If you are revisiting this thread, awesome! Here's the most up-to-date ranking that I can provide for those who are looking back at this post. (Last updated January 25th, 2025) 1. Tharandter Rampe - 59 votes 2. Birmingham Cross-City Line - 45 votes 3. Kassel-Wurzburg - 33 votes 4. Spirit of Steam - 28 votes 5. Bahnstrecke Bremen-Oldenburg - 27 votes 6. Cajon Pass - 24 votes 7. Harlem Line - 23 votes 8. Horseshoe Curve - 11 votes 9. Luzern-Sursee - 8 votes 10. The Holiday Express - 7 votes -------- original post -------- Hello folks, hope you're having a fine December. The Holiday Express recently released for Train Sim World 3, pretty much making it the last release of the year. I'm very doubtful that another route comes out of nowhere to release RIGHT before everybody takes a break. So, just like last year, here's a poll for you guys to vote on what you think are the best routes to be released this year! Also just like last year, you get 3 choices. Sure, this year saw 10 new routes instead of last year's 11, but I feel like more votes makes the results a bit more interesting. Surely somebody is going to vote for the Holiday Express. One thing to note, the poll is a bit different of a process than it was last year. The poll feature was removed earlier this year, meaning I can't add a poll directly to this post. You'll have to use THIS GOOGLE FORM instead: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1...6PMxlOdOXcWuYLSk5WG9bR9g/viewform?usp=sf_link You may notice that there are two notable exclusions from the poll: Island Line 2022, and Southeastern High Speed. I decided not to include these as I wanted to give the NEW routes a time to shine. Island Line is a fairly nice improvement to the original Isle of Wight, but it's still the classic 2020 route at heart. Same with Southeastern, with some extra goodies in Dartford and Ashford. SEHS got third place in last year's poll, and although I'm curious to see just how well it compares to this year's releases, I'll just keep it to purely new stuff. For those who are curious, my personal votes are Tharandter Rampe, Bremen-Oldenburg, and Cajon Pass. Last thing, if you participate in the poll, thank you! It's just a little bit of curiosity from myself, and I'm glad that you can satisfy said curiosity. I'll try to give updates on the results of the poll as time goes on! For the second year in a row, feels weird posting this poll in the PlayStation forum due to add-on Tetris shenanigans, but since I'm a PlayStation player, I shall post in the PlayStation forum.
This year truly has not shined for me in terms of new routes to be honest. Definitely not as much as last three years, for me personally it has been pretty weak year in terms of TSW. Just my taste in things. While overall upgrade this year has been rather welcomed (change from TSW2 to 3) it has also introduced some new issues with the old favorites and core play. Plus Spirit of Steam is welcomed to many, Southeastern Highspeed has been my personal favorite this year. So overall, through my eyes, a weak year in TSW front with some highlights but not as much as previous years. That's all through my eyes and tastes. EDIT: Of course I forgot my only highlight in terms of the routes this year. Called "Birmingham Cross City"
Schnellfahrstrecke Kassel - Würzburg and SBahn ZentralSchweiz for me. I didn’t know if we had to pick only one
My first pick would have to be the Harlem line. Second is the the new timetable of the bakerloo line. third is the SEHS
It’s been about 37 hours or so, and the poll has received 37 responses. What a wonderful coincidence! Here’s how the ranking looks as of now, but I wont specify how close some of these may be to each other: 1. Tharandter Rampe 2. (tie) Kassel-Würzburg and Bremen-Oldenburg 3. Birmingham Cross-City Line 4. Cajon Pass 5. Spirit of Steam 6. (tie) Harlem Line and Luzern-Sursee 7. The Holiday Express 8. Horseshoe Curve A few neat little points to mention: Tharandter Rampe is looking to be an easy number one. It is by FAR the most voted route on the poll. Good for it! With the top 3 all being German, I think we can easily say that it was a good year for German TSW fans. The most common type of response on the poll has been ticking ONLY Birmingham Cross-City and submitting the poll. 4 people have done it so far! I’ll keep you folks updated if the poll gets more interesting, or a fair amount of time passes.
Bcc is already my most played route this year. Followed by sehs and cjp. Sos would have been on the number 1 spot but.....
Horseshoe Curve struggling to get above Holiday Express. Wow. That's a big name route that could've been so much better. I actually enjoy playing it on occasion despite agreeing with it's place in the rankings. Other thoughts: Personally, I think the top 5 of Tharandter Rampe, Kassel, Bremen, BCC, and Cajon is spot on. Any one of those 5 are top 5 material- they're very good routes. I went TR-Cajon-BCC. Cajon probably dropped a bit since many people find USA freight boring. BCC just needs a little more rolling stock and traffic. It's slightly disappointing that SoS didn't quite match the hype. Lots of potential there. Probably needs more fixes, maybe a loco DLC. I'm curious about the future of steam for TSW. I actually have had some decent fun on Harlem and Luzern but there's no way they sniff the top 5 for me, even SOS is more well done
Not too big a surprise that Tharandter Rampe is at number one. It is a challenging route and visually stunning (with some great historic stations). The 612 brought a new dimension and of course layers from most other german stuff keep it busy.
