Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-84.195.150.143-20150730115149/@comment-97.125.90.154-20150801034217

Yep, we all do.

Friends can send you passenger/mail trains. Stay logged in, and express trains will show up every 10 minutes, delivering a combo of goods and coins, and don't forget to collect from your friends' stations. You can sell resources for extra coins, but you'll often find you need those later.

You can send passengers and mail to collect coins. You get extra passengers by placing more buildings (and of higher passenger rate per space used). Flags boost the max # of passengers and give bonus payment. Buy passenger/mail cars that offer bonus points (+35% for instance). Diesel will deliver a 40% increase in revenue (over steam) and electric will deliver a 100% bonus. Sets also offer a bonus... and some locos charge a bigger tax than others.

So, it becomes a balancing game to deliver the most coins per day. In an ideal world, you could collect most of your passengers in a single run, then set the runtime to when you next expect to play. Don't worry if mail is undelivered... it'll still be there when you return. Balance this against the resources to expand your city and station. (This requires resources other than coins.)

Save your gems for special trains. They are hard to come by (without spending real cash) and easy to spend. Work towards one-click passenger and freight, then when the big locos (especially the tax-free ones) come along, they will allow you to collect all your passengers/mail for max coins.

You can play the game for free... it just takes longer to get where you are going.