, otherwise you will be wasting your money. If its lifetime profits are minimal, then its probably a good idea to retire the train alltogether

If the train is under 15 years old and making a loss, then the route isn't good enough. Retiring the train before its 15 years old is a bit of a waste, I would advise reassigning such a train with different route orders, possibly by retiring an older train and giving it its orders.

Also, sometimes it won't be clear cut as to whether the train is making a loss. For example, in the past year and the year before that, for one of the years it may have made a profit and for the other one a loss. You need to add the profit and loss together, and if it shows a net profit, then keep it in service, but keep your eye on it. If it shows a net loss, then you need to do something about it.

Below is a table showing my suggested course of action for dealing with unprofitable trains

Be careful if you retire a train. Although a train hauling iron ore to a steel mill might not in itself make a profit, a whole load of other trains may make a profit as a direct result of that journey, such as all the steel trains and auto trains etc.