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Taking a contract

Freight leaves from the stations with a railroad office: Rhodes, Riggs, Wallace, Annesburg, Saint Denis, Emerald, Valentine and Benedict Point. At the Steamline booth on the platform, press G (“Freight contracts”).
  1. Pick the train the contracts are for. The list shows only what that train can carry, going the same way as the freight it already has.
  2. Each offer shows the cargo, the pieces, the weight, the distance, the deadline and the payment, which goes to the company’s till on delivery.
  3. Accept contract. The pieces wait at the station’s cargo point, beside the platform.
Each station offers 3 contracts; the ones nobody takes are replaced every 30 minutes.

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What goes where

  • A flatcar carries 2 contracts, a boxcar 1. A train holds at most 3 contracts.
  • All the freight on one train goes the same way: a contract that goes another way is refused.
  • One contract’s freight waits at a cargo point at a time: load it before taking a new contract there.

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Loading

Anyone in the company that took the contract carries its pieces, one at a time:
  • G by the pieces (“Pick up cargo”) lifts one: a crate from the top of its stack, a barrel, or a log on your shoulder. Barrels and logs are heavy: no running or jumping with them.
  • G beside a car where it fits (“Load into the car”) puts it in its place.
  • G anywhere else (“Set it down”) sets it down, and G by it picks it up again.
The blips on the map show where to load (“Load crates”) and where to unload. Every player sees the same pieces on the same cars. If the train leaves the station with pieces still on the platform, they are lost and the contract now pays only for what was carried.

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Delivering

At the destination you are told to unload (“You’ve arrived at Saint Denis: unload the barrels”).
  1. G by the car (“Take it off the car”) lifts a piece off.
  2. G by the station’s delivery pile (“Put it on the delivery pile”) hands it in.
The contract is paid when its last piece is handed in. Past the deadline it pays half. Ten minutes after the deadline, an unfinished contract is cancelled and its pieces vanish. Cancel contract, at the booth, drops a contract with no fine; the pieces already loaded are lost.

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The crew’s share

When a contract is paid, the company’s crew commission (10% by default) goes from the till to the members who carried its pieces, split by how many each one carried. See Companies. The pay grows with the weight and the distance, the deadline with the distance. The formulas are in Config.Cargo (see Configuration).