Wagons and Upgrades
Unrailed! has sixteen wagons, fifteen of which you can use in Endless, since the Cannon is Versus only. Every train starts with the Crafter, Storage and Tank, and you spend bolts at each station to upgrade those or add wagons like Dynamite, Ghost, Supercharger, Buckinator, Milk, Brake, Collector and Miner. Take the Crafter and Storage to Level 2 first, since both cost only one bolt, then buy Dynamite and keep it fed with iron. Your engine sets both the next biome you can reach and how many wagons your train can hold.
Your train is the single most important thing in Unrailed!. Every wagon you add and every upgrade you purchase determines whether you survive the next biome or derail three levels in. This guide covers all sixteen wagons, the animal ecology system, the bolt economy, engine progression, and the upgrade strategies that separate first-biome crashers from endgame runners.
Wagon availability and upgrade costs can shift between game versions. This guide reflects the current build, including the Underwater update of March 2023. Levels above 3 are reached with Superchargers, and a few of them are only reachable in Time mode, which is flagged wherever it applies.
Five wagons run on fuel and will quietly stop working if nobody feeds them: Dynamite and Miner and Supercharger burn iron, Collector and Light burn wood. The Supercharger cannot be fed by a Collector, so it always costs somebody a hand-carry.
Default Wagons
Every train starts with these three wagons. They cannot be removed or replaced. Upgrading them is always your first priority.
Crafter Wagon
The Crafter forges rails. You do not load it: it pulls wood and iron out of the Storage wagon on its own, and the finished rails stack up on the Crafter for players to collect. It stops forging when that rail stack is full.
| Level | Craft time | Rail stack | Bolt cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Level 1 (default) | 3.2 seconds | 3 | starting wagon |
| Level 2 | 2.0 seconds | 5 | 1 |
| Level 3 | 0.8 seconds | 7 | 2 |
| Level 4 (supercharged) | Instant | 9 | see Supercharger |
| Level 5 (2 Superchargers) | Instant | 11 | see Supercharger |
Priority: Upgrade the Crafter to Level 2 as early as possible. At one bolt it is the cheapest upgrade in the game, and Level 1 to Level 3 is a fourfold throughput gain.
One side effect worth knowing: once the Crafter is at Level 3 and supercharged it crafts instantly, which means it never registers as busy. Skip the "keep the Crafting Wagon busy" station missions from then on.
Storage Wagon
Storage is the wagon you actually deliver to. It holds raw wood and iron and feeds the Crafter automatically. It does not hold finished rails, and it is not an overflow bin for the Crafter, it is the input end of the chain.
Capacity is per resource type, not a shared pool.
| Level | Capacity of each resource | Bolt cost |
|---|---|---|
| Level 1 (default) | 3 wood and 3 iron | starting wagon |
| Level 2 | 5 of each | 1 |
| Level 3 | 7 of each | 2 |
| Level 4 to 5 (supercharged) | 9 then 11 of each | see Supercharger |
Priority: Upgrade to Level 2 after the Crafter. Also at one bolt, so a team holding two bolts at the first station can take both. Keep Storage near the front of the train so resources cleared ahead of the engine go straight in, unless you are running an upgraded Collector, which lets you move it to the rear.
You can buy a second Storage wagon in the shop, which is the cheapest way to widen a supply bottleneck.
Tank Wagon
The Tank wagon stores water for cooling, and from Space onward it becomes the party's air supply. There is no automatic cooling and no cooling range. Cooling is always manual, but you can pour the bucket onto either the engine or the Tank, whichever is closer.
| Level | Tank alone | Tank plus engine | Oxygen radius | Bolt cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Level 1 (default) | 30 seconds | 60 seconds | 3m | starting wagon |
| Level 2 | 60 seconds | 90 seconds | 4.6m | 2 |
| Level 3 | 90 seconds | 120 seconds | 6.2m | 2 |
The engine carries 30 seconds of its own on top of whatever the Tank holds, so every level you buy is worth a flat 30 seconds whichever column you read. Each further supercharged level adds another 1.6m of oxygen radius.
