More territories are on the way — the game reads each one from a data file, so new control points slot straight in.
If you'd rather learn by doing, back out and tap START TRAINING — it walks you through a few moves on the real board in about two minutes.
The control room is jointly staffed, so when you sign in you take a desk. Your railroad's trains are yours to route; everything else is worked by the desk beside you and shows dimmed — you can't touch it, but it's still competing for the same throats, so you have to plan around it. Their trains carry grey tags on the board; yours are yellow. Only your own railroad's work is graded. Pick Chief Dispatcher if you'd rather have the whole board.
Trains queue at the portal when they're ready to enter. Tap a waiting train, then tap a lit track to line up the route. A track the train could use whose lead is busy is drawn dim and dashed instead — tap it and the board tells you which interlocking is holding it. Wait for the lamp to clear, or send the train to a track on the other lead. To put a train back without routing it, tap the empty board or press Esc.
Every train shows its destination. Some runs don't reverse — they continue on to a yard for storage or servicing, which means they need a clear lead on the far side. You'll also see dashed EQUIP moves: empty consists in and out of the yards. Nobody's standing on a platform for those, so they can wait a little longer.
On a computer you can work the board from the keyboard: ← and → cycle through the trains waiting at each portal, 1–8 line the selected train into that track, Esc clears the selection, Space pauses, and M mutes.
To come off the board at any point, END TRICK at the top right closes the shift and takes you to your report, and from there back to sign-in. It asks twice, so a stray tap won't end a good trick.
Trains die. A disabled train on a platform ties up that track until it's moved; worse, an interlocking can lose its signals and take a whole lead out of service. A red banner across the top names the trouble and counts down the minutes. You can't fix it — you dispatch around it, which is the job. A train that physically can't move — dead on its platform, or with every throat it could use out of service — has its clock held until it can: the cost of an incident is the track and the lead you've lost, not a late mark you had no way to prevent.
Once berthed, a train dwells at the platform, then automatically departs the moment its lead is clear — NJ Transit and LIRR reverse back out the way they came; Amtrak runs through to the far side. Your job is choosing which track keeps both leads moving.
A lead lamp glows green when clear and red while a route is locked through it. Watch both leads on both ends — a good trick means never leaving a lead idle while trains queue for it.
Each territory runs its own railroads, with real line and branch names. Some services are peak-only and show up just at rush. Watch for a ★ named special a few times a shift — a real long-distance train, staged out of the servicing yard.
The board runs out past each throat onto the approach, so a train appears on the corridor and works its way in before it ever reaches you. Those blocks are dimmed: they're not at the portal yet and can't be routed — they're the look-ahead, telling you what's about to land and on which end. Use it to decide what to do with the train in front of you. Once a train reaches the tubes it stands at the signal, full brightness, until you route it, and rides in from there.
Each train shows as a red occupancy block riding the circuits with its yellow ID tag above it — the same way the real overview screen paints them. The radio log along the bottom carries crew and yardmaster chatter, and it's usually where you'll hear about trouble first. Every train also carries a booked slot (DUE 5:42); the clock at the top tracks your average delay against it.
You're graded on trains handled, on-time performance, and through-routed Amtrak moves. There's no derailment, no collision — just the quiet satisfaction of a clean board.