Last updated on January 28th, 2026 at 06:20 pm
Pocket Trains: Railroad Tycoon – Entertainment Game Review
Pocket Trains: Railroad Tycoon is a Entertainment/Strategy/Simulation game from NimbleBit LLC, first launched in 26th September 2013.
It’s rated 12+ and currently has 3,051+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Pocket Trains: Railroad Tycoon Stand Out
From the creators of Pocket Planes and Tiny Tower comes Pocket Trains! Manage and grow multiple railroads by hauling important cargo around the world. Collect parts to construct all the different train types from Steamers to Diesels, and complete daily events to unlock special trains beyond imagination! Stop reading and start constructing your railroad empire in Pocket Trains!
This Entertainment game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Pocket Trains: Railroad Tycoon is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 3rd November 2025
Recent improvements include:
- Updated link to NEW player Discord
- Bug fix for holiday trains
New in 1.7 ——- - New Bullet Maglev Special Train!
- New Job Cars!
- Ability to gift multiple parts at a time
- Ability to gift whole engines
- New VIP perk!
- Ability to bulk open normal crates
- New passenger costumes
- New train line colors
- Added community links to main menu
- UI improvement for devices with rounded corners
Download & Availability
Pocket Trains: Railroad Tycoon is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Pocket Trains: Railroad Tycoon on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
This game rewards the time investment put in. ALSO, you dont need to pay to have fun and progress in this. There are ad opportunities that are optional too. This is why we write this review. Thank you to the game developers for this game but also the others that are the same way, play for free and have fun. Our recommendation? Add more ways to interact with friends.
Great game for those who like micro management. It has always been a game we return to for years now, even after switching phones. Progression is a little slow but once you get better trains it gets faster, overall great game.
Hey you! Do you like trains? Well then this is the game for you! Nah seriously this is a really fun game, easy to understand, not annoying about ads or purchases, but watching ads or purchasing things do help expedite your journey through the game. We like the intentional slower pace of the game, as it feels more rewarding once you actually fill the entire map. Only complaint is we cant use special characters like or when naming our lines. This will probably stand as our favorite mobile game for a long time.
It is a fun game, very stable. We are not sure if we are doing something wrong. We feel like a cat chasing a laser pointer, getting nowhere. Generally you collect train parts to build new trains. More powerful trains take more parts. Crates with Train parts are rare. We are at level 9 and still mainly running the starting type steam trains. We have some parts for about 20 various train types. From the starting steam trains to the very high level Mag train. But not enough to finish any of them. We would rather only get parts for about 5 train types according to our level. As we level up lower level trains should drop off. Of the 5 types maybe there can be more parts of the lower levels and less of the 4th and 5th levels to keep it interesting.
We like it. Havent found any bugs. Fun little game.
Classic go to cellphone game. 11/10.
Fun little train logistics game.
Ive been playing this game for about 10 years, and we always find ourselves coming back to it. We love the strategy it requires when setting up your different train routes. We think it would be beneficial if the map scrolled all the way around so you could go from Asia to North America.
Eat it Sir Topham Hat. Mines better.
Ive been playing this game weekly for 10+ years. Connected all cities, and upgraded all trains to the max. It is still the best, most enjoyable game we have on our iPad. And our thanks to the developers for keeping the ads down to a tolerable level unlike most other games. Very much appreciated.
We should not need to explain ourselves any further.
Been playing this game since it came out. Ive loved trains since we were a kid and this game really brings us back to our childhood. Simple enough to play and enjoy right away but has some layer of complexity to avoid boredom. Charming graphics like all of Nimblebits games. Highly recommend whether you like train games or not.
Ive played several of the Pocket games and theyre fantastic! Theyre simple and entertaining! However, once you get to the huger levels it takes TOO LONG to get the next level and you get burned out. We know it should take longer as you gain but it seems excessive to gain the required xp to the next level.
This is a unique game, as it doesnt let you drive the trains, it lets you be the controller of the trains! We really like this sort of different gameplay style compared to other train games. Overall, great game.
Though we do hope that they would add another steam locomotive which would be Bigboy #4014 and we do enjoy playing the game.
This game is a fun way to just chill out and schedule some virtual trains a few times a day. Also its fun watching your railroad empire grow over time.
The game is great, but the ads you play for rewards are ridiculously long. So long we deleted the game.
We have been playing this game for several years. We really enjoy managing the trains. Being able to choose the color of the train line is really cool. The recent update a bunch of new colors were added. No mandatory adds.
We have loved this game and completely forgot about it. Coming back several years later, it is good to still see updates. We would love to see a UI improvement to show your trains worth before departure. Progression is still good and with the bonus from the ads, grinding is less cumbersome without getting smacked in the face with the ads.
Ive been playing since close to release. We come back every year or so and always have a ton of fun. They have certainly buffed the game to make it more enjoyable to play for longer periods of time.
Ive been playing this game for years now and we never get bored. Its always been a fun way to pass the time. Though a suggestion we have is that the trains should be made customizable, that way you could personalize them in any color you want, just like in Pocket Planes. If you guys could take our idea into consideration that would be awesome.
Solid game cool retro graphics and over all really fun to build up etc.
A classic game thats amazing. Loved pocket trains for years and planes are great too.
We love the concept and we played tiny tower so we love this game.
Our favorite game to play while watching tv. Makes you think a little bit, if you want to be efficient, but overall is very relaxing.