The Tank is also the one wagon with no hidden heat capacity, so it never catches fire from its neighbors.
Priority: Upgrade to Level 2 once Crafter and Storage are handled. A Level 3 Tank frees a player from bucket duty, but it is not essential until the Desert or later.
Positioning: the Tank starts next to the engine and that is the wrong place for it. Move it to the far end of the train and put the Crafter in its slot, so your rails sit at the front and you can still cool from either end. Reverse this in Space and on Mars, where the Tank is supplying oxygen and wants to be central.
Purchasable Wagons
At each station the shop offers you a choice of three wagons. Your train has a wagon capacity limit determined by your current engine, and adding a wagon when your train is full replaces the one you drop the new one on top of.
Three cost rules the guide used to omit, and they shape every plan below:
- Most wagons cost 2 bolts to buy. The Compass, Light, Transformer and Slot Machine cost 1.
- Upgrades usually cost 2 then 3. The Crafter and Storage cost 1 then 2, and the Tank, Transformer and Slot Machine cost 2 then 2.
- A second wagon of a type you already own costs +1, a third +1 again, and the same escalation applies to its upgrades.
:::warning A wagon you just bought cannot be upgraded until the next station Buying Dynamite at one station and taking it to Level 3 is a three-station commitment, not a shopping list you clear in one visit. Plan around that, and remember every engine costs another 4 bolts on top. :::
Dynamite Wagon
Produces dynamite sticks, which clear a large area of trees, rocks, and terrain obstacles when thrown.
:::warning You have to feed it iron The Dynamite wagon is not a free-running producer. It consumes one iron per stick, and turns one out roughly every 35 seconds once loaded. This changed on October 24, 2019, five weeks into Early Access and eleven months before 1.0, and passive production has been gone ever since. A team that buys this wagon and never loads it will conclude it is broken. :::
| Level | Effect |
|---|---|
| Level 1 | Small blast radius. |
| Level 2 | Medium blast radius. |
| Level 3 | Large blast radius. Clears massive swaths of terrain. |
A dynamite blast cuts one square deeper than its level, so a Level 3 stick clears four squares in and a supercharged Level 4 clears five.
Two things that catch people out: you cannot pick a stick up until the wagon's timer counts down to 3, and a loaded stick detonates if a teammate dashes into you or if the train reaches the station while you are holding it.
The Dynamite wagon really is the strongest purchasable wagon, and that is the community's own view and not a slogan. The wiki's strategy advice is to bank bolts and buy nothing until Dynamite appears in the shop, and the record-distance layout runs two of them. Just budget for the iron.
Ghost Wagon
Allows players and entities to pass through the wagon itself. Normally, your growing train becomes a physical barrier that forces players to walk around it. The Ghost wagon eliminates this problem.
| Level | Wagons made passable | Bolt cost |
|---|---|---|
| Level 1 | 1 (itself) | 2 to buy |
| Level 2 | 3 (itself plus one each side) | 2 |
| Level 3 | 5 (itself plus two each side) | 3 |
| Level 4 (supercharged) | 7 (itself plus three each side) | see Supercharger |
| Level 5 (2 Superchargers) | 9 (itself plus four each side) | see Supercharger |
Why it matters: As your train gets longer with more wagons, walking around it to deliver resources wastes critical seconds. A Ghost wagon in the middle of your train lets players phase through it freely. This becomes essential in later biomes where every second counts. The Ghost effect also applies to animals attached to the Milk Wagon within its range, preventing them from being crushed by the train or detaching in narrow corridors.
