Take the A-Train: Won!

I did it - I delivered the president, safe and sound and on time, from Washington D.C. to Hartford. Or maybe it was from Mar-a-Lago to D.C. The game is not specific about its geography or time. And not only did this trip have a body count, but I'm pretty sure it was supposed to!

 

In the south of the map, I have a stable cargo unloading loop-and-switchback system, and in the middle part, a stable revenue-generating passenger train loop. I'll need to make a few trips all the way up and down the map to retrieve more materials to finish the one-way presidential line, but I don't mind too much; the passenger loop already goes 40% of the distance, and three more full 490t loads ought to do it.

I could, in theory, shorten my travel time by incorporating the cargo train's route into the passenger loop and have it deliver rails closer to the front, but there's no way to do that without slowing down the passenger trains and therefore slowing down the revenue they bring in. The cargo train has to return to the yard, and the passenger trains don't, so I'd need to build more train stations and use time signals to keep the cargo train from crashing into the passenger trains as it enters the loop. Less trouble to just manually locomote myself back, using sidings to avoid crashing into my own trains, and pick up the goods myself, I think.

Plus, the south end of the loop is really cramped already. How would I even build more here?

Back at the front, all I have to do is keep building the line northward. For the most part this is not complicated.

A few screens up, and there's an apparent dead-end - but you can actually tunnel through the thin part of the woods. 

 

More track!

 

Eventually, there's another natural barrier, and this one's nasty.

This part actually ruined an earlier attempt, because the tunneling mechanics are so damn obtuse. It's really not clear where you can enter the woods, nor where you can exit, and once you go in, you're operating blind because the trees obscure the rails and your train. And since you can't see what you're doing, you'd better build your tunnel correctly the first time - which is a pretty unfair ask when you don't even know where it should exit! Create a junction here by accident, and you'll never know until the president's train goes off it and derails.

 

This will work, but you'd better not enter this tunnel during the day - you might construct a junction by accident. Best to only go back through at night when construction is impossible. 

90% of the way there. Gotta make one last cargo run.

Finally, the president's destination is in sight... but there's a problem. The way forward is blocked by some farmland!

 

Unless there's some other way of removing buildings that I don't know about, the only way through is violence. Violence and a carefully constructed series of junctions with the buffer stops removed.

 

This is why we needed so much money. As it turns out, I overprepared by about $100,000, but still, there's plenty of time left to complete the rail. It takes three train crashes full of passengers to clear a path through, but I do indeed make a path through.

Finally, I lock my cargo train into the switchback, wait for the remaining passenger trains to clear the southern loop, and connect the rails - this signals the president's train to start moving in 24 hours.

3x speed, transitions choppily edited out

 

GAB rating: Below average.

The first Take the A-Train is more interesting as a sign of things to come than a complete game experience in itself. It anticipates aspects of automation games, and largely achieves what it set out to accomplish, but the game just doesn't offer all that much to do, or much reason to explore the full extent of what its railroad engine allows, and between the interface friction points, the limited paths to victory, and the cramped map layout, actively discourages the sort of freeform play that these games would be known for.

Game 472: Take the A-Train

Artdink's initial entry in the A-Train series is weird. I was expecting a primitive version of Transport Tycoon, but what I got feels almost more like a primitive version of Factorio.

It hadn't helped that I couldn't find any full copies of the manual. The PC-8801 version of the game, and a digital manual, are available on the Nintendo Switch Store, but I don't have a Switch to view it on, so I'm stuck with the first page of it.

At least the in-game language barrier is thin. About half of the game is in English despite never being released outside of Japan, and the other half is terse enough that I didn't need a translation guide.

I chose the FM-7 version of the game, which launched first in December 1985 according to various sources (though the ingame copyright states 1986), using eFM77 to emulate.

Before writing this, I went through a lot of trial and error to figure out just what exactly I'm supposed to do and how to do it. Early on, there were a lot of crashes, derailments, and general frustrations with the interface. Then there were bankruptcies. And then there were crashes and derailments again. But now, I think I have a pretty good idea of what I'm doing.

The ultimate goal here is to transport the president's train, seen here outside the white house and marked with the star symbol, several screens north within 365 days. You have $100,000 and 750 tons of materials, which isn't nearly enough, but it's a start.