Hmm... difficult... Almost every route has its own charme. In general I like the German Routes most, but also for instance Birmingham Cross City (I like city routes) is great. So my top 3 are Tharandter Rampe, Kassel-Würzburg and BCC (ex aequo there would be Luzern - Sursee and Harlem Line). If I had to rate all of them, it would be: 1. Tharandter Rampe (great German route) 2. Kassel - Würzburg (I like "racing" with ICE but I am missing commuter services like on SKA) 3. - 5. BCC (City route), Luzern - Sursee (I like Swiss railways and the RaBe 523), Harlem Line (city route) 6. Spirit of Steam (nice idea, but I'm not very interested in old/steam locos) 7.Cajon Pass (freight-only route) Due to the addon-limit on PS5 I have not been able to try out Bremen-Oldenburg (but it looks great according to the screenshots/videos i've seen so far) and I don't own Horseshoe Curve and Holiday Express yet.
Just being a pedant, but shouldn't that read 1. Tharandter Rampe 2. (tie) Kassel-Würzburg and Bremen-Oldenburg 4. Birmingham Cross-City Line 5. Cajon Pass 6. Spirit of Steam 7. (tie) Harlem Line and Luzern-Sursee 9. The Holiday Express 10. Horseshoe Curve
The Ramp is the only one worthy of a vote, IMHO. Spirit Of Steam would have been in there if DTG hadn't cussed up the physics even worse than they already were in TSW2 and left all the erroneous SPAD's as an issue. Most of the other routes have some issue or another and SKW after a few drives got boring. Also where is the revamped IOW in the list?
My vote will go to Spirit of Steam. It lays the groundwork of what DTG is capable of for the steam age. The most disappointing route for 2022 is Birmingham Cross City. Seeing Birmingham New Street so empty and quiet of AI trains, passengers, noise etc etc is immersion breaking for me.
I dunno about the whole route, it's still a bit iffy in spots, but driving the G6 and the BR 204 in Bremen-Oldenberg timetable mode is quite cool and visually intense even on my aging PS4. On a PC or newer gen console it would be quite mind blowing. Of course the psychedelic party favours I did not imbibe in the other day probably influenced my bias here somewhat
I would've loved to see how Island Line 2022 (as well as Southeastern High Speed Extended) would perform on the poll, but they're not there as I mainly wanted to see a ranking of the best new routes from this year. IOW 2022 is still a lot like the original IOW at heart.
We have now reached 69 hours, so I shall now provide an update to the ranking! The poll has received 70 responses so far. 1. Tharandter Rampe 2. Schnellfahrstrecke Kassel-Wurzburg 3. (tie) Birmingham Cross-City and Bremen-Oldenburg 5. Spirit of Steam 6. Harlem Line 7. Cajon Pass 8. Horseshoe Curve 9. (tie) Luzern-Sursee and Holiday Express The biggest drop in the last 32 hours has been Cajon Pass, going from #4 to #7. Ouch. The one that went furthest up the list was Horseshoe Curve, going from #10 to #8. Definitely the most surprising result I've seen from this poll is the overall popularity of Kassel-Wurzburg. I would've thought that high-speed routes aren't the most positively received, due to them being less exciting gameplaywise. I can understand it's positive aspects, though. The ICE 1 is such a nice train to drive, and it's just a cool train in general. The timetable is quite nice with so many ICE services, and how freight absolutely comes alive at night. The route itself is nicely made, and it's truly impressive how DTG have finally created a route that's over 100 miles long. The placement on the list is still rather surprising, though. We'll just have to see if any route not called Tharandter Rampe can overthrow it and get that #2 spot. Also, I'll just mention how the US is not doing so hot with the voting. The most highly voted route is the Harlem Line (12 votes), and that's at #6! It may be a fair rating, though, as I've heard a lot about red light bugs and stuff. I can totally understand the low rankings for the US. Out of the three American routes from this year, all of them have had a fair amount of issues, and I can't really defend them. Here's hoping that 2023 can provide some good content for American fans once again. I'm now reminded of how 2021 was pretty good, with Boston Sprinter, Sherman Hill, and Clinchfield Railroad, all fairly solid routes.
