"The Government owes us lunch money, looks like we will be taking their turret and ammo as compensation."
—Bain offering the heist
Transport: Train Heist (commonly abbrivated as "Train") is a one-day heist included in the Armored Transport DLC. In the Train heist you need to rob a train that is currently stopped on a railway bridge spanning a rocky gorge. There are stairs and natural features on either side of the gorge which allow access to the bridge. You may spawn at either end of the gorge, facing the bridge.
As of Update #57, Transport: Train Heist is available as a contract from Bain on Crime.Net. Update #57 also added new stealth elements, in addition to requiring a certain amount of shells to be secured whereas previously shells were not required to complete the heist.
Prior to Update #57, it was a bonus contract that could only be accessed by finding the blueprints in any of the Transport heists. The chance of finding the blueprints was increased to 50% in Update #31. After the Intel spawned in a truck, players could pick it up to access this bonus-day heist. While the Intel is no longer required to access the heist, it will still spawn.
The train is comprised of three carriages, each with two doors at the front (leading into the front compartment) and two doors at the back (leading into the rear compartment). Between the front and rear compartments there will always be a vault, however until you open one of the doors it is impossible to tell which end has the vault door and which end has a blank black wall (the back wall of the vault).
Train doors can be opened by ECMs (with ECM Overdrive aced), by keycards, by drills, or by saw. There are four civilian workers on the map, two of which carry a keycard. On Overkill or above, one of the card carrying workers is replaced by a worker in orange overalls who never carries a keycard, reducing the number of potentially available keycards to one.
Due to the addition of the mission objective to retrieve bags of shells, it will be necessary to open at least 2 compartments in order to complete the mission (3 on Overkill or above).
Getting through this level stealthily is largely dependent on the number of guards that spawn. Eight or more may spawn, even on Normal, as well as several workers. Note however that the guards stick to relatively stable patrol routes and can, therefore, be avoided rather than killed.
Be very careful while approaching the bridge, as guards and civilians above you can spot you much more easily than those walking around the bottom of the gorge. Be careful to check each worker as you neutralize them, as they can drop one of two (on difficulties below Overkill) keycards necessary for quickly and quietly opening the train car doors. Assuming you are able to suppress the guards and workers without sounding the alarm, you must now open the train cars. As mentioned before, if you have found the keycard(s), one or two of the doors may be opened immediately. Otherwise, either someone with ECM Overdrive aced or a good old-fashioned drill is needed to open each car. Be sure to focus your efforts on a single side of the train.
Once you find a vault, use your hard drive to hack into it, the timelock will eventually be stuck and you need to re-wire the cables to make it work. Once the vault is open, take the loot to the drop point (the truck), take the hard drive too, as you will need it for the other vault.
As each train car will contain a vault, if you open a door and find only a blank black wall, the next door along the train must contain the vault. Conversely, if you have already found the vault door for a given train car, opening the second compartment of that car is a waste of time and resources.
As long as you stay undetected, it will be possible to check the inner vaults via a camera station in front of each vault door. This way you can find out which vault contains the sentry, which gives an advantage in choosing the order in which the vaults should be opened. Opening the turret car first should be considered, as the loot pickup will only arrive when the turret is disassembled into parts. Therefore, bags can begin to be secured immediately rather than packing the shells and then waiting for the turret vault to open.
As soon as the alarm is raised, Bain will send in Bile to deliver two thermal drills. These will be dropped in semi-random locations on the map. Players should move them to any available vaults and start drilling immediately.
The security cameras within the vaults will be deactivated, making it impossible to know which vault contains the turret, so players should just open any vaults they come across until the turret is found.
If possible, keep the doors on the lumberyard-side of the train closed for as long as possible - snipers will continually spawn at the end of the valley with sightlines directly into all the compartments.
Care should be taken to protect the drills, which may become a case of simply defending the very entrance to a train car during a protracted assault wave.
Strategy
Whether the plan is to stealth or go loud, you and the other players should make sure to have a dependable Plan B. Due to the location, everyone on the team could easily be surrounded and overwhelmed.
Players can saw through the train doors with the OVE9000 Saw. However, while this may seem like a quick, easy way to bypass the doors, it will more than often alert the nearby patrolling NPCs on stealth. It is best to use ECM jammers on stealth to mitigate the risk of being spotted as NPCs can easily spot a drill from a considerable distance.
Using the Even More Silent Saw Trick will mitigate this issue. Note, however, the original method for executing this trick has been patched as of update 240.3, albeit a variant of it can still be used.
It is highly recommend to have a player use a sniper rifle with a Theia magnified scope or High Value Target aced, to spot enemies. The open nature of the heist can make it very difficult to avoid guards and civilians, let alone, deal with them if alerted.
It is most advisable to open only the door on one side of the 3 train cars, as opening the other from the outside may waste a precious keycard/ECM Jammer and will also give law enforcers more entry points to swarm in if the heist goes loud.
With the new truck loot drop introduced in update 57, it is possible for a drop point to appear on either side of the train. If you find the turret on the first vault, try to wait it out and confirm the drop point before searching for other vaults as opening the doors on the other side will greatly increase time and risk taken to deliver the shells, even with the use of zip-lines.
It is best to use the deployable zip-lines near the train. Carrying the loot from across the map is impractical and risky.
