Guides
How Rail Island works
Five guides through the systems that make an island run — what each tool does, how the game reacts to it, and what to build first. Every one of them is written for the game as it ships today.
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Building · 4 min read
Laying track: the rail building system
How track works in Rail Island — free-angle curves, snapping, grading, rail types, parallel lines, stations, bridges and tunnels.
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The island · 4 min read
Cities and buildings: giving your railway a reason
How buildings and procedural cities work in Rail Island — the building catalog, the City tool, watchtowers on a rooftop, streets and where a town will and will not grow.
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Landscape · 3 min read
Woods and vegetation: planting the island
How the vegetation layer works in Rail Island — built-in woods types, the nine tree species, the vegetation brush, and building your own custom forest.
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Operations · 4 min read
Signals: running more than one train
How signalling works in Rail Island — placing semaphores, path reservations, signal colours, station signals, one-way gates and level crossings.
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Fleet · 5 min read
The fleet: trains, buses, trams, ships and cable cars
How vehicles work in Rail Island — the catalog, building a consist, stop lists, dispatching a train, and the buses, trams, ships and cable cars that run beside it.
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Try it on your own island
Rail Island runs in your browser — open it and the tools in this guide are one click away.