Last updated on January 15th, 2026 at 05:14 pm
Sid Meier’s Railroads! – Strategy Game Review
Sid Meier’s Railroads! is a Strategy/Simulation game from Feral Interactive Ltd, first launched in 5th April 2023.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 1,114+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Sid Meier’s Railroads! Stand Out
Become history’s greatest rail baron in Sid Meier’s Railroads!, a classic of the tycoon genre now available for iPhone and iPad.
In this captivating mix of model train set and railway management simulator, lay tracks and optimise routes to establish lucrative networks of cities and industries, transporting passengers, raw materials and goods across continents.
Grow profits through efficiency, innovation, and shrewd business decisions as you acquire valuable patents, trade stocks, and build or buy industries. Compete with world leaders and industrial titans to achieve the ultimate goal — becoming the greatest railroad tycoon of the age!
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TRY BEFORE YOU BUY
Lay the foundations of your railroad empire during the Gold Rush, then unlock the full game for more maps, trains, and 16 charming scenarios spanning the golden age of rail.
CREATE AN EMPIRE OF THE RAILS
Carefully lay tracks and design routes to transport freight and passengers, refining and improving operations until your railroad runs like clockwork.
STEAM ACROSS 16 CHALLENGING SCENARIOS
Test your entrepreneurial mettle in a mix of historical and fictional scenarios, each with a distinctive map and unique objectives. Establish the first passenger line in 1830s Great Britain, stitch together the American West during the Gold Rush, or help Santa with the Christmas rush at the North Pole!
COMPETE WITH HISTORY’S BEST
Take on world leaders and captains of industry. Grow your business by acquiring industries and railroad-revolutionising patents, or play the stock market and buy out the competition.
BRING 40 FAMOUS TRAINS TO LIFE
Play with historically important engines from early steam locomotives like Stephenson’s Planet, to the high-speed French TGV, and many iterations and innovations in between.
BUILD THE MODEL RAILROAD OF YOUR DREAMS
Take the pressure off in Train Table Mode. No competition, time limits, or financial constraints — just all you need to create a railroad that’s as fun to watch as it is satisfying to build.
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We recommend playing Sid Meier's Railroads! on iOS 15.5 or later. You need 1.7GB of free space on your device, though we recommend at least double this to avoid initial installation issues.
Supported iPhones:
• iPhone 6S / 6S Plus and later
• Any iPhone SE
• iPod Touch (7th generation, 2019)
Supported iPads:
• iPad mini (5th generation, 2019) and later
• iPad Air (3rd generation, 2019) and later
• iPad (5th generation, 2017) and later
• Any iPad Pro
• If you require assistance, please contact our support team at [email protected]
© 2006-2024 Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. Originally developed by Firaxis Games. Sid Meier’s Railroads!, Firaxis Games, 2K, Take-Two Interactive Software and their respective logos are trademarks of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. All rights reserved. Developed for and published on iOS by Feral Interactive. iOS and the iOS logo are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. Feral and the Feral logo are trademarks of Feral Interactive Ltd. All other trademarks, logos and copyrights are property of their respective owners. All rights reserved.
This Strategy game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Sid Meier’s Railroads! is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 25th September 2024
Recent improvements include:
• TRY BEFORE YOU BUY — All aboard! The first ride’s on us with 20 free years of railroading set in the great American West during the Gold Rush.
• Fixes a number of minor issues.
Download & Availability
Sid Meier’s Railroads! is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Sid Meier’s Railroads! on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 6s / iPhone 6s Plus / iPad Pro (12.9-inch, 1st Gen) / iPad Pro (12.9-inch, 1st Gen, Cellular) / iPad Pro (9.7-inch) / iPad Pro (9.7-inch, Cellular) / iPhone SE (1st Gen) / iPhone 7 / iPhone 7 Plus / iPad (5th Gen) or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
Very faithful port of the original one. Basically identical as someone who still occasionally plays the PC version. Controls take a little bit to get used to as it is touch screen. Do try it before you buy.
The game is great but you have to purchase to play the hole game. It is unfair in our opinion.But other than that its pretty good (5 stars).
One of our favorite strategy games.
So fun for Railroad nerds!!!!! Like us.
This is one of our all time favorite games. The depth of play is fantastic. We used to play it on our PC, now on the Apple tablet. Can play for hours. Or at least until Im asked if Im going to play that game all night. Well worth the $12.99 for the full version.
