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This is taking longer than expected.
This is taking longer than expected.
Read real departure boards, change trains across Europe, and reach the destination before the clock runs out.
This is taking longer than expected.
Reach the city before the deadline.
RailPass is played on the real European rail network: published operator timetables from more than thirty national feeds, covering around 28,000 stations from Penzance to Bucharest. Nothing is invented. The departure boards are the ones the operators publish, the night trains are the ones that actually run, and missing the last connection strands you exactly as it would in life.
You wake up in Narvik, above the Arctic Circle, and the destination is Stockholm. The board shows a handful of departures a day, so the first call makes itself: the iron-ore line east toward Boden.
At Boden the main line south opens up. A daytime intercity would get you there, but the sleeper leaves later, covers the distance overnight, and ticks the day's night-train challenge while you rest. You route the last leg through a quiet regional junction instead of the main line, collect the obscurity points, and arrive with ninety minutes to spare - two of the day's three challenges done, and a reason to hunt a cleverer route tomorrow.
Sixty for challenges, twenty-five for time, fifteen for obscurity.
A hundred points. The three challenges carry sixty, so the fastest route is rarely the best one. Time is scored against the route the solver proved rather than a guess, so matching it earns full marks and beating it is possible. Obscurity rewards routing through quiet stations, which is deliberately at odds with speed: the scoring is built so that you have to choose.
Seven habits of high scores.
RailPass FAQ.
Reach the day's destination city before the deadline, starting from wherever the game wakes you up. Every departure on the board is a real train from published operator timetables, so the route you build is one you could ride.
Yes. Every departure comes from published operator timetables, gathered from more than thirty national rail feeds covering around 28,000 stations. The times, the operators, the calling points and the night trains are the real ones, played on a canonical Tuesday.
Each day sets three challenges drawn from a wider pool: ride a night train, ride two high-speed trains, use three different operators, stop at five or more stations, ride only regional trains, and more. Together they are worth sixty of the hundred points, so they matter more than raw speed, and they are what push you off the obvious main line.
Yes, and that is checked before the day is published. A journey is only released once a solver has found a real route that reaches the destination inside the deadline while satisfying all three challenges. Days solvable in one or two trains are rejected as too easy.
The same thing that happens in life: you are stranded. The clock is the only budget in the game, so a connection you cannot make is a route you cannot take, and the day ends when the deadline passes.
In a few cities, yes. Where two big stations are linked in reality by a walk, a metro or an RER rather than by a train, that link appears at the top of the departure board with its real duration. Crossing town is not a train, so it never counts toward the train or operator challenges.
Often, yes. A sleeper covers ground while the clock runs anyway, so an overnight leg can turn an impossible distance into a comfortable one. On longer journeys the proven route usually includes one, and riding one also completes a challenge.
Out of a hundred: sixty points for the three challenges, twenty-five for time and fifteen for obscurity. Time is measured against the route the solver proved rather than a guess, so matching it scores full marks and beating it is possible. Obscurity rewards routing through quiet stations instead of the obvious main line.
Yes. One journey per day, the same start and destination for every player, refreshing at midnight Eastern. Past days are playable from the archive.
Yes. RailPass is free to play in your browser with no account and no download.