I still am wanting BCC however, that elephant in the room wants a word with me. His name is the add-ons manager Revamped IOW and SEHS aren’t on there because they are revamped, not brand new. SOS is a fair point as the SPAD’s and the physics do need a fix
I did buy BCC but refunded due to the various issues, not worth £30 in my book. Likewise the Bremen route, sure it's great and worth a mention but not at the asking price.
I'd begrudgingly have to say bcc as I'm only interested in UK routes and not interested in steam, bcc isn't worth £30 imho as it isn't finished (new street might aswell be Redcar central for how quiet it is)
Cajon Pass is a very well-done route- in effect it succeeds at being what Sherman Hill tried to be - and the execution is solid, even exemplary, with a lot of attention to world-building detail (and virtually bug-free by DTG standards). Unfortunately, US Big Freight just isn't all that popular with the player base.
And Cajon is a bit like Tehachapi, already done to death in the other sims. I've had a couple of drives but I don't like the split services (now the save game is fixed) and the braking from the ES44 seemed almost non existent on one run I did. Had to put it in emergency just to stop in time from 10 MPH at the objective marker.
Cajon Pass is by far my favourite route and is what I consider the best by a mile. I can’t go back to Sherman Hill after seeing Cajon Pass because it looks even worse than I remember now. It could well do with a makeover to improve the scenery to the new standard.
Hate to spoil your party, but with 10 routes and 70 total votes, how useful is this poll? The average would be only 7 votes per route, hardly a representative count. Perhaps you could provide the actual votes for each route. That might be more interesting, though you need a lot more votes to make your poll credible.
Personally I still rank Cajon Pass lower than Sand Patch Grade. Not to mention I personally grade Cajon harder than other US routes since its one of the few routes I can see IRL
Me too. But not by a mile. With more drivable locomotives and better vegetation, Cajon would be closer to SPG than any other US freight route.
For all that Sand Patch is great, I think Cajon with its steeper grades and much heavier consists is more of a challenge to run.
Your wish is my command, your request is my obligation, your aspiration is my mandate, yeahhh I'm just using thesaurus.com. Here's the ranking (with the amount of votes) after about 95 hours, with 83 responses. Keep in mind that each voter got to choose between 1-3 votes. 1. Tharandter Rampe - 47 votes (56.6%) 2. Birmingham Cross-City Line - 26 votes (31.7%) 3. Bahnstrecke Bremen-Oldenburg - 25 votes (30.5%) 4. Schnellfahrstrecke Kassel-Wurzburg - 24 votes (29.3%) 5. Spirit of Steam - 17 votes (20.7%) 6. Harlem Line - 15 votes (18.3%) 7. Cajon Pass - 13 votes (15.7%) 8. Luzern-Sursee - 6 votes (7.3%) 9. (tie) Horseshoe Curve and Holiday Express - 5 votes (6%) Obviously this little poll on the Dovetail Games forums isn't going to be entirely reflective of the general opinion of each route, but it's still fun to see things get ranked on a list.
Very interesting, thanks for taking the effort to host this poll externally since the forum feature was disabled a while ago! Looking back at this year, I’m really happy with the amount and variety of content we got. But there are definitely a few disappointments and missed opportunities in there as well. The year started off incredibly well with Tharandter Rampe, which remains a community favorite and is (in my opinion) definitely the coolest piece of TSW content we’ve gotten all year. We then got Harlem Line and Luzern-Sursee… two unique add-ons which are certainly hampered by their lack of content (short route lengths) and unfixed issues (red signals/blocked track on Harlem and ECTS + tons of visual stuff on Luzern). Didn’t buy these routes at launch and even when they were discounted because they’re just unfinished and definitely deserve some more attention by the developers in my opinion. Can’t say much about Horseshoe Curve because I’m not a freight fan, but it seems like the delay it got definitely allowed the devs to polish it a bit more. We then got Spirit of Steam! I actually didn’t buy this at launch, but really really enjoyed it when I got it as part of TSW3. Definitely playable even on PS4, although the fact that major issues introduced with TSW3 still haven’t been addressed is incredibly disappointing. They worked on steam for years, and now they’re seemingly abandoning it in a (slightly) broken state. It’s still my Top 2 route this year, though! TSW3’s launch brought us SKW and Cajon Pass. I’m definitely proud if the devs for taking on the challenge of such a long route and introducing a complex train (the ICE 1) along with it. In practice, the route has proven to be extremely boring (since the correct way to drive it is essentially to do nothing) and repetitive. In the future, such a longer route would definitely have to include more stations or a regional branch to be interesting for me. Again, can’t say much about Cajon Pass because I’m not a freight guy, but it sure does look beautiful and people seem to be having fun with it. After a relatively long pause (with the rather forgettable, but reasonably priced loco expansion pack in between), we got Birmingham, Bremen-Oldenburg and Holiday Express all within a few weeks. Birmingham definitely suffers from the “Cathcart Syndrome”, which means it’s a cool route with a