Q1. Is it allowed to start a new track next to a city without being already connected to that city?

A1. You may begin laying tracks at any city, even ones you weren't originally connected to.

Q2a. Income reduction: do I have to pay the income reduction in cash(for example 2$) or do I have to move my counter back two places (2 places back)?

A2a. Income reduction reduces your income, which is where your marker is on the income track. So move your counter two places back.

Q2b. Income Reduction. How is it done? As an example; if I get to 11 do I pay myself $11.00 income THEN drop back 2 (Two) spaces to 9 OR do I just stay at the 11 space but pay myself only $9.00 income?

A2b. You get 11, pay expenses and then drop 2 steps to 9. These are separate steps.

Q3. Linking and towns: if I place a simple track and a grey town counter on a town hex, does that mean that this splits my railroad into two new links? Or is this only valid when you use a Dedicated Town Track?

A3. A track with a grey town counter on it counts as two tracks, each one leaving the town.

Q4. As mentioned in the section titled "Moving Goods", a player may forego shipment during a round in order to "increment" his engine link level. It does not specify in the rules by how many links a player may increment his engine, only that the maximum is 6 links. Can a player increment his links by more than one per round? In other words, can I go straight from a 2 link engine directly to a 6 link?

A4. You can only move your engine level up by 1 for foregoing 1 cube shipment. You are only allowed to do this once per goods movement phase. Note that the word "increment" means "To increase the amount of ONE unit". Also be aware that if you get the Engineer you can still forego a shipment in order to get a maximum upgrade of +2 on the turn as a whole.

Q5. Moving Goods: Can a player ship goods during his turn even if the goods never cross any of his own track ? A player did this in our last game in order to deny income to his nearest competitor. Although he himself didnt earn any income, he had the ability to dictate who did. Not sure if this should be allowed.

A5. The ability to do "preventative" shipping is one of the prime tactical and strategic considerations of the game! It makes the "ship first" action much more valuable, especially in the end game, and periphally causes the "production" action to be more valued. It can also influence you to build smart rail systems which preserve your shipping options as long as possible.

Q6. All the established cities have numbers with either white or gray backgrounds and the ones with gray backgrounds are all on the east side of the board. The "new cities" have gray and white backgrounds also, but the rules don't mention these backgrounds and in fact say that you can replace ANY town with ANY new city. So, the question is, do the new cities have to go on a particular half of the board?

A6. The cities can be placed anywhere on the board... their color and lettering scheme just remind you of which one of the mass dice rolls are used to regulate the production of goods cubes.

Q7. The number of available engine upgrades seems to be low. After turn two, two players were able to monopolize the upgrade, causing two players to be able to move over multiple lines, and the other three got stuck with a one engine until near the end.

A7. If you forgo the movement of a good cube, you get a free engine upgrade. It's the last sentence in the paragraph that explains the movement of goods rule.

Q8. Is it allowed to start a new track next to a city without being already connected to that city?

A8. Yes. Your track is not required to form a single network.

Q9. Linking and towns: if you place a simple track and a gray town counter on a town hex, does that mean that this splits my railroad into two new links? Or is this only valid when you use a Dedicated Town Track?

A9. Yes, putting a simple track on a town creates two links. The dead-end dedicated town tile is used when you want to go into a town but you don't want anyone going out of it without paying for a track upgrade. (Remember, that second link leading out of the town is an uncompleted rail link, and if you don't extend it on your next turn someone else can. Usually this doesn't happen because you extend the track or the town gets urbanized.)

Q10a. Moving goods: do I understand correctly that goods can move between cities/towns as many times as you have Engine links and can end in any city color. They only stop moving if you enter a city with the same color as the goods?

A10a. When you move a goods token, you MUST deliver it to a city of the right color. You can not move it over a city of that color to deliver it to another city further away. Finally, you're not allowed to move goods over the same city twice (so no loops). You're not obliged to take the shortest route though.

Q10b. Moving goods (continued): you get two opportunities to move goods during the moving goods phase. How many goods may you move each time?

A10b. You may move one goods cube each time. And remember, you may forgo one opportunity to move a goods cube and instead advance your locomotive marker. You also may do this as your first "goods movement" and then move one goods cube using your new locomotive as your second.

Q11. When you take a cube from the production chart, do you slide the others in the column up to take its spot or do you leave the empty spaces at the top of the column?

A11. No you don't push the cube up. Note that this allows you to front load cubes in the cities selected during the "production" action.

Q12. Two players have track leading into the same empty hex. I'm quite sure that either player may place a tile into that empty hex and thus cut off the other player. However, may a player do this even if the newly placed tile that cuts off the other player *cannot* be replaced by an appropriate complex tile (because it doesn't exist or all are used)?

A12. I would think so, given the rule for Redirection (p. 5), which states, "Redirection is commonly done by players who have had their track 'blocked' or 'made difficult' by another player," which seems to be exactly the situation you're describing.

Q13. If you run a good across a link in the first run, can you run a second good across the same link in the next run?

A13. There is nothing in the rules to prohibit this.

Q14. Does track building go: each player builds one hex, then each builds a second, etc., or does the first player build all three hexes, then the next player builds 3, etc.

A14. Each player completes building ALL of his track sections before the next player begins.

Q15. During a game last night my income was positioned at 20 (right on the edge of moving up to the -4 income reduction range). A player then moved a good one link over my track to bump me into the -4 reduction range. He didn't cross any tracks of his own. Is this a legal tactic?

A15. Perfectly legal -- quite nasty and effective, too!

Q16. Can you move a commodity to a different city, even though it is not getting delivered?

A16. "The Good must by moved... so that it ends its movement in a City of the same color..." So, if you're not ending in a City of the correct color, then you can't move the good. If it helps, don't think of it as actually moving a single good. If that were the case, then you'd get paid cash instead of gaining income (another thing people seem to be confused about). Think of it more as setting up a route that will run continuously for the rest of the game. The goods are "factory production", that will be produced for transport... but they must be moved to the destination promptly or they won't be produced at all (a faster train can make side stops for additional passenger fares). Each turn you have the resources (planning people and such) to set up two new routes (or by pulling some resources upgrade your train). Changing routes at a later time is impossible, because even if you did build an alternate route later, you're still committed to whistle-stops along the old line.

Q17. It says "the most expensive Town tile would be a complex track with a Town counter placed on it. This costs $5." But you can never build a complex Track from scratch (i.e., you can only put a complex Track on the board by replacing a simple Track), right? And when replacing track in a Town, the costs is always $3. So wither $5? I could see paying as much as $4 (by placing a Dedicated Town tile with three exits, which would cost one per exit + one for the Town = $4), but as no Dedicated Town tiles have four exits I can't see how a $5 expenditure could ever come about.

A17. When you build track into a town you can place either a dedicated town tile or a normal town tile plus a gray block. When you build into a town you can place a tile with anything between one and four exits at a cost of $2 to $5 depending on the number. The person placing the town tile owns all of the exits to the town and must extend any uncompleted links next turn or loose them as per the normal rules.

Q18. We were riding an engine with one link capability around the whole board. The reasoning was that the engine could go from link to link as long as the next link was one. It would have to stop if the next 2 links were the same color. Some of us thought it could go only one no matter what.

A18. Only one city to city delivery is allowed with engine level 1. Remember that for a 2 link delivery like city - town - city (or city-city-city) you’ll need a engine with level 2 and so on..

SUMMARY:
FAQ compiled from Q & A on Boardgame Geek by Brian