I believe this has been posted somewhere before but in light of the excellent series of lineside industry posts here, I just want to ask why DTG didn't take full advantage of all the industrial sidings that have already been modeled, and make more and different timetable services related to these industries - shunting, raw material delivery etc. IMO the advantage of freight services over passenger is that we can design all kinds of different services instead of sticking to a timetable. I am not saying that there are no such services, but it might be better if such services take place more often. Now most services are just deliver xxx from A to B and it is kinda repetitive after a while, especially when those A and B are the same across many services. I totally understand that random events, while able to add much more variation and excitement to the game, might not be the easiest to make due to the logistics and disruption of the whole timetable, but even pre-setting different destinations to the same kind of service in schedule can easily add more variation into the game. I will take CJP as an example: there are many lineside industries in CJP but most of them are empty. At the same time, most, if not all, services are Barstow - Victorville, Victorville - San Bernardino, and vice versa (sometimes service ends/starts at summit) Would it be possible to just make services that deliver different materials from the big hub like Barstow or San Bernardino to different industries, and make a more complicated shunting service at the industry? Moreover, there are also passing sidings along the line that will allow slower services to stop and make way for express trains. In terms of gameplay, that also keeps the duration of a service in a reasonable length.
Some industries are used by different freight locomotives not in game. For example in some german routes, there are lineside industries and lines not used simply cuz the right train isn't in game, whether it be run by a diesel loco or freight loco or shunter. Or it's actually out of bounds and not part of the route or not used at all in current times.
For what would be such a huge increase in playability for our game, I think we can accept a little less than 100% realism. In fact, we do.
