Quite understandably, the forums here skew towards US and UK routes and locos. My TSC build is exclusively German and Austrian. After emptying my wallet on payware, I’ve spent the last couple of weeks installing assets and freeware routes from rail-sim.de. The community there has made routes whose quality exceeds anything DTG or RSSLO has done. In particular I highly recommend Rodachtalbahn, Project Freiberg, and Bremen-Bremerhaven. In addition the community has made excellent facelifts to DTG routes including Hanover-Hamburg and Munich-Garmisch. The trick is that since each freeware route relies on dozens of payware and freeware assets, it takes a lot of effort to get these installed. The language barrier did not help. I certainly wore out Google Translate. There are also plenty of scenarios available on rail-sim.de but they all seem to require very specific loco and rolling stock assets from expensive third party vendors. Of course, all the documentation and screen prompts are in German. In any event, I am hoping that fellow fans of German rail can share best practices, favorite freeware, good deals on payware, etc. My suggestions below: Power (add-on): VirtualRailroads 101, 112, 103 (available from Steam under the “TS Pro” brand, or directly from VR), RSSLO ÖBB 4023, TSG BR 425 Routes: can’t really go wrong with anything from the past 5 years but my favorites are Berlin-Leipzig, Munster-Bremen (includes VR’s BR145), Black Forest (Konstanz-Hausach) (includes VR’s BR 111 and cab car), Salzburg-Rosenheim, Passau-Regunsburg, Semmeringbahn, S-Bahn Rhein Main (includes RWA’s 423), Frankfurt High Speed (includes Valero ICE3 BR407). All routes produced by RSSLO (set in Austria and southern Germany) are well done but can get repetitive. Subscribe to their newsletter for flash sales. Workshop scenario creators: GeipDie, blackforestdriver, Coasty, MaTT Freeware routes: Rodachtalbahn Plus, Bremerhaven-Bremen, Project Freiberg. (The latter is particularly stunning - it’s basically TSW’s Tharandter Rampe set in 1980s DDR with lots of industrial branch lines and East German signage.) Freeware upgrades: Hamburg-Hannover Deluxe, Munich-Garmisch Deluxe, Nuremberg-Regensburg upgrade)
Fellow non-german German/Austrian route obsessive here. Though i live in Denmark, and often travel in both countries. The fascinating thing, for me, is the sequrity systems. Driving with pzb is a very engaging experience. You definately should check out the latest version of the Rodachtalbahn. Every bit as stunning as Hausach Konstanz. I recommend registering at rail-sim.de and perhaps also Railworks Austria. Be prepared for a little bit of resistance to english, not all of them speak it well. I learned to be persistent and have very much been accepted, and in time i also began contributing to the freeware scene.
Nice to meet you, Kim - and I totally agree, working with PZB and German signaling is both a joy and a challenge.
I can recommend some great freeware locos on the Railworks Austria forum. Although RSSLO routes are scenery wise probably not the best, they really grab the Austrian atmosphere. And there are plenty of them!
I like the combined routes such as Salzburg - Ljubljana https://www.rsslo.com/product/combine_ljubljana_salzburg/ Combine four routes into one, long about 365km.
I'd recommend SAD's Brennitzer Linienstern and IKB3 payware routes (with some caveats, mainly tracklaying.) For freeware I can't recommend S-Bahn Bad Altburg or Nachteburg-Rannstadt highly enough, they're both fictional modern routes in the former east germany and are just a joy to play and are excellent for scenario creation as well. Another freeware recommendation is Wetteraunetz 90 which is a branch line network in 90s west germany. Oh and for locomotives the k-trains TRAXX and Vectron are both excellent, they're some of the most advanced locomotives that exist in the simulator (that said they do have some bugs which are unlikely to be fixed but I'd argue the good vastly outweighs the bad)
