[QUOTE=Charlie Tan]
I played a railroad game some five years ago -lay rails, build stations, make money from cargo. No violence, just strategy. It was great fun, quite similar to SimCity. I tried googling “railroad tycoon” and the top result was this. It’s not the game I played, but maybe it meets your criteria?
[/QUOTE]
Could you be thinking of “Transport Tycoon” by Chris Sawyer? You built not only railroads, but highway/road systems, harbors, and airports, along with buying trucks, boats and planes. I used to spend entire nights designing and building entire transportation systems.
ETA forgot about the water shipping