No more need of idle games. Go back in time and enjoy real interaction while watch beautiful trains roll by. Worth every single penny.
It would be cool if you added 4-4-2 from Milwaukee road and add 4-6-4 Hudson with the STREAMLINERS all types please.
Train lovers will 100% love this.
Thank you for bringing this to iOS. What a fantastic port of the PC version! We see a few improvements from the original too, and the controls are so well made for the touchscreen.
We love this game because its fun and challenging. But the full version is $12.99! That is a little too much to us. If you could please just make the full version just $9.00 to $11.45 that would be nice. Thanks if you do it. And its okay if you dont do it.
Same game we played on pc years ago. Like that you buy it once versus all the in game purchases AND we dont have to be online to play – big bonus when Wi-Fi not always available when flying.
We used to play this in 2014 on our high end pc but the game would crash. Ive played over and over on our iPad Pro successfully without a problem in 2025. Beyond happy.
Lots of fun once you figure out how it works. Can play for hours.
We usually dont write reviews, but this game is so good that we have to. Its free from annoying micro-transactions, gimmicks, or ads. Instead, it offers a real challenge that requires you to think strategically about planning your routes, managing resources, and making efficient decisions. If youre into business or logistics, this game is definitely worth checking out.
Overall the game is great we like playing tycoon games particularly train related there are some problems though 1 the steam locomotives that had tenders in real life need to have tenders and the right kind for that engine 2 we think it would be a good idea to be able to cross over track with out bridges and 3 we dont know if this is a technical issue or an actual game feature but the different paint jobs particular the alternate ones when we get the correct color and paint job if we turn the switch that puts it on all the locomotives if its an alternate paint job it only puts it on the one we painted but besides all of that we give it a 9 out of 10.
We never thought we would like train games but this game is great we highly recommend it.
Really enjoying this game. Played for 100s of hours and have yet to find a game with similar replay ability.
Brings us back to our childhood when we used to play all Sids games! Well worth the 14 bucks.
If you get this just know its only the trial thats free you do have to pay for the full edition.
The title is self explanatory. Every steam locomotive that has a tender in real life just doesnt have one in the game. Please fix this so the in game steam locomotives are accurate to their real life counterparts.
Devs. SimGolf is a must to port over. Please make this a priority.
Love this game, only issue is the world is small. After taking over other barons there really is no next step in which we could expand the rail world.
Would like to see more difficult, or larger / custom maps. It would be cool to also have longer playtime in terms of years or infinite (2000s+).
The game is really good but give us the pack thing for free. And a sandbox too.
This game is good overall. For the most part its fully featured and has many nice touches. However there are few things holding it back from being truly great. – One way track or better yet signals would be very helpful – Better track / depot connections – An option for longer games – More complex buyout mechanics, it should be more complex / fun to architect a buyout of a larger company rather than just saving up money – Above all else, far more complex supply chains, up to something similar to Steel Town FIRS in OpenTTD (Transport Tycoon) – Multiplayer lobbies – A wider variety of trains including high speed – A campaign – A few more maps / scenarios (Asia?) – More messages from the other AIs in game These would easily add significantly more gameplay to the game. Id easily pay $15-$20 for these features. A good game sure, especially with all the small charming touches, but not quite great.
Fun premise. Great graphics and physics. Somewhat one-note once played a few times. We still like it.
Really a great game overall. Extremely playable, very challenging at higher difficulty settings. Not sure its totally worth the moneyfor an app its pricey. Will there be updates coming, or seasonal levels available throughout the coming year? We will certainly keep playing to find out.
The game is good and all but for some reason, when we purchased the full game we were tricked into buying a subscription for privacy protection.
Good game. Played as a kid. Wish was a demolish option for railroads and a sell option for the businesses. Other than that great game. Oh maybe bigger maps. Well not what else to say. Apparently you have to write so many words to send a review so here we go.
Love the franchise. Played this on PC back in the day. Its a simple game by todays standards. And the asking price for the unlock is too much in our opinion. It could use an update: add achievements, improve cloud syncing, and fix crashing bugs. Otherwise, we dont regret the purchase.
The game itself is fun But gets boring eventually. We kind of want a refund.
This game is very addicting, if you start playing it its hard to put it down.