The A-Train, the circle marked with the letter A, is your construction vehicle, and you directly control it. Or at least you will once the weird controls start to make sense. Rails follow the vehicle in insert mode, and are picked up from behind you in delete mode, but both modes are subject to a lot of edge cases which can set the rails in unexpected ways or just cause the game to yell at you that you can't do that. The A-Train can't derail, but a collision with any other vehicle is an immediate game over.

The first challenge is the controls. Even now, I often find myself fighting with them, not being able to move in directions I think I should, laying down tracks where I don't mean to, not laying down tracks where I think I should be able to, or not being able to remove tracks that I do mean to, wasting a lot of time and money. Compounding the problem is a day/night cycle; a full day last just under 30 seconds, and construction is impossible from 7pm to 5am, during which time the controls also immediately shift into an automatic rails-follow mode. Too often, I'd be struggling for several seconds to connection a junction or delete an erroneous piece of track, only for night to fall and force me to wait until morning to try again. And that's before the other trains start moving.

Also, inexplicably, signals at junctions and stations can only be changed at night. If dawn breaks before you're finished, tough luck. Hope you didn't need a train there today.

What the. I don't even want a junction there!

 

The next challenge is procuring more building materials. Money isn't a problem yet, though it will be. Trains IV and V are your cargo vehicles, and there's plenty of rail supplies at those stations, but they are inaccessible to you. You've got to use these trains to deposit those crates somewhere you can retrieve them from.

Planning this is crucial. You can put the receiving depot just about anywhere, but you need a loop that gives enough room for you to maneuver in and grab materials from the receiving depot, while also leaving you room to build a passenger line with all those materials you're about to get. Several of my games failed because I built myself into a corner here. Two rules to keep in mind - only three rails can ever meet at a junction, and never at 90 degree angles.

This design should work pretty well.

Once the rails are connected to a rail yard, the train parked there will be scheduled to start moving in 24 hours - just enough time to set the signals. Train IV will deliver cargo to the station on the west, loop around and return to the switchback, back up into the yard for more cargo, and repeat.

 

Now we have to worry about money.

This is the only place where you'll see how much cash is left.

The red window is the important one right now - we have $90,070, we've spent $390 today (so far), $1,190 yesterday, and $520 the day before. The numbers below are revenue, and so far we've made none. Everything costs money - moving, building, demolishing, operating trains, even switching signals. The more track you have laid down, the more you'll need to spend every day on maintenance and trackage fees, and the farther up north you build, the higher the rates get.

Your only revenue stream is passenger fares, collected by the trains marked O, I, II, and III. Passengers are picked up at stations in proximity to villages, and dropped at other stations - doesn't matter where, all passengers get off when the train stops, and the farther the arrival station is from the departure (measured by latitude, not track length), the more money you get.

I'm sure you can get fancy with an elaborate system of loops, junctions, and switchbacks, but I don't really see any advantage to anything more elaborate than a simple loop that goes between two villages fairly spaced apart. Fares seem to be directly proportional to the distance between stations, so having four stations in the loop instead of two means you get paid half as much twice as often, only it takes longer because the trains stop twice as often. And a complicated routing system that gets different trains to different destinations without any collisions is tricky to design in the map's often cramped terrain, and for very little benefit I can see.

Leaving the starting screen

Ah, a village!

Station positioning is important. Maximize the houses in proximity and minimize impassable terrain.

Periodically, I must return to the start for more track. Not a big deal.

Just passing through the next town.

 

Halfway to Hartford. I think this little hamlet will be my terminus.

Making a return loop

It's done!

Cash is down to $35,000. Weirdly, the does not show this on the main screen. But we're nearly ready to start bringing in some revenue.

With a simple two-point passenger loop, we can deploy all four passenger trains right away. First I wait until nightfall and divert the cargo train into the switchback so that it doesn't get in the way. Then in the morning, I connect all of the passenger trains, making sure to stagger them at least two hours apart so that they do not collide.

 

And they're off!

At this point, the best thing to to is sit back and wait. I will need a lot of money, and these trains are money losers at first. I am spending $3000 per day just waiting, and the trains are pulling in about $1500 each on a round trip that takes two and a half days. That's a $6000 loss on each trip. But keep waiting; with each delivery, the towns grow, and the revenue grows with them.

This hamlet is getting bigger!

 

A bustling metropolis.

 

Revenue starts to cap at about $16,000 per trip, certainly profitable, but not amazingly so. By day 100, I've got just over $100,000 in the bank. And I keep waiting because I will need more. By day 150, I have $200,000, and this, I feel, is enough.

No need to expand the loop - from here on, we are building the presidential line.