:::warning The engine can never be ghosted This was changed deliberately in October 2019 and it still catches people out. However far your Ghost wagon reaches, the engine remains solid, so you must still plan the track route around being blocked by it. :::
Compass Wagon
Points toward the station and carries a mini-map. Since the March 2023 update the map is the wagon's main selling point, not the arrow.
| Level | Effect | Bolt cost |
|---|---|---|
| Level 1 | Arrow points toward the station. Mini-map showing 10 behind and 25 ahead. | 1 to buy |
| Level 2 | Also points along the best route, not just the bearing. Map shifts to 7 behind and 28 ahead. | 2 |
| Level 3 to 4 (supercharged) | Map reaches 32 then 35 ahead, and the rear view drops to 3 then 0. No bonus at all past Level 4. | see Supercharger |
The mini-map arrives at Level 1, not Level 2, and its position and size are adjustable in the pause menu. Note the trade-off: each upgrade extends your forward view and shrinks your rearward view, and by Level 4 the rear view is gone entirely.
When to buy: The Compass is useful when terrain forces long detours. Its strongest feature is easy to miss: while you are stopped at a station, the mini-map will show you the beginning of the next level before you commit to starting it.
Light Wagon
Lights the night and melts snow around it. It burns wood as fuel.
| Level | Melt radius | Fuel | Bolt cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Level 1 | 6 | 3 wood | 1 to buy |
| Level 2 | 10 | 4 wood | 2 |
| Level 3 to 8 (supercharged) | 14, 19, 23, 27, 31, 35 | 5 to 10 wood | see Supercharger |
| Level 9 to 10 | 39 then 43 | 11 to 12 wood | Time mode only |
:::tip A Supercharger matters more than the upgrades do Unboosted, the Light wagon melts once every 10 seconds no matter what level it is. Put a single Supercharger next to it and that halves to once every 5 seconds, and further Superchargers do not improve it. So in Snow, one Supercharger beside the Light does more for you than any amount of leveling. :::
When to buy: For the Snow biome. Sell it before you buy the Lava engine. There are no more night sections after Snow, and from Space onward it never gets dark at all, so the wagon becomes dead weight in exactly the biomes where slots are scarcest. Its one residual use in Space is clearing space dust.
Supercharger Wagon
Boosts the effective level of adjacent wagons by one. This is the most strategically powerful wagon in the game and the cornerstone of all endgame builds.
| Level | Effect | Bolt cost |
|---|---|---|
| Level 1 | Boosts the wagons directly adjacent, 2 in total. | 2 to buy |
| Level 2 | Boosts within two slots, 4 in total. | 2 |
| Level 3 | Boosts within three slots, 6 in total. | 3 |
The Supercharger pushes adjacent wagons beyond their normal Level 3 cap. A Level 3 Crafter next to a Supercharger crafts instantly. Multiple Superchargers stack, and that is how leaderboard runs reach the extreme levels quoted in the tables above. Position them to cover as many critical wagons as possible.
Three limits that decide whether a second Supercharger is worth its slot:
- Superchargers do not boost each other. Chaining them gains you nothing directly.
- The Supercharger does not raise the Milk wagon's level. It speeds milk production up sharply, but the charge capacity stays where your bolts put it.
- It burns iron continuously, and it cannot be fed by a Collector. Every Supercharger on your train is a standing hand-carry job for somebody.
How high can you actually go? Level 9 is reachable in Endless for the Buckinator, Collector, Dynamite, Miner and Tank, but it costs six Superchargers plus the target plus your three base wagons, which is exactly the 10 slots the Mars rover gives you. Level 10 is Time mode only, for every wagon. The Light wagon is the exception in the other direction: its Level 9 is Time mode only too.
Bucket Wagon (Buckinator)
When a standard water bucket is docked into the Buckinator, it becomes "charged." The charged bucket projects an area-of-effect (AoE) ring that empowers any player standing inside its radius.
| Level | Charge duration | Carrying capacity in the ring | Snow melt range | Bolt cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Level 1 | 6 seconds | 3, the same as unbuffed | 2 | 2 to buy |
| Level 2 | 9 seconds | 12 | 3 | 2 |
| Level 3 | 12 seconds | 12 | 3 | 3 |
| Level 4 to 9 (supercharged) | 15 up to 30 seconds | 12 | 3 | see Supercharger |
At every level the Super Bucket lets anyone inside the ring chop and mine in one hit, and with Cow milk on top of that they can harvest either resource with whichever tool they happen to hold.
