I LOVE WEBSITES

Emily's Current Obsession: Transport Fever 2

Blog Date: AUG/25/2026

So in this game you build infrastructure to transport (fever) ((2)) goods and people between locations, gaining money for your transportation company and making your systems ever more efficient so as to generate even more money, more passengers, more cargo, and thus more money. It's an addictive cycle.

By default you begin the game in the year 1850. Transportation is done on a micro-scale. Horse-drawn carriages transport a stack of bricks or wheat at a time at a snails pace, 12 Kmh (7.5 mph) if I remember correctly. The only train you have access to is equally slow, inneficient, and coal spewing - much like trains were at that time, thought of more as a novelty than as a legitimate method of transportation. Still, when your alternative is walking, many people were willing to suffer the 30 kmh speeds of the early engine and just enjoy their time travelling across the countryside.

With time though you discover better and faster methods of transportation. Maximum train speeds explode from 35kmh, 60kmh, and in the year 1900 cross over the 100kmh threshold. I have not gotten further than this so far, but technology continues to progress even beyond this point. Electric trams shuttle people in the cities, but soon electrified rail will enable ever faster transportation across the map.

• fun fact! High Speed Rail (HSR) is defined as trains that can go faster than 250 kmh (155 mph). Many of them exceed 300kmh and are considered "True" HSR. The record holder for HSR is the unbuilt l0 series "Shinkansen" (bullet train) in Japan which, when finished in the 2030s, will link the Tokyo and Kyoto metro areas by cutting straight through the mountainside. These experimental trains are ran by Maglev technology - extremely fast but extremely expensive - that allows them to literally hover off the magnified rails. It's reached over 600kmh(370mph) in testing!!
• This falls into the realm of pure speculation, but if a conventional HSR (300kmh) were plopped down in the middle of metropolitan areas in the USA and allowed to run at full speed down a straight track, here's how long it'd take to get to other, large metro areas around it.
• San Antonio -- Austin
- 25 Minutes [118 KM]
• Seattle -- Portland
- 56 Minutes [280 KM]
• New York City -- Pennsylvania
- 26 Minutes [130 KM]
• New York City -- Washington DC
- 67 Minutes [333 KM]
• Los Angeles -- San Fransisco (HA as if...)
- 123 Minutes [616 km]
• (IRL) Tokyo -- Kyoto
- 122 Minutes [450 km]
(That's an average speed of 221 km/h!! That's 137 mph!!!)

Many people try and claim the USA is just "too big" for railroads to make practical sense - but look at the distance between these metro areas! These are super reasonable times for a commute or weekend trip - it's not like we're asking for a bullet train between NYC and LA (sobs).

Anyway. Ends my rants.

Part of the strategy of the game is balancing your budget. At the start of the game, rail infrastructure is a huge investment compared to basic road transportation. You start with something like $3,000,000 and a single train depot, rails, stations, and a cruddy train with a few rail cars to move cargo around at, again, 30kmh, costs about half of that starting total.

Comparitively, basic horses and carts cost maybe 1/10th of your starting budget for a comparable route which makes a lot of sense especially when two industries that feed into each other (Industries like bakeries or brick smelters can turn raw materials into finished products that cities demand and require for growth.) But over time you might start to see the benefits of scale: a train might cost 3x the upfront cost, but if it's generating 3x the profits every year it'll generate more revenue over the long term. (And remember: the whole point is to get that money so you can build more stuff so you can generate more money.)

There's also a campaign to the game buuttt I haven't gotten further than the first mission. I've never really been into the slow, drip-feed structure of these sandbox campaigns where it's clear they're just trying to teach you the mechanics so that you can use them in the open sandbox later.

I benefitted a lot from having played a very similar game a nearly obsessive amount: OpenTTD (Open Transportation Tycoon Deluxe). A 1994 isometric game created by Chris Sawyer, the same man behind Roller Coaster Tycoon, this game involved many of the same mechanics you see in TF2.

TTD contained the same progression of trains more or less, evolving from steam, to deisel, then to electric and maglev - and unlocking other forms of transit like airplanes and cargo ships. Although TTD having its start date in the 1950s by default means you spend much less time with horse and wagon and more time perfecting modern train infrastructure. It's a snappier kind of progression and one that I quite enjoy, but that was certainly showing its age in many other regards (Remember: 1994 was 32 years ago)

I've spent many hundreds of hours in OpenTTD, perfecting rail networks and watching cities bloom from rural backwaters to urban metropolises, turning intercity stations into subway stops as the city begins to demand transportation within its own borders. It's addictive watching numbers go up, and the reason I see myself spending many, many more hours in Transport Fever 2.

Public transit systems I've been on: (and counting!)

Last Updated: AUG/25/2026

Washington State:

• Pierce Transit
-My home public transit system! The frequencies are absolute dogwater as you can see
(This is actually better than some of the older bus routes they used to run like the 13 - a bus which ran maybe 3 times in the morning and 3 times in the afternoon and dropped people off in extremely hilly terrain which meant the bus drivers had to ruin the clutch just getting up and down. They replaced it with an on demand shuttle which is somehow even worse.
• King County Transit
-The system used in King County
(Seattle metro)
and surrounding areas. Reliable, frequent, and only occasionally smelling of piss. I love to use it when I'm in Seattle
• Sound Transit
-THE GREATEST OF ALL TIME. 10/10
DO YOU LIKE:
-LIGHT RAIL W/ 4 MINUTE FREQUENCIES
-EXPRESS BUSSES BETWEEN ALL THE MAJOR CITIES
-ONLY SLIGHTLY
($12,000,000,000)
OVER BUDGET???
THEN RIDE SOUND TRANSIT

Oregon:

• MAX Light Rail
I have to admit I really, really thought I was going to like this one more than I did. The frequencies downtown aren't great, it moves at a snails pace through crowded car traffic, and only goes in one direction? Unfortunately did not impress me as I thought a light rail should.

Pennsylvania:

• SEPTA
I was just a youngin' when I rode this one on a trip to Philadelphia with my family but I remember really enjoying it. Baby's first big city transit system. So good we took the bus to our little AirBNB and back.

New York City:

• MTA
Best transportation system in the USA no contest. Loved it when I was there - saw a dude doing breakdancing in the subway car. Love that it goes above ground too, I love when you get to see the city around you while riding a smooth ride.

Vancouver, Canada

• Trans Link
Super fun to ride on! The train cars were very small for a train, only three or four train cars if I remember correctly? Fun Fact however: They're able to run them on high frequency schedules because they're fully automated (much like the trains in DC!)
Takes you to where you need to go too, was able to get nearly anywhere in the city along with their very reliable bus system using just the public transit (and a quick uber to get to the train station early in the morning when we didn't feel like walking to catch our Amtrak back home)