A railfan from US here. I have all the US route and loco DLCs and plenty of DLCs from Germany and UK, and am stunned by the number of layers in UK and (particularly) German routes. Saw people complaining about the new UK route including only one loco... Gotta say it is the daily life of US railfans. The most recent couple of routes all come with one new loco and one reused loco(SMH, CJP, HSC... Also yes, reused SD38/40-2 everywhere) If I remember correctly, the most recent addon that comes with more than 1 new loco is NWP, but it's a commuter route and I don't think more layers can be added into that - which makes me wonder why it is so hard for the US routes to have more layers... Surely BNSF has SD70s and UP has ES44s. Is it because licensing issues, but DTG has already been granted the licensing from BNSF, UP, CSX and NS, no?
Because US routes simply seem to be done with less care - especially US freight routes. Bad scenery, 80% reused rolling stock and worse ideas to begin with. It's really shown by their 3-loco add-on with the RHTT, Dispolok 182 and Santa Fe F7. The UK gets an RHTT train that gives unique gameplay and can be used on any future UK route basically. The Dispolok while low quality, but looks interesting and again, can be used on any german route. The US? Oh they get a locomotive that doesn't even fits the route it put on - a locomotive from the '50s surrounded by modern rolling stock on a modern route and it problably will not be used anywhere else, unless they do a 50/60s route in the future and let it layer in. Also as far as I know, the red variant is mostly for passenger services, yet they used it for freight. But anyway, yes, the US really deserves more variety. If the UK and Germany can get layers across different routes, then why not the US? Cajon Pass could have a layer for the UP traffic from Sherman Hill, and vice versa. I'm also pretty sure there could be more simple substitutions as well, especially between routes with the same operator.
It's cuz every operator has their own version of the same train. It's not just a livery change. There are internal and external modeling differences dtg would have to make from scratch. So a bnsf sd70 would have differences compared to a up one. It might be small but dtg would still have to make changes to the model and the livery Another thing about US content which Matt described in another thread is that it's really hard to get reference material especially for freight. They don't have a lot of contacts or experts in the US. Dtg aren't based in the US. Class 1 railroads don't allow reference trips. The operators that run the short length routes don't want to be in game. Museums are another thing but also very limited since you can't really move the train to record the train at high speeds for example. Lots of operators in the passenger side don't want to be in tsw either, they weren't in tsc either.
Really? I have never seen them yet. Though I have not driven much on Cajon Pass, so maybe that's why.
They are only on the Palmdale Cutoff and only a handful appear, the best service to see one is the service that starts at Summit in the morning, there is a UP train heading down Grade at the same time.
