Game Manual
- Basics
Installation
Game Settings
In-game interface
Controls
Getting Started
Gameplay
Multiplayer
- Game content
- Infrastructure
- Vehicles
The game includes a short tutorial which will guide you through the first steps of the game. If you don't need it, you can disable it in the advanced Game Settings before you create a map.
At first, you should pause the game and have a look around the map. Notice how many Towns are there, how many Industries, and how far apart they are. A good starting location should have at least three Towns and at least one of each Industry (i.e a forest, a coal mine and a toolworks) close by. You'll have enough money for distant connections later on, but for now you should set up short lines so you don't have to spend too much money on rail.
You start with a loan, and if you don't start by earning more money (green tokens: 
) you'll quickly run out and that would be the end of your fledgling rail empire. Therefore, before you look at freight trains you need money trains (i.e passenger traffic), so start by connecting two nearby towns. Try to place your Stations in such a way so that they cover a bigger part of the town (or the whole town, ideally) - that way they will generate the most passengers.
- Hint 1: There is a helpful station extension called the "waiting room" that extends how much of the town your station covers. An "extension" is an add-on building you can build right next to your industry, or in this case, station. Click the station. Then look at the Extensions tab. You'll find that the only extension costing money only (i.e. the only extension you can build before earning coal or wood tokens) for the station building is the "waiting room". Click that and place it on the map, and you will have increased your coverage of the town quite considerably!
- Hint 2: Towns and cities will have a church. Try to include this in your station coverage - if you click the church you'll see why: it acts as ten houses for purposes of generating passengers for your trains. At the very start of the game you will want to avoid the smallest villages without churches (because you'll earn money that much slower) but eventually you might want to connect every little hamlet to your rail empire - towns grow if you provide them with rail services.
For your very first line you need two stations, a depot, and the rail connecting the two stations. The simplest approach is to just create a loop connecting them: one rail leading one way and another track leading back. If you plan on using more than a single train on the line (and you should, at least for this passenger line) you will need to put down a few signals to allow multiple trains to run on the same track; see Signals. Then connect your depot (from which you enter trains on the line) to that loop. Purchase two Porter locomotives, and add a couple of passenger cars (Pullmans or coach) to each. Don't forget to click the green flag to start them running!
For a steady money income, build at least six passenger trains, possibly creating a triangle between your three towns so a pair of trains service each of the three pair of towns. Stations can have additional tracks (a station can be as large as six tracks six squares long, at least at first). You will want to use signals to protect junctions.
Depending on your difficulty setting, you might want to build more, so that you don't run out of money in the middle of the game, or simply to expand faster. There will be additional sources of money added in the upcoming Ages (carrying goods from factories to cities, just to pick one example) but passenger traffic will remain the base of your income. As you progress out of the starting phase of the game you should find that you earn much more money than you can spend. This is normal - the challenge is in the freight traffic, and earning enough of the other types of tokens, not running out of money (this is written before a possible rebalancing of the game).
After your income is secured, start building the supply chains for other Tokens, of which there is many but you start with just two: coal 
and timber 
. Coal trains (Coal Mine -> Toolworks) are important, because Coal Tokens are consumed by the more powerful steam trains as fuel, until the Diesel trains become available. Also many different extensions cost Coal Tokens to build. Timber chain (Forest -> Sawmill -> Toolworks) is also very important for extensions. Later on, there will be many usages for timber tokens, and you'll end up using thousands and thousands of them. Build them in any order you see fit. Don't forget to complete quests during your gameplay, as you will gain rewards as well as open new quests. Now, it is your turn to create a big transport company!
Finally, a note about progressing through the game: There is a quest that grants you access to each new era by paying tokens, but per default game settings, you'll get the new Era after ten years automatically (even if you don't complete the quest). Each new era brings new locomotives that are faster and/or more powerful and at least one new industry and its associated freight tokens. A new Era also often improves existing industries by making new extensions available, so don't forget to check the Extension tab when you click on an industry. (To take one example: Sawmills will get steam-powered sawing in a later era to allow you to process more logs 
to lumber 
if you supply the sawmill with a moderate amount of coal 
. As luck would have it, forests will offer the "charcoal kiln" extension so you might fulfill this need by adding a couple of coal cars to the end of your existing logs trains - if they can handle the extra load...)
Good luck!