Hi Dovetail team and community, I’ve noticed a lot of players, including myself, have shown interest in seeing light rail or tram systems in Train Sim World. Since Dovetail has talked about wanting to bring more players into the game and expand its variety, I wanted to share why I think light rail could be a big benefit to the game. Why It Would Be Valuable: Fresh Gameplay Variety: Right now, the game does an amazing job with heavy rail—commuter, passenger, and freight. But light rail brings a completely different style of operations—street running, tight curves, frequent stops, urban signaling systems, shared roadways with traffic, etc. This would add new challenges and a fresh experience for long-time players. Appeals to a Wider Audience: A lot of younger or casual rail fans are familiar with trams and city light rail systems more than freight or long-distance trains. Including these could attract new players who love city transit like LRT, metro, and streetcars. Realism & Modern Transit Representation: Modern transportation isn’t only heavy rail. Cities all around the world—like Toronto, San Diego, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Melbourne, Berlin, and Manchester—depend on light rail. Bringing those systems into TSW would reflect today’s real-world rail environment more completely. Creative Route Possibilities: Light rail opens up so many iconic routes: San Diego Trolley, Portland MAX, Los Angeles Metro, Salt Lake City Traxx, Docklands Light Railway, Manchester Metrolink, Netherlands tram networks, German Stadtbahn systems, etc. These would fit perfectly into the existing TSW engine, especially with pedestrian environments, AI cars, and city detail already improving in recent releases. Community Demand: There have been repeated requests (at least from I've seen) from players over time for light rail content. Many of us are looking for more urban-style operations, shorter routes, and more “up-close” city-level immersion. Adding light rail would show the community that these requests are being heard. Closing Thoughts: I fully understand it may take more work—different signalling, street-level assets, pedestrians, vehicle interaction, licensing, etc. Yes I completely understand that. But even one light rail route or DLC would be a huge step and could test the interest level while expanding what TSW is capable of going long ways into the future of the game. Thank you for maybe even remotely considering this and for all the work you continue to put into the game. It goes unnoticed and I’m sharing this out of passion for Train Sim World and the hope of seeing it grow into an even more diverse rail simulation.
Vintage Blackpool for me, before the Flexities and corrupting the Heritage fleet with pantographs, door pods and fibreglass lifeguards.
Ah yes give them more reason to kill freight /j Also just keep in mind the community has been requesting the class 55 and 91 for years and yet haven’t seen the light of day lol, so I wouldn’t have high hopes
Doesn't DTG already have a Tram game in the works? Outside of that there are a slew of Tram/Light Rail/Bus ("City Transport" games out there crowding that market. TSW pretty much has the intercity market to itself, so I'm not sure why they'd stop focusing on that to focus on a saturated market everyone else is doing.
I'm from The Netherlands and I would love to see the complete metro subway route of Rotterdam. This lightrail system has a lot of stations and variarity of landscape. Most of the routes are above ground. On some lines the metro trains has to switch from 3th rail to overhead wires and have to raise the pantograph. Rollingstock: MG2 (Bombardier), this rolling stock together with the SG2 will retire in 2030, because the RET will order new longer metro trains. SG2 (Bombardier), 3th rail and pantograph RSG3 (Bombardier) Rotterdam - The Hague, 3th rail and pantograph Between Rotterdam and The Hague, the metro and the trams of The Hague, that is also part of the Randstadrail, will share the same track. From there the stations have different floor levels. On one side the platform is low for the tram and the other side the platform is high for the metro. SG3 (Bombardier), 3th rail and pantograph HSG3 (Bombardier) Rotterdam - Hoek Van Holland, 3th rail and pantograph At metrostation Hoek Van Holland Strand, you will just walk out of the station directly at the beach into the sea. In the photo below you can see the North Sea RET subway map Metro Spijkenisse accident
Not AFAIK. There was CTS which they were publishing on behalf of the developer, who subsequently moved on.
I would love trams, but then DTG would have to work on their "impression of speed", dunno how else to describe it... in TSW, when doing like 80 or so kph, it feels slow AF, as if you were crawling, when IRL those are pretty quick, even though it is pretty much faster road traffic speed... and anyone who has ridden trams can atest that during those bursts of speed aka around 30-40 kph or on dedicated tracks even 60+ kph, those feel pretty fast, almost as 120+ in this game because as it is atm, tram speeds would feel super slow when IRL they dont seem that way, unless the tram goes through a junction, bend or changes tracks