:::warning Level 1 gives no carrying bonus at all The 12-resource carry starts at Level 2. A team that buys the Buckinator, stands in the ring at Level 1 and waits for a carry buff will never see one. :::
The stacking mechanic: the Buckinator ring stacks with Milk Wagon buffs. A player under Camel milk standing inside a charged ring carries 24 resources, which the wiki describes as octupling the base of 3. The charged bucket also supercharges placed dynamite by one level, and melts snow within 2 to 3 meters every 2 seconds. That is a useful trickle, not an instant clear of a large area.
:::warning The buffer role is a shuttle, not a station Two limits make the dedicated-buffer plan harder than it sounds. The charge drains the moment the bucket leaves its dock, and it recharges at the same rate it depletes, so a Level 3 Buckinator gives you 12 seconds out for 12 seconds back. And when a player carrying 12 resources steps outside the ring, they immediately drop 9 of them on the nearest free ground and continue with the base 3. :::
Milk Wagon
The Milk Wagon generates consumable buffs from biome-specific animals. Carry an animal to the wagon to attach it, then dash into the wagon to drink. Each buff lasts 17 seconds.
| Animal | Biome | Buff | Follows at |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cow | Plains | Triples chopping and mining speed, breaking resources in one hit. | 0.160 m/s |
| Camel | Desert | Quadruples carrying capacity to 12 items per trip. | 0.500 m/s |
| Walrus | Snow | Melts the snow beneath you as you walk. | 0.160 m/s |
| Blowfish | Underwater | Infinite oxygen. | 0.280 m/s |
| Lava Blob | Lava | Ghost power. You pass through other players. | 1.300 m/s |
The Lava Blob is also called the Magma Blob on some wiki pages. Steam's own achievement text uses Lava Blob.
Note what the last two rows do not say. The Walrus does not grant immunity to the snow slowdown, it melts snow under you, and you still move slower than your normal walking speed, which makes simply carrying a filled water bucket the better option. And the blob's ghost power works on players only, not on obstacles and not on the train. Passing through the train is the Ghost wagon's job, and even that excludes the engine.
Stacking: milking several animals at once combines their effects into one drink, and the effects persist as long as one charge remains in the cart. They are not multiplicative in any meaningful sense, because the five buffs govern five unrelated things. The one genuinely multiplicative interaction is milk with the charged Buckinator bucket, which takes Camel carrying from 12 to 24.
Milk production runs at one charge per animal per 20 seconds. Superchargers do not raise the wagon's level but they do speed this up, to one charge every 10 seconds with a single Supercharger and every 5 with three. Upgrading the wagon adds +2 charge capacity per level.
:::warning Why animals keep leaving Animals follow at a fixed speed and simply fall behind once the train outruns them. Only Camels and Lava Blobs can keep pace with a fast train, and Camels only because they are chasing your Tank wagon. Cows and Walruses also stop to rest and can detach while idling. On top of that, one-tile paths and pinches detach animals or crush them outright when several end up on the same tile.
The fix is the Ghost wagon: bring its radius over the Milk wagon and the attached animals turn ethereal too, which stops the detachments and deaths at bottlenecks. Building gentle loops instead of straight lines also helps animals keep up. :::
Brake Wagon
The direct answer to the game's only real threat, and the wagon most players forget exists. It slows the train by 0.450 m/s, which stops it outright if the train was slow enough already.
To use it, dash into it six times to charge it, then dash in once more while the red button shows.
| Level | Brake duration | Charges | Bolt cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Level 1 | 7 seconds | 1 | 2 to buy |
| Level 2 | 10 seconds | 1 | 2 |
| Level 3 | 13 seconds | 2 | 3 |
Most valuable late in a section when the train is already slow, buying the team time to plan a route, mine, and lay track.