Its a fun thing to do when you have 5 minutes.
Really like this game. Ive played for over a year. Managed to open the whole world. One thing we really like is you can play it without WiFi. So if your traveling its a good game to have.
Easily one of the best games on the app store in terms of quality, and how much it makes you want to come back. We only have 2 complaints. One is that the cost for starting new Rail Roads scales way too high way too quickly, and if you arent actively paying for more Bux to convert into coins, youll be stuck grinding the Bux needed by watching ads that offer Bux. Our other complaint is that the randomness for the better train parts are very poor, especially in the Special Crates, even though these rarer trains are vital to covering the more remote cities in a reasonable manner. It makes the mid-game feel extremely sluggish.
Love the pickup put down factor. You can play it and drop it at any second.
The only problem with the game is that you put Minsk but not WARSAW.
Ive played this game for literally years, but a couple months ago we opened it and everything was gone, it recognized our VIP name and number but we had a brand new game, money was gone trains were gone we didnt even have all the licenses. Now Ive restarted this game a few time, but it was our choice and we were able to keep our money. We guess we didnt buy enough or play it every day or who knows what but Im very disappointed.
We checked our purchase history and we downloaded this in October 2013. Almost eleven years so far. (Its August, 2024) This is the only game Ive transferred and played through all our phones since then. For us, its the perfect combination of fun and challenging. Its great for playing for 10-15 minutes while waiting for our wife, or winding down before bed. This game helped us get through Covid lockdowns and we expanded through Asia, Africa and Australia during then :) If you havent, give it a shot.
Yet it is painfully expensive to make a new railroad. Or Im just bad at the game. Either way, there are trens and trens are good.
A fun way to relax and unwind. Great for all the times in line or traveling.
This is an easy chill game thats really fun if you like trains.
Been playing this game on and off for years, its super satisfying to fill up the board and is a great to be able to monotonously move the trains or choose to think about systems and efficiency. Great game to play on the plane or train as you can just keep progressing. Very simple gameplay but also some depth. Would love to see some updates for the game, but still very nice job! (And we dont even love trains and stuff like that, its just fun!).
Pocket Trains has always been our favorite of the games, and we've played Tiny Tower, Pocket Planes, Bit City and Disco Zoo. The concept is simple but interesting, but can get outlandish, too (Literal train lines across oceans that would never exist irl). We usually don't like pocket games that you leave idle, but there's something about sending trains around to different cities that is satisfying to us. However, we agree that a few minor changes could be made for aesthetic: different times of day based on your timezone (like in Pocket Planes), weather based on location, etc. It is nice to know you finally connected Helsinki to Stockholm, though (It's been awhile since we last played). Now, if you could just connect Dublin to Glasgow, that'd be great lol! Keep up the good work, NimbleBit.
You can really go far without ever paying anything. Yes, you need to watch vids for bonuses, but they are really big bonuses.
Ive been playing this game for quite a while and love the balance of free and paid options in the game. Several times Ive taken a break and come back for casual play. Only a couple things that we think would make this game better: 1) add the ability to pinch and zoom in the map 2) Show the origin of the crate so we dont accidentally bring it back to where we found it.
You can drive train and make money to make more lines and trains you can open boxs and get train parts.
Simple graphics and many options. Only reason for less than 5 stars, little updates.
Ive been playing this literally since the beginning. Would you guys for the love of all thats sacred adjust the resolution so the screen does not bleed Into the notch and cut off ever corner of the screen. Due to this the content also appears smaller than it needs to. IPhone 13 makes everything tiny now oppose to it being reasonable before. We have been mainly playing on droid emulators specifically due to this look on iPhone.
It takes forever to level up but you will feel proud when you open the special crate. Getting other licenses are a pain.
Its bad enough that theres that annoying little box always flashing for videos. Now we have offerwall. A distracting little gizmo on all our nimblebit games. Ive gone back to playing them on our old iPad which doesnt have them. Of for a time when greed wasnt everywhere.
Ive been playing this game for years now and absolutely love it! Even when we had to start over when switching phones, we were able to try a different method of growing our train tycoon! It can be a little slow at first but once you get past that point and get the better trains it is a lot more fun! Definitely would recommend.
Love this game but the new app picture is extremely ugly and doesnt even match the style of the game. Change it back.
Dope game that existed for years.
This is a really good game and we highly recommend it for people who want to learn about trains. Its not all realistic, but its pretty accurate from what we know. We love how you can have more than one train! Its amazing and its so fun! We know this message isnt much but we really do love this game. It really makes our day a good day. Keep up the good work, NimbleBit.
Ive been playing a week and Im getting the hang of it now. It was tricky at first because it was a bit confusing but now that Im used to it, Im excited to see what we can do next in the game. Its nice that we dont have to buy a lot of things to advance in the game or that Im bombarded with ads either. We love the other nimble bit games so Im excited for this one.
Great game its the best train game Ive played personally but the game now is just frozen and its just the music playing we just need help figuring it out.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.8.7
- Size: 149.19 MB
- iOS: 15.0 or later
- Languages: CA, EN, FR, DE, JA, KO, ZH, ES
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Sexual Content and Nudity, Loot Boxes, Infrequent/Mild Mature/Suggestive Themes, Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
- Developer: NimbleBit LLC
Last updated: 3rd November 2025 | Genre: Entertainment, Strategy | Developer: NimbleBit LLC