A few weeks ago, I wrote an article on my first thoughts on Nimby Rail. A transport management game that has caught my intention because you can play Nimby Rail anywhere you like.
NIMBY Rails has only recently become available for early release on Steam. Today I’m going to start a new playthrough game for CTNET readers.
Now is a good time for a disclaimer. I’m not sure how well a let’s play blog will work; why don’t we find out?
Starting A new Nimby Rail game
On Starting a new game, I have entered the company name at CTNET. We will keep the unlimited money unticked, giving us a starting loan amount of 1 billion dollars. Don’t be fooled into thinking that it is a lot of money.
Nimby Rails supports mods and works with Steam Workshop as I’m British. I have downloaded some mods for some British or European trains, which I will enable before starting a new game.
Nimby Rail the gaming world
Above is a map of the world, and you can within reason build a track wherever you like on the map by zooming in on the map to wherever you want to lay your track. The game time is the same as the game started. As with most games of this type, you can pause or speed up the passage of time.
The game includes different time zones, and passenger demand does change with less demand in the early morning than at rush hour. The timezones are not 100% accurate at the moment, but I like their inclusion.
Planning our first Nimby Rail route
The first question is, where do we place our first route. In Nimby, Rail passengers will transfer to other services to reach the destination. So it is likely we will look to expand our network of the first route.
My first thought is the UK may be starting our first route in London, seeing as it is one of the biggest cities in the world. Then expand our network out across the UK and into Western Europe. According to WorldPopulationReview.com the UK is the 49th most densely populated country globally. Several other Western European countries either have a higher population density, such as the Netherlands or slightly lower, like Germany.
Population density suggests that we would get the best return for our investments by starting our transport network in Western Europe, and as I’m British, we will begin our game in the UK.
As I zoomed, the game map showed the most populated places in England. I think we can identify three prime candidates listed below.
- Greater Manchester & Merseyside area is a large Urban area surrounded by several nearby cities including Leeds and Sheffield
- Birmingham is a large Urban area surrounded by several nearby cities including Coventry and Leceister.
- London is the largest Urban area in the UK. With about 10% of the entire British population living in the Greater London area.
Following this analysis, we will start in London. My first goal will be to connect London with Birmingham.
I zoomed into London, which like any city, is full of streets impacting where ground-level tracks can be placed. Looking at Paddington or Kings Cross areas, you can see areas with no roads. This is where the railway tracks are located in real life. A good place for us to place our railway tracks.
Building our first Nimby Rail stations and tracks
Building tools are available under Tracks allowing new tracks, stations and branching of tracks.
When we start creating new tracks, it is added to a Blueprint. Changes can be made to a BluePrint at no cost. The game keeps track of how much it will cost to build the BluePrints, and that money is taken from your account when the Blueprint is built.
Lines can only use stations and tracks which have been built.
For future network planning, we have built at least one platform at the location of all major Railway hub stations in Central London. We have also built an Underground line between a station in the City of London and Kings Cross Railway Station in London.
Setting up a Nimby Rail line
The tools you need to set up a line are available under the Lines tab.
We will set up a new line between the underground station in London with the Railway station at London King Cross. By selecting what platforms the service will use.
Once the line is set up, we will set up the cost. We can set the base price for a ticket, or per Kilometer travelled on that line. We will initially set the price to $0.35 and see how the passengers respond and how much profit we can make from the line.
Our next step is to ask the game to calculate the travel time. We can change the speed parameter as different trains will have different speeds. The estimate allows us to calculate the number of trains we will need to buy for the line we are creating.
We would typically set a minimum duration for the line to control the distance between trains on the line. As the line between the City of London is estimated to take about seven and a half minutes, we will but one train for the line and see how it goes.
Adding trains to a Nimby Rail line
Train management tools are under the Trains tab.
We can select the trains from the list of possible trains. As it is a short line, we will not be that concerned about speed, but each station serves a large population, so capacity is the primary concern for this line. This is why I think we should select a train with high capacity. For this reason, we have chosen a London underground train with 6 six cars that have a capacity of 1250 passengers, but a maximum speed of 100 KPH.
Next, I have to set up the schedule, which, as the developer admits, isn’t currently working, so at the moment, we click on the schedule and select the line.
Conclusion
In part two we will look to extend the London Underground network further.
Please feel free to leave any comments below.