Collector Wagon
Vacuums up loose resources lying on the ground and files them straight into Storage. Burns wood. It cannot collect unharvested resources, only what is already on the floor, and it gathers one resource type at a time. If Storage has no room for that type, it will not pick it up.
| Level | Pick-up speed | Radius | Fuel | Bolt cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Level 1 | 2.5s per item | 3 | 3 wood | 2 to buy |
| Level 2 | 2.0s | 5 | 4 wood | 2 |
| Level 3 | 1.5s | 7 | 5 wood | 3 |
| Level 4 to 5 (supercharged) | 1.0s then 0.5s | 9 then 11 | 6 to 7 wood | see Supercharger |
Two catches. Pick-up speed improves only via Superchargers past Level 3, never from boxes in Time mode. And it will happily hoover up a pile you were building for a "stack X resources in one place" mission.
Miner Wagon
Fires shockwaves out of both sides of the train, damaging every tree and rock in their path. Burns iron.
| Level | Range | Mining speed | Fuel | Bolt cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Level 1 | 3 | 5.0s | 3 iron | 2 to buy |
| Level 2 | 5 | 4.5s | 4 iron | 1 |
| Level 3 | 8 | 4.0s | 5 iron | 3 |
| Level 4 to 5 (supercharged) | 10 then 13 | 3.5s then 3.0s | 6 to 7 iron | see Supercharger |
It only cuts sideways, never forward, so it never clears the path ahead for you. Watch the range as it grows: a wide Miner can breach a wall that was safely penning in bandits or animals.
Transformer Wagon
Converts wood to iron and iron to wood at 1:1, in both directions, and costs nothing to run unlike the Miner, Collector, Supercharger, Light and Dynamite.
| Level | Conversion time | Stack | Bolt cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Level 1 | 5.0 seconds | 3 | 1 to buy |
| Level 2 | 2.75 seconds | 4 | 2 |
| Level 3 | 0.5 seconds | 5 | 2 |
The Transformer is at its best exactly where the guide used to say it was obsolete: biomes that demand a lot of one material for bridging, Space above all. If your map generates lopsided, it converts the surplus into the shortage for free.
Slot Machine Wagon
Dash into it and its two wheels spin. Match them and you get wood or iron, rails, a stick of dynamite, or an immediate explosion in your face. Roughly 60% of spins give nothing and about 16% explode.
It is part of the paid Supporter Pack, has to be enabled in the main-menu settings, and in online games only appears if the host has it enabled. Costs 1 bolt to buy, then 2 and 2.
Cannon Wagon
Versus mode only, and it does not upgrade. You load it with a resource, and the resource picks the effect:
- Iron targets one of the enemy players with a small explosion that can kill them. It also mines any trees or rocks caught in the blast, which does them a small favor.
- Wood is fired at the enemy train and speeds it up, and that is how you make them crash.
Since February 2024 a Versus match can start with a different wagon instead, if the host turns off the "Versus: Cannon Wagon only" option under Accessibility.
Engine Progression
Each engine costs 4 bolts, and buying one does four things: it moves you to the next biome, adds a wagon slot, widens the engine's own light radius at night, and resets the train speed to a lower value.
That last one is why you should not rush engines. The advice from record-distance players is the opposite of "upgrade before you advance": hold off until the train is genuinely faster than your team can keep up with, then buy.
Capacities below include the three base wagons, so the starter engine gives you two free slots, not five.
| Engine | Biome Unlocked | Wagon Capacity |
|---|---|---|
| Standard steam engine | Plains | 5 |
| Improved steam engine | Desert | 6 |
| Turbo diesel engine | Snow | 7 |
| Submarine engine | Underwater | 7 (no increase) |
| Heavy nuclear engine | Lava (Hell) | 8 |
| Rocket booster engine | Space | 9 |
| High-tech Mars rover | Mars | 10 |
| Nostalgic space bus engine | Ending | n/a |
The Submarine engine is the one exception to the extra-slot rule, and it is also not one of the six engine purchases that carry you to the ending, since Underwater is a bonus biome you drop into instead of buying your way to.
The final engine requires the orange special bolts from the third section of every biome. There is no lesser ending: without them you never reach the Final Biome at all, and Endless simply keeps generating Mars sections until you crash. Collect every special bolt you encounter, the Underwater one included.
