Sidetrack — Tiny Trains for Your Desktop

Sidetrack is a tiny railway town in a strip along the bottom (or top) of your desktop. Get on with your day: the trains keep running, the cargo keeps paying, and whenever you look down the town is going about its business. There is no timer and nothing can go wrong.

Run the railway

• Idle at your own pace. Stations make cargo and your trains carry it for coins. Blow a train's whistle for extra coins, send it off as an express for double pay, or just let it all run.

• Buy and build. Wagons for every cargo, steam, diesel and electric engines, faster track, more trains, longer platforms and station lights for the night shift.

• Five districts on one long line. The Countryside, the Harbour and its tides, the steep Mountain, the electric-only City and the endless Grand Terminus, each with a chain of contracts that opens the next.

• The Museum. Retire a finished district for tokens, perks, liveries and decorations, then run it again, on a charter for a medal if you like.

• Offline progress. Close the game and come back up to 16 hours later (72 with Museum perks) to what your trains earned.

• Focus blocks. Set a 15 to 90 minute block, get on with your work, and a bonus express rolls through town when it ends.

Live in the town

• A town that grows with your line. New stations and contracts bring new buildings, people and cars, and vans take your deliveries to the shops that want them.

• Sixteen regulars. They ask for deliveries and favors, and some keep a shop you can look inside.

• Things to find. Sixteen rare trains, a missing cat on the rooftops, lost property, visitors for the guest book and a photo album of the town to fill.

• Make it yours. Name and paint your trains, ride along to fill a stamp book, fund town projects and place forty decorations wherever you like.

• Day and night. Windows light up at dusk, the trains run with headlights, fireflies drift over the river, and now and then it rains.

Made for your desktop

• Choose the monitor, the edge, the height and the scale; keep it on top or let other windows cover it.

• Step away and Night watch parks the line for the night, then pays you for the time.

• 78 achievements, a radio with each district's music, and a guide behind its own button.