Tiny Rails

I looked at Trainstation 2 first and it had better graphics, but the tutorial seemed to go on forever, never letting me make my own choices.  Maybe you get more freedom after a while, I don't know.  But I installed Tiny Rails a few days later and I like everything about this one better.  It has pixel art but it is very well done, especially the moving landscapes and train cars, day/night cycles; very well done.  After getting the feel of it, you pretty much just cruise from city to city with passengers and cargo.  Its most surreal bit is that you get new cars from ... a gumball machine??  There is some humor spread throughout, like the time my engineer asked me to get carrots to try as a new fuel source, and failed, and said she wasn't much of an engineer after all.

There are hundreds of cars to choose from, from normal working cars to taco cars, muffin cars, a kiwi petting car (really!) ... you name it, it's fun to see what you might find next ... so you get to build your own funky train and do what you want.  The cars have a few stats: weight, speed, cargo, food value, entertainment value, facilities.  Some rail cars will make money during the journey, but they are only open certain hours of the day.  I got one recently that was open 24 hours, so even in the middle of the night I can click to get coins.  Coins also accumulate in the caboose for some reason.  Your passengers leave comments, coin and possibly gifts.  It's a good mix.

The range of goods is fairly limited.  I have seen maybe 20 different items so far, but they have all been priced from 8 to 13 coins, so there's very little room for business.  You can see which stations are asking for which products but again, and when you stop it will show notes like the "profit +1" on your cargo, but the price range and amounts of the goods hardly makes it worth the time to travel 6 stations west to get +$50.

You can always take screenshots if you want to.  There are photo opportunities that come up and give you a few seconds to get a photo of them.  These are major landmarks, or in one case it was a meteor falling.
 
There are funny moments when there are things on the tracks: so far I have seen rocks, logs and cows.  You click to shoo them away and they drop goods.  One time a cow dropped two pigs, so it's not exactly logical.

There is a map page, where you can choose destinations and browse the goods needed.  You can buy into up to three levels of investment at each station, giving you perks of extra passengers, extra cargo or x2 coins.  The cost varies based on the town size, but the smallest ones cost $500, $1000, $5000 vfor the three levels.  You unlock the map one region at a time.  At level 20 I unlocked Europe, technically, but the regions of Europe still had locks on them and I have no idea how to get my train there.  I am hoping that you get to have more than one train at some point.

There is a "Trainpedia" which is the encyclopedia of trains, showing over 200 empty numbered boxes at first, but as you find them, they fill in and you can check their stats.  When you get two cars of the same type, you can merge them into one car of level 2.

This is a bit of fun before bed.  It does take a few minutes to get from one stop to the next, so the quiet music while zooming through the night, in an unlit room around midnight, is all very relaxing.  Some apps just feel soulless or industrial, but Tiny Rails has a friendly feel.  Some apps spend too much time guiding you, this one lets you choose, and that's the direction I like to go in, if I'm going to spend my time doing a thing.