Bridge Materials
The resources required for bridge construction change as you progress. This shift is one of the most common causes of late-game derailments.
| Biomes | Bridge Material |
|---|---|
| Plains, Desert, Snow | Wood |
| Lava (Hell), Space, Mars | Stone |
| Final Biome | None. The track is already laid for you. |
No source states a bridge material for Underwater, so plan for it instead of assuming.
The usual explanation, that wood burns up in lava, only accounts for the Lava biome. Space and Mars have no lava at all and still require stone. Mars needs noticeably less of it than Space, because there is far more solid ground.
A team that arrives in the Lava biome with a Storage wagon full of wood and no iron will derail at the first lava flow. Begin stockpiling in the Snow biome to prepare for the material shift.
In Space and on Mars you have a jetpack, so you can fly between islands and over gaps. That makes the two-tile-wide bridges you needed earlier unnecessary, and you only bridge for the train itself.
The Bolt Economy
Bolts are scarce. Understanding how to earn and spend them efficiently is the difference between a stacked train and a bare-bones deathtrap.
Earning Bolts
You can collect up to three bolts per section, one from each source. Bolts exist in Endless and Sandbox only, and Time and Quick replace them with boxes.
| Source | Details |
|---|---|
| The map bolt | One hidden in each section, often floating where a short detour bridge is needed. Placed by the map seed instead of rolled at runtime, so a given seed always hides it in the same spot. |
| Station mission | One bolt for completing it. Real examples include "prevent any player from getting eliminated" and "use a minimum amount of dynamite". |
| Reaching the station | One bolt for connecting your track to it. |
| Special bolts | One per biome, in the third section. Orange. Worth 2 regular bolts. Required for the final engine. |
Spending Bolts
| Priority | Upgrade | Cost | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | Crafter to Level 2 | 1 | The cheapest upgrade in the game and the biggest early bottleneck. |
| 2nd | Storage to Level 2 | 1 | Also 1 bolt, so both fit in a single 2-bolt station visit. |
| 3rd | Dynamite Wagon | 2 | Clears terrain faster than manual tools. Budget iron for it. |
| 4th | Dynamite to Level 2 then 3 | 2 then 3 | The most expensive line here at 5 bolts, and it cannot start until the station after you buy the wagon. |
| 5th | Ghost Wagon | 2 | Removes the train-as-barrier problem. Needed for Milk Wagon animals. |
| 6th | Tank to Level 2 | 2 | Reduces cooling pressure. |
| 7th | Supercharger | 2 | Pushes critical wagons past their normal cap. Needs a steady iron supply. |
| 8th | Milk Wagon | 2 | Animal buffs. |
| 9th+ | Situational | varies | Light (Snow only, sell before Lava), Compass, Buckinator, Brake. |
That ladder totals about 17 bolts, roughly six clean sections, and every engine on top costs 4 more.
Resist the urge to buy every new wagon early. Fully upgrading one wagon beats leveling two in parallel, which wastes bolts. Many strong players go further and bank everything until the Dynamite wagon appears in the shop, spending early only if the offered wagons are poor.
Wagon Positioning
Where you place wagons on the train matters. Some wagons have range-based effects (Supercharger, Ghost, Light), so their position determines which other wagons benefit.
General rules:
- Swap the Crafter to the front at your first station. It starts at the back of the train, which is the worst place for the wagon you collect rails from. Put the Tank in its old slot: you can cool from the engine or the Tank, so nothing is lost. This is what record-distance layouts do, and it matters most on Extreme where pinches leave you no room to walk the length of the train.
- Place the Supercharger in the center of your train to cover as many wagons as possible, up to six at Level 3.
- Place the Ghost wagon so its radius covers the Milk Wagon and its attached animals.
- Place the Dynamite wagon where players can easily reach it to grab sticks.
- Bring the Tank forward again in Space and on Mars, where its job changes to supplying oxygen.
:::tip Reordering is free Rearranging costs no bolts and no penalty. Once you connect to a station you simply pick a wagon up and drop it on the one you want it to swap with. It costs nothing, so treat your layout as something to revise at every station and not a decision you commit to when buying. :::
Recommended Builds
Each build lists the whole train, base wagons included, so the slot count is the engine capacity you need.