This game is great. Its fun to play, but we wish it worked with our backbone controller. Please someone take a look at this.
Bought this since it is the same company that makes the 10/10 Xcom2 port. While this game functionally works fine on our iphone (15 pro/max), we found it too frustrating using our finger to draw the rails. Phone screen is too small for this, perhaps if you have an Ipad that might be a better way to play this game. The demo cut off "just before" things got technical enough in-game to really show how using your finger is more frustrating than fun. Requested a refund.
The game is great but is too expensive.
Constantly crashes, and we dont mean the trains.
Having to connect train lines is annoying on touch screen. Its confusing and then you are demolishing lines and wasting money because it wasnt lined up correctly. For beginners, instructions are not clear as to what to focus on. Objectives are somewhat random and dont focus you on building an empire. We can see why folks may enjoy it but it was far from enjoyable for us.
We have the Mac version of the game, shame we dont get the same game for our phone. Some things are better and some more awkward to rapidly grow.
Its hard to lay tracks and the stations. We got this on our pc and its really fun to play too. And we think we got on our Mac mini m1 as well. And its plays really good. For an iPad its not fun at all. Need more to so its easier to play on. This is way we given it two stars for the iPad version and 5 stars for pc and iOS . TIL they make easier to lay things down then Ill give 5 stars across.
A once great game, this looks like it has all the essential elements that made it a decades-long classic. But this iPad implementation is nearly, no, actually unplayable because it doesnt do a good job of joining track sections. This affects game play because you lay track, build a station, and then wait to continue the track from your city or farm to the next town. But no, half the time it looks connected but says you cant reach the next station. Your only option? Demolish the track and try again, losing money in the process. A waste of $12.
We cant find a way to delete track. The game if fun apart from this problem.
Someone wrote an inaccurate review. They mistakenly wrote that this game has minimal complexity. They must have been reviewing an earlier edition or a different game because this has all the complexity that the original Railroad Tycoon, which we owned in 1990. Its a great game that requires building stations, laying tracks, finding resources, and connecting resources to different stations to earn greater revenue. You can play against 0 to 3 other AI players. It has multiple levels of complexity and 15 different scenarios. Now, whether the AI players are geniuses or not, Im not sure, but thats not been an issue. Its still a fantastic gamevery complex. Any review that says anything different is wrong.
Ive enjoyed this game for years. Please give us more content.
We have thoroughly enjoyed playing this game on our brand new m4 iPad Pro, BUT, we've experienced two game crashes and a number of goofy bugs. Sometimes, all our tracks will just disappear, and we need to close the game and resume to get all the details back. IPad gets very warm while playing. We know its a resource intensive game, but its hard to believe there's not enough resources for this game. We hope they can address the small issues, because they would make a great game even better. Thank you.
Great game! Glad its on mobile now vs PC. This is our go-to game when we want something to beat in a short time.
Its about time Sid brought Railroads to moble. Been waiting.
This is one of our favorite games ever.
Used to play this on the pc and was surprised how well it was ported over to ios. Recommend using the apple pen as it makes it easier to connect the rails. Good times.
We played this game for many years on our PC. We like the convenience of playing the game on our IPAD. The game runs flawlessly on our IPAD 6 with 128K memory. We Appreciate buying the game completely upfront with no in app purchases necessary to advance. Play the game as much as we want with each scenario and no additional purchases necessary to win or complete the scenario! Having said that we would gladly pay for additional map/scenario packages! Are there any plans to offer additional map packages? We hope so.
Our goodness, Im so nostalgic! Used to play this game for hours and hours on PC listening to some good music in 2008/2009. Its exactly how we remember it! All the elements are there. One of our favorite PC games of all time. Im so happy. To see it on iPad. It can be complicated at first, but, once you get the feel for all the elements its so much fun and you want to keep going. Buying industries, patents, winning auctions, hostile take overs, upgrades, improving efficiencys, customizing the trains, its all there! No in app purchases! The full game and itll have you hooked for hours.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.4.2
- Size: 1,613.46 MB
- iOS: 15.5 or later
- Languages: EN, FR, DE, HI, ID, IT, JA, KO, PL, RU, ZH, ES, ZH
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: Feral Interactive Ltd
Last updated: 25th September 2024 | Genre: Strategy, Simulation | Developer: Feral Interactive Ltd