Nevertheless, this tactic is not entirely foolproof, as waiting near one just to send off a loot bag can take too long, and the heavy loot can make it hard to avoid NPCs. Also, on loud, the law enforcement can potentially take them after they are dropped from a zip-line.
If you are going to secure all shells as well, wait until all shells are bagged and are at the escape. After you secure the three turret parts, then you will just have to pick up and throw shells a number of times.
Note that on Mayhem+, it is not optional to go after the shell bags; all 20 shell bags must be secured to escape.
After the boat arrives, an invisible wall will block the bags from being thrown past the boat. If the turret parts are thrown into the water before the boat arrives, they will respawn in the loading area by the building with a forklift.
The same applies if players attempt to load shell bags before all three turret parts are secured.
Variations
The location of the vaults can vary, as can the amount of time needed for each time lock.
Timelocks may be abruptly stopped by Bain being shut out of the system. One of the four power boxes around the train will need to be re-wired to resume the timelock. The number of times this can happen may vary, and may even not happen at all on some timelocks.
Guards may or may not have flashlights on, which will make them easier to spot.
The crew may arrive at two possible locations:
The waterside where the boat pick-up arrives.
Behind the fences in front of the buildings located close to the train carts.
The loot must either be secured by a boat arriving at the waterside, or a pick-up truck arriving behind a fence next to the buildings.
The location of the escape and the zipline(s) depend on the vehicle used to extract the loot.
The escapes will usually be at the same locations as the starting points, at the waterside next to the boat, or behind the fences in front of the buildings. However, it is possible for the escape location to be on the opposite side.
Mayhem+ Changes
11 guards patrol the entire area: three in the gorge under the train, three at the lumberyard, and five patrolling around the train itself.
Only one out of four civilians will carry a keycard. (Keycards only spawn on the red-helmeted workers.)
All shell bags must be secured in order to escape.
The FBI Files
Civilian trains are often authorised to carry sensitive military equipment, providing they can provide the appropriate security. This train was stopped by hacked signal boxes. It was shipping a prototype RC1 automated turret.
My Notes: If the army brass doesn’t want to lose more of its experimental ordnance, it needs to stop handing it over to these civilian outfits. Who the hell knows what else Bain might be picking up?
Bugs
Even if all three vaults are already open when the alarm is triggered, Bain will still send Bile with two Thermal Drills, despite them no longer being needed.
Civilians may sometimes get stuck in certain spots of the map and be immune to shouting down. Cops will also not attempt to rescue them, resulting in them being stuck there for the duration of the heist. The only way to get them unstuck is to kill them.
Guards standing close to the train track beams may unnaturally slide away if killed depending on how they fall, leaving their bodies more exposed.
It is possible to freeze a guard by placing an unsilenced drill, and then opening the train door by way of an ECM jammer or keycard once he starts making his way over to check it. Once frozen, said guard will never move for the duration of the heist.
In addition, the boxes containing the sentry shells shows the TF2 logo and a top hat on them, with said hat being a reference to TF2's famous cosmetic headwears. The codename, RC1, might also be a reference to Radigan Conagher, a character in the TF2 comics and grandfather of Dell Conagher; the BLU Engineer.
It could also be a reference to its real world usage in software development. RC1 is an abbreviation of "Release Candidate 1", and is used for testing software with beta testers. This makes sense even in the world of Payday 2, as the Sentry is deemed "Experimental" by Bain, typical hallmarks of something being in "Release Candidate" status.
The train wagons themselves have TF_Wagon written on the sides of them. This is a reference to Source, the engine TF2 is built on. Many naming schemes in Source use prefixes, such as for maps, objects, and scripts, with "TF" being an obvious nod to Team Fortress, and a valid prefix used to differentiate assets between TF2 and other Source engine games.
The cut Death Wish Train achievement.
There was a different Death Wish achievement for the Train heist (Modern Train Robbers) originally, though it was removed due to a bug that originally caused the heist to be unable to be completed on this difficulty. It has returned in Update #78, however, with a different name and icon.
In a building near the bridge, there are two red toolboxes presumably made of metal, labeled "Solid Gear," a possible reference to the Metal Gear Solid franchise.
The achievement "We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat" is a reference to a memorable line in the movie Jaws.
On March 13 of 2015, with Update #57, Train was turned into a standalone heist rather than being a Transport bonus, along with the release of Cook Off during the Spring Break.
Before Update #57 the amount of turret shells in each of the two train cars with shells was 20. Since Update #57 there are only 10 shells per car and the number of shells required for the achievement We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat was scaled accordingly to 20.
Also since Update #57 the shells no longer explode on heavy impact, and thus can be handled much easier, but can no longer be used as makeshift grenades either.
Despite the heist receiving a significant update, Bain's voice lines apparently haven't, as he still warns players to handle the shells with 'great care' despite them not being able to explode anymore. He also seems to implore players to get the shells out if they can, even though those are only mandatory on Mayhem+ difficulty.
Before Update #67 Train was the only heist (aside from Escapes) not required for the Death Wish mask. Since that patch, however, it's required for both the mask, as well as the Long-Term Relationship achievement.
Even though the heist takes place during the day, all the guards patrolling the valley beneath the train wear flashlights (like the guards in Framing Frame day 3 and Firestarter day 2).
At the end of the train at the warehouse, there is a continuation of the train cars that the players can't access.
Gallery
The Turret in the Vault
The container in the Train heist, labeled "Solid Gear"
One of the train cars' bags of "Shells" ammunition