Early Game (Plains through Desert), 4 of 5 slots
| Slot | Wagon | Target Level |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Crafter | Level 2-3 |
| 2 | Storage | Level 2 |
| 3 | Tank | Level 2 |
| 4 | Dynamite | Level 2 |
Fits from the Plains onward with a slot to spare.
Mid Game (Snow through Lava), 7 slots
| Slot | Wagon | Target Level |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Crafter | Level 3 |
| 2 | Supercharger | Level 2 |
| 3 | Storage | Level 3 |
| 4 | Ghost | Level 2 |
| 5 | Dynamite | Level 3 |
| 6 | Milk Wagon | Level 1+ |
| 7 | Tank | Level 3 |
Exactly fills the Turbo diesel engine at Snow. It will not fit in the Desert.
Late Game (Space through Final Biome), 9 slots
| Slot | Wagon | Target Level |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Crafter | Level 3, supercharged |
| 2 | Supercharger | Level 3 |
| 3 | Milk Wagon | Level 1+, within Ghost range |
| 4 | Ghost | Level 3 |
| 5 | Dynamite | Level 3, supercharged |
| 6 | Buckinator | Level 2-3 |
| 7 | Supercharger (2nd) | Level 2-3 |
| 8 | Tank | Level 3 |
| 9 | Compass or Brake | Situational |
Exactly fills the Rocket booster engine at Space. Mars adds one more slot, and that is the ceiling.
These builds are guidelines, not prescriptions. Adapt to team size, the biome lineup, and what the shop offers. Price the late build honestly before committing: a second Supercharger costs 3 bolts, not 2, and its upgrades cost 3 and 4 once the first is at Level 3, so the pair runs to 10 bolts and not 7. Both of them also need iron carried to them by hand all run, since a Collector cannot feed a Supercharger.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best wagon to buy in Unrailed?
The Dynamite wagon, and that is the community's own verdict and not a slogan: the usual advice is to bank bolts and buy nothing until it appears in the shop. Just budget for the fuel, because it consumes one iron per stick and turns one out about every 35 seconds. It has not been a free-running producer since October 2019.
What order should you spend bolts in?
Crafter to Level 2, then Storage to Level 2. Both cost a single bolt, so a team holding two bolts at the first station can take both. After that buy the Dynamite wagon and push it to Level 2 or 3, then add the Ghost wagon, Tank Level 2, a Supercharger, and the Milk Wagon. Remember a wagon you just bought cannot be upgraded until the next station.
How does the Supercharger wagon work?
It raises the effective level of nearby wagons by one, pushing them past their normal Level 3 cap, and covers up to six wagons at Level 3. Multiple Superchargers stack. Three limits matter: they do not boost each other, they do not raise the Milk Wagon's level, and each one burns iron that no other wagon can deliver for it.
Why do animals keep detaching from the Milk Wagon?
Animals follow at a fixed speed and fall behind once the train outruns them. Only Camels and Lava Blobs keep pace with a fast train, and Cows and Walruses stop to rest and can drift off while idle. One-tile pinches make it worse, detaching animals or crushing them when several crowd onto the same tile. Put the Ghost Wagon's radius over the Milk Wagon so attached animals turn ethereal, and build gentle loops instead of straight lines.
When do bridges need stone instead of wood?
Wood works in the Plains, Desert, and Snow. Lava, Space, and Mars all need stone. Only Lava needs it because wood burns, since there is no lava in Space or on Mars. Start stockpiling in the Snow biome so you are not caught out at the first lava flow. No source states a material for Underwater, and the Final Biome needs none because the track is already laid.
What to Read Next
- Biomes and Progression. Bridge materials each biome demands.
- Co-op and Strategy. Splitting wagon duties across a team.
- Achievements. Mechanical mastery achievement requirements.
- Tips and Tricks. Supercharger limits, Buckinator rules, and the real price of the second one.