All 202 Rail Vehicles in Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic

In Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic, you build your own railway and metro networks, and rail vehicles are what runs on them. The group covers locomotives, trainsets and motor units, trams, metros, passenger and freight wagons, and track builders. Each one has its own speed, power, capacity and production years, so the right choice depends on what you need to move and where.

How trains are put together

A train is a line of connected vehicles that runs along a track and carries people or goods. Most trains are pulled, or sometimes pushed, by a locomotive, and the passengers and cargo travel in the wagons attached behind it. Locomotives come in diesel, electric and steam types, and the wagons come in passenger and freight forms.

A train and a metro are not the same thing, though. A train covers long distances and usually runs outside city limits, while a metro is built for shorter trips inside cities and their suburbs. Knowing that difference helps you decide which one a route really needs.

Buying, assembling and selling rail vehicles at a depot

Trains, metros and track builders are bought at a train depot, and that is also where a train gets its line-up. You pick a locomotive and add compatible wagons there, so the set is ready before it heads out. A depot only has so many parking spots, so you can buy only as many vehicles as it can hold at once.

Once you reach that limit, the new vehicles have to be assigned to a line and sent out before you can buy more. A new purchase only opens up when a parking spot frees, and the depot has buy buttons for both Dollars and Rubles. If you want to change what a train is pulling, it has to come back to a depot first, so it's worth settling the full set of vehicles before sending it out.

Selling starts the same way, since a vehicle must be sent back to a depot before it can be sold, and that needs a free parking spot. Once it's parked, select it, press Sell vehicle and accept or decline the suggested price. Accepting sells it and frees the spot. If you want to clear a depot, the Sell all vehicles button appears whenever vehicles are inside.

How trains keep a safe distance

Unlike road vehicles, trains need a good gap between them. The track is split into blocks, and only one train can occupy a block at a time. Each block is sized so a train can stop inside it, which means a train always has time to halt before getting too close to the train ahead.

Semaphores are the signals you place to create these blocks. A signal turns red when the next block is taken, and the train waits until that block clears and the signal turns green. For the vehicles themselves, the rule that matters most is length: a train must be shorter than the blocks it runs through, or it can block a junction and hold up everything behind it. That means a longer train needs longer blocks, and the game recommends double track, since a single line becomes hard to signal once several trains share it.

Passenger trains, trams and metros

Trainsets and motor units are the self-propelled passenger vehicles, so they carry riders without needing a separate locomotive. Motor units are smaller railcars built for lighter passenger service. Passenger wagons work differently: they are coaches that a locomotive pulls as part of a train.

Trams are streetcars for urban passenger routes, and they run on their own rail infrastructure. Metros are high-capacity railways for city subway lines. They usually run on an exclusive right of way that pedestrians and other vehicles can't enter, often in tunnels or on elevated tracks.

Passengers still need a way to reach the platform. Platforms and metro stations are where riders board, and citizens need a road, footpath or passenger tunnel to get to them. Connect those buildings properly so people can actually use the service.

Freight wagons and what they carry

Freight wagons are one of the largest groups of rail vehicles in the game. Each one is built for a certain cargo, and its capacity is given in tonnes with the cargo named, such as dry bulk, aggregate, oil, mixed waste, livestock or refrigerated goods. General freight wagons come with open or covered bodies, and the vehicle's details show which one it is.

Some wagons aren't made for goods at all. They are built to carry vehicles, and their capacity reads Vehicles. Container wagons come in 40-foot and 53-foot forms, and the 40-foot wagons were built in an early version from 1977 to 1985 and a later version from 1986 to 2002.

Freight wagons depend on cargo buildings for loading and unloading, so plan those stations into the route from the start.

Track builders and how they lay track

Track builders are the rail vehicles that lay new railway track. They travel from the depot to a rail construction office and build track from there. Each track builder has three values: a build level, which is how much it carries and builds in one trip; a maximum number of workers; and an optional multiplier that changes how much those workers add.

Those numbers describe how much one machine can do, not different kinds of track, so compare them as capacity. Some track builders also come disassembled, and they show a top speed of 0 km/h. A disassembled track builder is a kit that has to be hauled to a rail construction office before it can start laying track. Their names include (disassembled), so you can tell them apart from the assembled versions. The KT1-5.6m is built for tunnel work.

Picking the right rail vehicle for a route

Top speed decides how quickly a vehicle covers a route, and engine power set against weight shows how much pulling strength a locomotive has for its size. Capacity is counted in passengers for passenger units and wagons, and in tonnes for freight, so compare like with like.

Pick by the job rather than by one number. A fast passenger line, a heavy freight route and a track-laying job each call for different strengths, so check the figures that matter for the work you have in mind.

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