Contact Pocket Trains Support

by Donsmythe

This game used to be a decent bit of fun, but ever since the last release it just keeps locking up for long stretches of time, anywhere from 15 seconds to over a minute. This makes it unplayable as you dispatch a couple of trains, which takes a couple of seconds, and then it just freezes again for a while leaving you unable to do anything, meaning it spends more time forcing you to wait for a hung screen than it does actually letting you play. Sometimes it freezes for so long that you get the “welcome back” panel even though you never went anywhere.

(My suspicion is that the most recent release either added a race condition between threads that causes a deadlock until a watchdog breaks it, or there is some hideous memory management under the hood that is causing fits for a garbage collection algorithm, or maybe even a bunch of circular references that can’t be collected, gumming things up, because the freezes get worse the longer you try to play.)

by Gotigerss

Would no longer recommend. With the latest update, Nimblebit is ‘thanking’ us for our support by giving us 30 seconds of ads for each 1 second of actual play. This used to be a GREAT game, but has been destroyed with all the ads. It’s distracting with all of the ads. This is in addition to the ‘freezing screens’, and the new delay when you click on the depart button. Also once you get to the higher levels (40+), Nimblebit shows their ‘support’ by only putting out a few jobs to do. I have trains that can carry 28 cars, but there’s not enough jobs to fill up the trains. And the daily challenge has become a real pain. It literally takes all day long - one or two cars half way around the world?? Why not make it a little easier some days. I have over 60 trains and it’s very hard to keep track of where the daily challenge cars are.

by Panzer Pete XLVII

I love playing this game, but it has several issues that I find so frustrating that at times I am tempted to delete it and just move on to something else. 1) You work like crazy to earn crates that contain engine parts so you can get more capable engines. But, about 40% of the crates turn out to be parts for the “steamers” which are the least capable engines and since you don’t need them, you either just stack them up in a yard or sell them off for peanuts. 2) I have also lost many crates just dropping them in a switching yard only to have them disappear when another train tries to recover them. 3) The map does not scroll. So, although you can build a track across the entire Atlantic Ocean from Lisbon, Portugal to New York City in the United States, you cannot go across narrow distance from Alaska to Siberia.

This game has been out since 2013 and I’ve been playing it since 2014. About two years ago it just disappeared and I lost everything - including lots of engines and routes that I paid real money for. The customer service folks tried to help, but I could not get the game restored. After a year off, I reinstalled and started over - because it really is fun, but although there are some new features, it still is kind of basic and glitchy. I’m still playing, and occasionally paying real money to improve my rail empire, but you might think twice before getting involved in this.