OpenTTD | Building bridges

Bridges are an extremely useful tool when you encounter obstacles like valleys, competitor tracks, rivers or even your own tracks. Many advanced train junctions and station designs can be constructed that wouldn't cause traffic jams or make opposite direction tracks cross.

In this tutorial you can learn how to build (place, construct), position railway and road bridges. You can also learn about building and placing bridges above uneven land.

1 How do I build bridges?

How do I build bridges?

This section will focus on building railway bridges. There is no real difference between building railway and road bridges - the method is completely the same.

A basic bridge

First of all, you must open the Railway construction toolbar - click the railway build button on the menu bar to display the railway construction toolbar.
Then select the Bridge building tool:

Selecting Bridge tool
Now look for the place you want to build your bridge. The gray line below shows a place we have chosen to build a bridge.

A place to build a bridge
Place your mouse where you want to start your bridge (it does not matter whether you have already built railway next to it or not). For now this is the sloped square right next to the water.

Placing mouse at the starting point of the bridge
Now click and drag the mouse to the ending point of the bridge. For now, this is across the small river (sloped square next to water). Let go of the mouse and a new window will pop up.

Choosing an ending point of the bridge
Now you have to choose the type of bridge you wish to build. The more expensive the bridge, the faster the trains will be able to go over it. Scroll down the list to see more types. Select the one you want.

Choosing bridge type
Once you have clicked the type of bridge you want to build, it will be placed at your chosen location.

Newly placed bridge

Different shapes & sizes

Following steps in basic Bridge section you can build bridges of different lengths and types.

See Bridge types for a full list of what bridges you can build.

Several bridges

You can also place bridges above deeper valleys if you make sure the bridge starts and ends at the same height on the sloped squares.

A higher bridge

Generally, you may build bridges above sloped land which is sloped towards the direction of the bridge.

A bridge over uneven land

Note: If the land above the bridge is sloped in some other direction, you will not be able to place a bridge. You will either need to landscape the valley or run the tracks through the valley without using a bridge.

Bridges are very useful when it comes to passing competitor's tracks (or roads).

Bridges over competitor's tracks

The bridges can even be placed so that the starting and ending points differ by height (no more than 1 level). This can be useful in many situations.

Lowered and Raised bridges

Road bridges are the same

There is no real difference between road and railway bridges, so read the Basic Bridge section to learn how to build a railway bridge and follow the same steps for a road bridge only using Road Bridge tool.

Road bridges are useful to pass over the railway. And though you can construct level crossings, there is a chance a fast coming train will crash into your truck or bus. The train won't be damaged by this, but you will have to build a new truck. So to avoid this a road bridge may be used. The downside is that the truck slows down while climbing the bridge. However it will also speed up when driving down at the other end.

To build road bridges, open the Road Construction Toolbar and select the Road Bridge tool: