FREIGHT TRAIN BASICS
Freight Trains: It can bring you high demand products from outside markets to use in your facilities.
Currently there are five freight locomotives and 27 "long" Freight cars. There is a standard Freight Engine, Enghanced Engine, Supreme Engine, Ultimate Engine and a Turbo Engine. The regular freight cars which are available for coins, are just decoration items and do not provide any fuctionality. The Long Freight Cars (which cost farm cash) are the ones which can be dispatched with a locomotive to bring you products across all the markets. To check the products and quantity that each Long Car can carry, click the help button in the store.
To prepare your train for dispatch you need to have at least one Long Freight Car coupled to a Freight Locomotive. Place the Long Freight Car right behind the Locomotive without any space between them. If you mouse over the Locomotive all Freight Cars (including short and long cars) correctly coupled together will be highlighted.
To manage your train, click the Locomotive and select 'Show Train Details'. The Long Freight Cars that are correctly coupled to your Locomotive will be highlighted in white. The ones that you don't own or that are not correctly coupled will appear disabled.
To dispatch your train click the 'Dispatch Train' button. Only the Freight Cars correctly coupled to your train will be dispatched to carry goods. Once you dispatch a train it will be locked (and will appear semi-transparent, if you have this option checked in your settings) on your farm until it returns. It is now possible to keep your train "solid" as opposed to semi-transparent. All you need to do, is click the "settings spanner (wrench)" at the top right corner of your farm. You will then need to untick "Transparent Despatched Train"
The Standard Freight Locomotive completes the trip across all markets in 7 days.
The Enhanced Freight Locomotive completes the trip across all markets in 6 days
The Supreme Freight Locomotive completes the trip across all markets in 5 days
The Ultimate Freight Locomotive completes the trip across all markets in 4 days
The Turbo Freight Locomotive completes the trip across all markets in 3 days
To check the progress of your train click on the 'Train Status' tab. You'll see how many units are being carried and how many are pending to load. The progress bar indicates the progress of the train across all the markets.
As soon as the train visits all the markets and returns to your farm, you can click the 'Unload Train' button to move all products to your Storage. At this point your train will be fully visible again (providing your train is set to transparent) so you can add or remove cars for the next dispatch.
At this point in time, you can have a total of ten locomotives, across all your farms, carrying products at any given time. In other words, you can build ten trains, and have them all dispatched, at the same time. However, you can only have a maximum of two engines the same, so to do this, would require you to have two of each engine. There are five available (Standard, Enhanced, Supreme, Ultimate and Turbo). You can have five trains on the same farm, but they do have to have different engines. You cannot have two engines the same, on the same farm. There are buying restrictions when it comes to purchasing the Engines. For example, in order to purchase the Enhanced Engine, you do need to have purchased the Black Standard Freight Engine, and to purchase the Ultimate Engine, you do need to have purchased the Enhanced Engine etc. Further to this, if you wish to purchase a second Enhanced Engine, then you do need to have purchased a second Black Standard Freight engine etc and so on.
Currently, only one Long Freight Car of each type per train can be carrying products. That is to say, you can have all 12 Long Freight Cars coupled to a train (the Container, the One-Door, the Two-Door car, Refrigerator Car, Tank Car, Sliding Door Car, Long Hopper Car, Long Well Car, Long Gondola Car, Long Bulkhead Car, Long Lumber Car and Long Cattle Car) and they will all carry products, but, if you purchase another Long Freight Car and couple it to that train it will not carry any additional products at this time.
The products that each Freight Car carries will cost you coins and 420 fuel.
Once you purchase any Long Freight Car you can move it to any other farm
FACILITY BENEFITS
In the September 2012 update, the train diversification ranks were introduced. This means that if you have a freight train, the Mayor will work more of your friends facilities for you. At present, when you work a friends facilities, the Mayor works half (50%) of them for you. However, the Mayor will work 5% more facilities for each different freight car that you have on your train. This means, if you have at least 10 different freight cars dispatched, the Mayor will do all the work for you.
When gaining this help from the Mayor, it is important to mention that this applies to "car's despatched", meaning that you could have two engines with five cars attached and despatched, and you would still get the 100% help from the Mayor. However, this rule does change, if you wanted to further the Mayors help, by having him also travel from farm to farm for you. This is explained below.
FURTHER FACILITY HELP VIA THE TRAINS
It is now possible to not only obtain help from the Mayor, by having him work 100% of facilities for you, on each farm, but to also have him travel from farm to farm for you. This means that you would only have to land on a friends farm, and with a couple of clicks, the Mayor would work all facilities, on all farms, and also travel to those farms for you. So you get to sit back and relax, while the Mayor does all the work.
To obtain this help, you do need to have TWO trains. Each train HAS to have 10 cars attached and be despatched. While you could split those cars up initially, between multiple engines, to get the 100% help from the Mayor (as we mentioned previously), you do need to have all ten cars, on at least two engines, in order to get this maximum help from the Mayor.
BOOST FEATURE
You can now boost your train, which means, with the help of your friends, your train can arrive back to your farm, one day earlier. The maximum amount of friends that can boost your train is 12. So you should, aim to probably send around 15 requests. This will allow for any friends, which are not online at the time you send a request.
To boost your train, simply click on your train, and "show train details". You should then click on the "train status" header. At the top left you will see "boost train" and you will need to click on it. You will then be given a box, where you can select which friends you would like help from. Once 12 friends have boosted your train, it will speed up, and arrive back a day earlier than scheduled. Friends will recieve goods when they boost your train, so this is a case where, a boost helps not only you, but your friends as well. For a train with 12 cars, the approximate value of goods which your friends recieve is 1 millioin coins.
