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The trains themselves, owned not by the operators that run them but by leasing companies. A ROSCO (rolling-stock leasing company) buys the fleet and leases each unit, often fully maintained, to a train operator for a lease rate on every available train, for decades. The same model appears as an availability PPP, where a government pays for trains kept fit for service. Pick a real lessor below and work through the depot, the model and a working returns model.
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Drag the sliders to see what earns the money: the size of the fleet, the lease rate on each unit, and how much of it is available for service. How many passengers ride is beside the point.
Rolling stock is the asset layer of rail, the trains and railcars themselves, owned not by the operators that run them but by a leasing company. The business is a contracted leasing annuity: the lessor buys the fleet once, then earns a lease rate per unit per year, paid for so long as each unit is available for service, over an asset that lasts 30-40 years. There are two flavours. An operating lease (a classic ROSCO like Angel Trains, or a railcar lessor like GATX) leases the fleet at market rates and carries the residual-value risk (what the trains are worth and re-leasable for when the first lease ends), which makes it a little more cyclical and a little higher-returning. An availability PPP (Lima, Sydney, Riyadh) is the same model with the risk stripped out: a government pays a contracted, indexed payment for trains kept fit for service, with no demand risk and no residual exposure: a pure, core-infrastructure annuity. A finance lease (CRRC) goes further still, leaving maintenance with the lessee for a thin, high-margin financing spread. Everything turns on the fleet, the lease rate and the availability rather than on the passengers.
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See also the rolling-stock simulator, and the Cash-flow & DCF model.