The U.S. focus

[ihavenonamenoreallyidont]

Loads of cracking videos, thanks for posting those.

[lateagain]

Loads of cracking videos, thanks for posting those.

Yes indeed and point well made about US variety as well With all the development in ten years of MSTS that variety has not been explored or exploited enough IMHO so with the newer sim it all bears looking at? There's also been a reluctance until recently to revisit routes already done or partially done in MSTS that means that many interesting routes do not exploit the current standards achieved in that sim. It would be a big mistake to follow that route in RW ?

There are always those (with short attention spans? ) who hanker after the new all the time, but building on the foundations of already existing stuff by expanding routes, adding stock etc. makes for an alternative "NEW" too.

As I read it the RS team will be updating existing stuff to the latest 2012 features? That will take time but surely that's time well spent?

Geoff

[chrisiveson]

If you like making lots of noise

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPhQiRlH ... re=related

Chris.

[danny3]

A common mistake of thinking is that the U.S. has the NEC and 5,000 `boring' freight routes and nothing else.

We have all sorts of lines.

DMU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DByGZF3Q ... re=related

A very small section of that is in the NEC though, assuming that is the river line from Trenton?, although not that much to be useful though!

[jan38]

I am from Holland (Netherlands) and none of the dutch trains are represented in any way, except maybe for class 66 diesel, since we have those too.
Also in the past we had some uk locs in holland. in holland it was called class 1500.
For more info see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Class_1500
We are a small country, yes, but we have a massive railway infrastructure and once we had a electric loco (class 1200) that was designed by americans basically.

Anyway, I don't mind. I love the english and U.S. tracks very much, very beautiful and everything.
And to me, it seems logical that UK trains/routes where represented first, since the game developers and artists are mainly from England and the initial fanbase was also from England.
The U.S. representation to be next in line is also logical to me, America is just a very huge country and lots of railfanners and rail hobbyists are present.
I usually look up some trains on youtube from americans and just to see those huge freight trains is absolutely lovely to see and hear.

So, all in all I'm very pleased to see any content and I purchased also the horseshoe and most of the american locs including Big Boy (wow, that is one big loc).
In my country, people still use MSTS more than TS2012 and dutch trains and tracks are available in MSTS.
But I like TS2012 very much, better graphics and sound. And someday there will be some dutch content, I hope. If not, I still enjoy TS2012 very much.

Anyway, I love the U.S. content and also the U.K and German. I have certainly no problems about that.
At the same time it is a learning curve for me to get to know U.S. and U.K. trains and to find out all I can about them.

[Kariban]

A common mistake of thinking is that the U.S. has the NEC and 5,000 `boring' freight routes and nothing else.

Shortlines are something we don't have at all in the UK ( not sure about Europe either ), and they're ideal for simming. Not sure I'd call a 150odd mile line a "short line" personally "Class 3" perhaps? the nearest thing the UK has would be a Light Railway, and I'm pretty sure there's none of those left running for pure commercial reasons.

[Kromaatikse]

There are a number of UK lines running under the Light Railways Act - not least the Welsh Highland Railway (ie. Porthmadog to Caernarvon) which is virtually brand-new, though operating mostly on a series of historic alignments and using largely steam traction. I believe that some preserved railways operate as full railways but taking advantage of "grandfather" inertia, while others operate under the Light Railways Act.

One major feature of the Act is a maximum speed limit of 25mph, which is quite plenty for 2-foot gauge (and one of the initial justifications for it) - and on standard gauge, serves as an excuse to make a necessarily short journey last longer.

They are regulated differently from the national network as a result, and this sometimes results in different methods of operation becoming viable. It also means that a preserved railway can keep more historically accurate features without them being subsumed by modern technology - the latter being very necessary at 90+mph, but not at all at 25mph. Most preserved railways keep a lot of infrastructure from the steam age, however, and carry on using practices designed for a full-scale railway even if they are a little out of date.

The Light Railways Act itself is fairly old, but wasn't used to much effect when it was new because nearly all of the railway building that was ever needed was already done. Most of the original Light Railways no longer exist - I'm not entirely sure whether *any* have survived, but one or two might have done.

[NeutronIC]

jan38: Have you seen http://www.dutchrail.eu ?

Video of a dutch level crossing prototype in railworks:

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I think fopix3d does dutch stuff too : http://fopix3d.blogspot.com/

I'm sure I remember seeing a screenshot of a double decker NS train in RailWorks too, but blowed if i can find it now!

So while dutch users are perhaps not the best supported in RailWorks, looks like there's a few people putting stuff out there so it will grow with time.

Matt.

[Kariban]

The WHR is still a recreation of the original WHR/NWNGR for historical/recreational purposes rather than to fill an economic need to transport people between Portmadog and Canaervon... I can't think of anywhere operating under a LRO ( I guess the equivalent is some Transport & Works order nowadays, would that mean new applications aren't necessarily limited to 25mph? ) that is purely filling an economic need. Things might be different if our rail freight operations were anything like the US, but despite the ridiculous fuel prices here road is still king in that respect - and I'm not sure we even have capacity for regional wagonload operations. Of course we also don't have all that much freight to move.

The K&ESR is an original light railway in the sense that it has always operated under the act.

[TransportSteve]

As is usual with any forum a few voices appear to make a lot of noise.

Although English born (of Welsh descent) I do appreciate the US railroad scene and I do like the raw power of the US locos.

What I would like to see for Railworks is the GE AC6000 that BHP mining use in Australia.

Well said John I agree with everything above.

Having been on holiday to Australia, Scandinavia, Canada, USA, Africa, India and China, as well as virtually every country in Europe, and travelled on all of their train systems, I am quite happy with what RS.com have offered us in the 2 years since Railworks was first released. As many of you know I'm an ex-railwayman, and avid train traveller around the world, fortunately, I have downloaded virtually every route that has been created so far in our game, especially by 3rd party builders and thoroughly enjoyed playing on them, to replicate my vacations in the past.
Apart from RS.Com's default and Payware content, we must remember that our Railsimming friends from Russia and China have chipped in with fabulous locomotives and rolling stock models and coupled to the maps built and freely available from websites in Spain, Italy, France, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, China, USA, etc, and locomotive repainters from many other countries, we have a fairly good selection of content, however, it has been mentioned before, that many of us would like to see more foreign stuff being made available, especially from some Eastern European countries and possibly Australia, South Africa, Japan, South America, etc. I would think that RS.com have many projects in the melting pot, we will all have to wait and see what they come up with in the next few years, but, I'm sure they appreciate that many of us like trains from other parts of the world and will endeavour to accomodate folks accordingly in the years to come.

Cheerz. Transport Steve.

[BenBlairL]

VIA Rail still has some of these preserved.

I think Cn has a couple in use as MOW equipment too.

TRE still has 13 of them in active service.

[briyeo1950]

I wonder if anyone else can remember the old US TV series Casey Jones with Alane Hale Jnr.
My earliest exposure to US Steam

[stephenholmes]

Hi Brian
I can it was compulsory viewing in our household
Kind regards Stephen

[briyeo1950]

Hi Brian
I can it was compulsory viewing in our household
Kind regards Stephen

I bet you can still sing the theme song too Stephen

Casey Jones
Steamin' and rollin'
Casey Jones
You never have to guess
When you hear the tootin' of the whistle
It's Casey at the throttle of the Cannonball Express

[stephenholmes]

Hello Brian
Being as we've already had two days of Rain
I'll refrain from singing "Casey Jones"
Kind regards Stephen