How to Create Train Tracks Puzzles in Puzzle Maker Pro

Summary:
Train Tracks puzzles are created in Puzzle Maker Pro by choosing a grid size and difficulty, generating, and exporting the puzzle with its matching solution. This tutorial shows how to make your first puzzle, add optional custom track art, and export publish-ready pages.

Overview

Train Tracks (also called Rails) is a path-logic puzzle. This tutorial walks through creating one in Puzzle Maker Pro, from opening the module to exporting a print-ready puzzle and solution. The module uses the same Settings / Tiles / Style / Titles layout as every Puzzle Maker Pro puzzle, so if you have used another module the flow will feel familiar. New to the puzzle itself? Read How Train Tracks Puzzles Work first.

Required Modules

Puzzle Maker Pro – Train Tracks
Puzzle Maker Pro – Train Tracks Productivity Edition, required only for Time Saver, batch creation, JSON, HTML output, and Puzzle Slides

A free demo of every module is available, so you can try Train Tracks before buying.

Preparation

No word lists or images are needed. For your first puzzle, an 8×8 grid at Medium difficulty is a comfortable starting point. Each puzzle is generated guess-free with exactly one solution.

Choose the Main Settings

On the Settings tab, set the options that define the puzzle:

Grid size: the square board, from 4×4 to 15×15 (default 8). Larger grids give longer tracks and take more time to solve; smaller grids work well for beginner collections.
Difficulty: Easy, Medium, Hard, or Expert. Lower difficulty prints more starting track pieces as hints; higher difficulty reveals fewer and packs the board with more track.
Allow guessing (harder): off by default, so every board is solvable by logic alone. Turn it on to reveal the fewest possible hints — the board still has exactly one solution, but reaching it may need a “what-if” guess. Combine it with Expert for the hardest puzzles.

Generate and Preview

Set the Quantity to 1 while you dial in the size and look, then generate a preview. Each puzzle is unique, and Puzzle Maker Pro builds the matching solution at the same time. When the look is right, raise the Quantity and the same settings produce a whole batch of unique puzzles — single and batch are the same workflow, just a different number.

The track simply reaches the left edge (entry) and the bottom edge (exit); there are no arrows, exactly like printed Rails puzzles. The solution image shows the completed track — there is no separate “show solution” toggle, because the track is the answer.

Add Custom Track Art (optional)

By default Puzzle Maker Pro draws clean rails-and-ties tiles for you. To give a book its own look, open the Tiles tab and supply your own art:

You provide just two base images — a Straight (horizontal) piece and a Curve (N–E) piece. Puzzle Maker Pro rotates each one into all the orientations it needs (the four curves and both straights), so you never draw six separate tiles.
Leave a slot empty to keep the built-in default for that piece — supplying two images, or none, is all that is ever needed.
The Create your custom track images here link opens a tool that generates correctly sized base images you can drop straight in.

Style the Puzzle

Train Tracks uses the shared style panel on the Style tab — canvas colour, cell background, the grid line (cell border), the thick play-area frame (puzzle border), and the clue-number font. There are no solution-line or wall controls, because the track itself is drawn from the tile images rather than as a line. A crop option trims the outer margin for a tight board. For full styling guidance use the shared styling tutorial linked below rather than repeating it here.

Set the Title

On the Titles tab, choose a Smart Title. A Smart Title fills in the puzzle’s own details automatically, so every page in a batch is labelled correctly without retyping. Train Tracks offers three formulas — Grid Size, Grid Size + Difficulty, and Difficulty — each available with and without the “Train Tracks” name. The examples below are for an 8×8 Medium puzzle:

Train Tracks Grid Size Difficulty — e.g. “Train Tracks 8×8 Medium”
Train Tracks Grid Size — e.g. “Train Tracks 8×8”
Train Tracks Difficulty — e.g. “Train Tracks Medium”
Grid Size Difficulty — e.g. “8×8 Medium”
Grid Size — e.g. “8×8”
Difficulty — e.g. “Medium”
Custom — your own title text, used exactly as typed

The same options are available for the puzzle Description (the default reads “Draw one continuous train track from the entry in the left column to the exit in the bottom row. The numbers say how many track pieces are in each row and column.”). Smart Titles works the same way in every module — see the Smart Titles tutorial for how it works.

Export Your Puzzle

Export the puzzle and its solution as PNG, JPG, SVG, or PDF for worksheets and books. With Productivity Edition you can also export JSON and HTML output (exported HTML plus a ZIP for the BookPublisherTools WordPress plugin) for interactive web play, and Puzzle Slides — an interactive PowerPoint where the solver drags the six track tiles into place. Train Tracks does not use Interactive PDF.

Outcome

You can now create individual Train Tracks puzzles with matching solutions, give them custom track art, and export them for print or web. To produce a whole book of unique puzzles from saved settings, use Time Saver, and assemble finished or mixed books in Puzzle Book Studio (Productivity Edition).

To style the puzzle, set up Smart Titles, batch with Time Saver, or build books, use the shared tutorials below rather than repeating those steps here.