Currently there are five freight locomotives and 27 "long" Freight cars. There is a standard Freight Engine, Enghanced Engine, Supreme Engine, Ultimate Engine and a Turbo Engine. The regular freight cars which are available for coins, are just decoration items and do not provide any fuctionality. The Long Freight Cars (which cost farm cash) are the ones which can be dispatched with a locomotive to bring you products across all the markets. To check the products and quantity that each Long Car can carry, click the help button in the store.
To prepare your train for dispatch you need to have at least one Long Freight Car coupled to a Freight Locomotive. Place the Long Freight Car right behind the Locomotive without any space between them. If you mouse over the Locomotive all Freight Cars (including short and long cars) correctly coupled together will be highlighted.
To manage your train, click the Locomotive and select 'Show Train Details'. The Long Freight Cars that are correctly coupled to your Locomotive will be highlighted in white. The ones that you don't own or that are not correctly coupled will appear disabled.
To dispatch your train click the 'Dispatch Train' button. Only the Freight Cars correctly coupled to your train will be dispatched to carry goods. Once you dispatch a train it will be locked (and will appear semi-transparent, if you have this option checked in your settings) on your farm until it returns. It is now possible to keep your train "solid" as opposed to semi-transparent. All you need to do, is click the "settings spanner (wrench)" at the top right corner of your farm. You will then need to untick "Transparent Despatched Train"
The Standard Freight Locomotive completes the trip across all markets in 7 days.
The Enhanced Freight Locomotive completes the trip across all markets in 6 days
The Supreme Freight Locomotive completes the trip across all markets in 5 days
The Ultimate Freight Locomotive completes the trip across all markets in 4 days
The Turbo Freight Locomotive completes the trip across all markets in 3 days
To check the progress of your train click on the 'Train Status' tab. You'll see how many units are being carried and how many are pending to load. The progress bar indicates the progress of the train across all the markets.
As soon as the train visits all the markets and returns to your farm, you can click the 'Unload Train' button to move all products to your Storage. At this point your train will be fully visible again (providing your train is set to transparent) so you can add or remove cars for the next dispatch.
At this point in time, you can have a total of ten locomotives, across all your farms, carrying products at any given time. In other words, you can build ten trains, and have them all dispatched, at the same time. However, you can only have a maximum of two engines the same, so to do this, would require you to have two of each engine. There are five available (Standard, Enhanced, Supreme, Ultimate and Turbo). You can have five trains on the same farm, but they do have to have different engines. You cannot have two engines the same, on the same farm. There are buying restrictions when it comes to purchasing the Engines. For example, in order to purchase the Enhanced Engine, you do need to have purchased the Black Standard Freight Engine, and to purchase the Ultimate Engine, you do need to have purchased the Enhanced Engine etc. Further to this, if you wish to purchase a second Enhanced Engine, then you do need to have purchased a second Black Standard Freight engine etc and so on.
Currently, only one Long Freight Car of each type per train can be carrying products. That is to say, you can have all 12 Long Freight Cars coupled to a train (the Container, the One-Door, the Two-Door car, Refrigerator Car, Tank Car, Sliding Door Car, Long Hopper Car, Long Well Car, Long Gondola Car, Long Bulkhead Car, Long Lumber Car and Long Cattle Car) and they will all carry products, but, if you purchase another Long Freight Car and couple it to that train it will not carry any additional products at this time.
The products that each Freight Car carries will cost you coins and 420 fuel.
Once you purchase any Long Freight Car you can move it to any other farm
FACILITY BENEFITS
In the September 2012 update, the train diversification ranks were introduced. This means that if you have a freight train, the Mayor will work more of your friends facilities for you. At present, when you work a friends facilities, the Mayor works half (50%) of them for you. However, the Mayor will work 5% more facilities for each different freight car that you have on your train. This means, if you have at least 10 different freight cars dispatched, the Mayor will do all the work for you.
When gaining this help from the Mayor, it is important to mention that this applies to "car's despatched", meaning that you could have two engines with five cars attached and despatched, and you would still get the 100% help from the Mayor. However, this rule does change, if you wanted to further the Mayors help, by having him also travel from farm to farm for you. This is explained below.
FURTHER FACILITY HELP VIA THE TRAINS
It is now possible to not only obtain help from the Mayor, by having him work 100% of facilities for you, on each farm, but to also have him travel from farm to farm for you. This means that you would only have to land on a friends farm, and with a couple of clicks, the Mayor would work all facilities, on all farms, and also travel to those farms for you. So you get to sit back and relax, while the Mayor does all the work.
To obtain this help, you do need to have TWO trains. Each train HAS to have 10 cars attached and be despatched. While you could split those cars up initially, between multiple engines, to get the 100% help from the Mayor (as we mentioned previously), you do need to have all ten cars, on at least two engines, in order to get this maximum help from the Mayor.
BOOST FEATURE
You can now boost your train, which means, with the help of your friends, your train can arrive back to your farm, one day earlier. The maximum amount of friends that can boost your train is 12. So you should, aim to probably send around 15 requests. This will allow for any friends, which are not online at the time you send a request.
To boost your train, simply click on your train, and "show train details". You should then click on the "train status" header. At the top left you will see "boost train" and you will need to click on it. You will then be given a box, where you can select which friends you would like help from. Once 12 friends have boosted your train, it will speed up, and arrive back a day earlier than scheduled. Friends will recieve goods when they boost your train, so this is a case where, a boost helps not only you, but your friends as well. For a train with 12 cars, the approximate value of goods which your friends recieve is 1 millioin coins.