I would guide you to the October average for each year, this is the month after their major update. There's a spike every year where the game moves up a revision and people take notice. If the game didn't have this change would there be such a spike? There isn't the same sort of spike around the various sales I notice...
The meaning of my questions about TS1 was all about Steam or intended to be anyway. If TS1 could be updated then you have steam there already to go but it seems that isn't the way to go. I thought it was obvious the way I was going but next time I'll make sure to spell it out for your benefit, OK?
I do think that N&W is a leading candidate, since DTG already have a licensing deal with NS, and there are some preserved N&W locos in existence. No 611 actively does railtours, and so would be available to study and record in action; it would be popular with a lot of players too as a 110-mph express engine (also, as a streamliner the visual 3D modeling would be a bit easier!). And for freight there are a couple of preserved G-class 2-8-0s (the real freight workhorses of the steam era, not the big articulated glamour girls). As much as doing a Class A or Y would be awesome, the problems are the same as doing a Big Boy or Challenger: too complicated for a first release.
Quite so. Up until the management change in the mid-50s their mantra was "burn what you haul." But afterwards they couldn't dieselize fast enough; from buying their very first diesel to withdrawing their last steamers was only a matter of five years, 1955-1960. Still, it can be argued that N&W's Roanoke shops built the most technically advanced steam locomotives ever produced in the United States, and some of the last great ones (the three Class J1c's were built in 1950, the last American passenger steamers ever)
