Transport Fever 3 Beginner Guide: Your First Hour

By Tobias Lindqvist · Updated October 1, 2026

Pick how you want to learn

Transport Fever 3 gives new players two guided routes. The official game manual describes a quick start tutorial that launches a normal free game and walks you through the basics; once it ends, the map simply carries on as your own save. The campaign has 8 missions, and the manual recommends the first few for newcomers because they introduce the major systems one at a time. See our campaign overview for the mission list.

If you go straight into a free game, the setup screen asks for a climate (temperate, subarctic, dry or tropical), a start year between 1900 and 2020 in ten-year steps, and a difficulty preset. The Tutorial switch sits in the Environment section, so leave it on for your first map.

Your first money: loans

Your company starts with nothing in the bank. Open the company window by clicking your account balance, go to the Loans tab, and pick one of four offers. The manual says offers are random but usually include a smaller, cheaper option and a bigger, more expensive one. You can hold at most four loans at once, interest is charged monthly, and the rate depends on the difficulty level.

A practical rule from a popular launch-week tips video: take the lowest interest rate you can, but check that you can actually cover the annual repayment shown on the card. Pay loans back early when cash allows, because interest keeps running. Our money guide covers loans and income in detail.

The first passenger line

The manual lists two fast ways to earn: moving passengers within or between towns, and moving cargo between industries or from an industry to a town. The easiest opener is a bus line between two neighboring towns.

• Use passenger stops, not cargo stations. The two station types are different.
• Every stop has a limited catchment area. Place several stops in each town, or add a small local bus line, so residents across the whole town can reach the intercity service.
• Buy buses in a road depot. A new vehicle does nothing until you assign it to a line.

Lines live in the line manager (press L). You can create a line by clicking a station in the world when no line is selected, then use the Buy Vehicles button, which finds the nearest compatible depot for you.

The first cargo chain

Start with something short. The manual suggests taking vegetables or fish to the commercial district of a town that demands them. Each town shows its cargo demand in its info window and next to its name.

Two things trip up almost every beginner:

1. Cargo no longer waits at stations. A developer on the Steam forum explained that ports, stations and other infrastructure do not store cargo in Transport Fever 3. Cargo can only be unloaded where it has a destination: a factory, an end consumer, or a warehouse. If your ship reaches port with fish and nothing happens, build a warehouse near the port.
2. The line must be told what to carry. The same developer said to check that your ship can actually carry fish (early start years may list passenger boats first) and that fish is ticked for loading at the fishing grounds and unticked at the port.

Our cargo not unloading fix and warehouse guide go deeper on both problems.

Delivery time is new

Every cargo type has an expected delivery time, shown in the company window’s Delivery Time tab. According to the official town documentation, late cargo still pays full income, but the town’s delivery rating drops, and that slows town growth. Food is time-critical; bulk goods such as stone tolerate slower transport, the developers wrote in their tycoon dev blog.

Building routes cheaply

• Follow contour lines or build level. Terraforming costs money, slows vehicles on steep hills, and, like clearing trees, hurts your reputation with nearby towns.
• Avoid tight curves. On rail, curve radius limits top speed.
• Make platforms at least as long as your trains, or loading slows down.
• Buy enough wagons for a train, and pair locomotives with wagons of a similar top speed, or the train is likely to lose money.
• Freight wagons, trucks and cargo ships refit automatically at stations, so plan return loads to avoid empty trips.

Place your headquarters with care

The developers explained that the company headquarters gives a growth bonus to the nearest town, and the manual puts that bonus at 5% to start, rising as you expand the building. Put it in the town you plan to grow first. Your company rank, from Junior up to Tycoon, rises with the total population on the map, so growing towns is the long-term goal. Read our town growth guide next.

Controls worth learning on day one

The full list, including the data layer keys, is on our controls page.

Keep checking as towns grow

Towns ask for more cargo and more passenger capacity as they grow, and they gain new cargo demands at higher levels. Revisit your lines from time to time, watch the warning icon at the top of the screen, and expect the first months of a big network to run at a loss before it pays off.