For some you this may be a nice addition to TSW2. Rail Roads Online is a train simulator program with focus on 19th century narrow gauge steam railroading in the US. It is early access, but within the next few weeks a very interesting update will come. What you get is a not very big mountain world with a yard, one cute locomotive and a flatcar. In the world you find a number of industries, a logging camp, a saw mill an iron mine and so on. You will need to design and lay all track by yourself to connect the industries. Then you start bringing goods to industries, make some money you can use to buy more rolling stock. Laying track in the mountain area is a real challenge. You need to pay attention to the grades (max 6%) and the curve radius. Spanning large valleys requires to lay bridges. If you do anything wrong, you will face derailments and trains falling into ravines. You can play solo, but it also supports multiplayer with up to 32 people joining you. All switches are manual, all loading must be done manually, coupling and uncoupling must be done manually. There is no signalling. We all miss the route editing tools for TSW2, but to be honest, building a complete route is a huge task and only few people that start doing this will finish it. In Rail Roads Online you only need to lay track and add some facilities like water towers, engine sheds and firewood depots. This also will keep you busy for a while, but it is doable once you get the hang of it. The trains are far less detailed if you compare it to TSW2. Also, there is no simugraph, so physics are less realistic but you definitely will find out your trains have mass when you try to pull them up the mountains. I like it a lot, but it will not be everyones cup of tea. It requires a lot of patience and perseverance. That is why I do not recommend it. I believe the next update will make life much easier.You can lay tracks i simple way and switches will be calculated, there will be a grid to properly align track and so on. The devs also work on more locomotives, they have put 96 narrow gauge steam engines on the roadmap. So let's see what happens. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1696810/RAILROADS_Online/
I purchased at Christmas, and refunded after an hour. No dedicated servers was a huge deal-breaker for something marketed as an online game.
I agree, support for multiplayer is rather limited. I did not buy it for the mutiplayer function primarily, but for the narrow gauge steam and then discovered the challenges of laying all tracks by yourself.
Yh the track-laying was... interesting The game does have some interesting merits, but needs to be baked in the oven a bit longer. I will re-visit more fairly sometime in the future.
Well, a really great review you got there! I've spent a little over 66 hours in total playing RR Online, and I can definitely say that if it's your cup of tea - it's amazing. Track laying is tricky at the start, but as you get more into the game you become used to it. Also unofficial apps/websites help a lot (minizwerg.online, RRO Extended, RO Save Editor...). I've built 2 major worlds alone (have never even used online, as strange as it can sound) with one being half complete and then lost, and the other, current one being around 80% complete (2 industries left) and I love this game. Although really you can't be sure if you'll like it since it is really a specific game. Hopefully tho they will soon increase the fleet of locomotives, since currently there are no locomotives for several types of jobs (for example heavy industrial shunting)