cool train, but suffers extensively from a lack of rolling stock and service variety. The content that is included seems to be really good, though, which is reflected in the amount of votes it has in the poll. Bremen-Oldenburg is definitely among the shorter routes, but includes some much-requested rolling stock and great layers. Seems to have gone under the radar though as I’ve seen almost no discussion or videos about it… very sad. I think a longer and more elaborate marketing campaign with two preview streams would have done it justice. The post release patches have been very satisfactory, so I’ll definitely be getting this add-on once it’s on sale. Holiday Express doesn’t really count as a full route, but the unique features, low price and huge amount of love that has gone into this DLC will definitely make it worth it for the players who are interested into this type of content. Overall, I think there was tons of cool stuff this year, but definitely also lots to learn. Routes like Harlem, Luzern and (to a lesser extent) Spirit of Steam essentially getting abandoned in a broken state just can’t be allowed to happen any longer, which is why I was very delighted by the good post release support of Birmingham and Bremen-Oldenburg. They will definitely need to get the Special Projects team to focus on these abandoned releases before doing another Holiday Express, though. And there’s also lots of broken pre-2022 content (Peninsula Corridor & Oakville timetables, for example). We also saw that route length doesn’t equal greatness, since KWG turned out to be quite boring for the average player. Definitely a positive signal that TSW3’s release went reasonably smooth in retrospect, though! I’m excited for 2023, with interesting things expected early in the year like TSG’s German, Rivet’s UK and DTG’s US routes as well as the expansion packs and the Add-On manager which should improve things for all console players. The things I’d like the developers to keep in mind: Take care of existing routes/trains and don’t abandon them! Continue making cool layer selections to increase the amount of variety. Don’t be afraid to try out unique locations/trains, but also be willing to learn from DLCs that didn’t get an amazing reception. Take your time… not just with content development, but also with marketing campaigns! It’s not wrong to build a little excitement and have multiple preview streams like in the past.
BCC is my most played route by quite a margin. I've played a bit of Harlem, but didn't think it was especially worthy of a vote. Cajon and SKW have barely had any use and, in fact, were both deleted to make space within my PS5 limits, which is also why I haven't bought any of the other new routes. Spirit of Steam maybe would have got a look in, but I got it bundled with TSW3 so I've only played it broken, which isn't a great experience. BBO is the only recent German route which I'm interested in as it looks like something different, but I have no room for that so it's out at least as long as the limit remains.
TSW does have a heavily British player base, some of whom by their own declarations here play nothing but UK routes. Personally I have no national bias, but BCC like Cathcart and Bakerloo is not the kind of route I enjoy: one kind of train doing nothing but commuter rail (which I hate).
I tend to agree. The fact is that British players enjoy commuter routes because it's the overwhelmingly dominant form of traffic in the UK. I think many younger players don't remember that there was once a thriving freight segment over there.. That's why DTG keep churning out routes like BCC, along with the put-you-to-sleep electrostars ( or their close siblings ). On the other hand, UK players don't understand why Americans are fascinated by relatively slow, ponderous heavy freight, which is the dominant segment in the US and Canada. Each to their own, I guess.
I personally now get the American fascination with freight and that's purely down to TSW. Sandpatch is the only US route I tend to play and I've haven't bought Cajon and Horseshoe tempted as I am for the reason I'm not prepared to pay money for 'not fit for purpose' add-ons and only the finest quality word-salad in response when we, as a community voice our concerns. Cajon I'm maybe being to harsh on but until I see improvement on fixing things I'm not prepared to buy it. The UK as you say is screaming for another route with freight, I'd have been interested in BCC if it would have had a new loco and some freight, even if I think modern diesel traction is a bit yawny! I'd rather a 80's/90's with 56's, 58's and 60's but that's me. Spirit of Steam I loved at release but the 'downgrade' to TSW3 has somewhat damped that fire. The only route I've parted money with for is Tharandter and I've got to say I do like it, definitely has potential, thats to say what's possible in the future..cough cough APT lune gorge. Say no more, nods as good as a wink to a blind horse! I must say that I am strangely tempted by the holiday express, as a technical experiment of course you understand, but the thought of running 47s,45's and jubs round a living room does pull at the 8 year old part of me.
I’m going to pick up Tharandter Rampe, which is 45% off in the current PSN sale, thanks to this poll.
Cajon is an excellent route. The only issue with it is the absence of modern safety systems (in common with all the US freight routes in TSW, including Sand Patch)
BCC was my fav, I honestly think that they should electrify all of the GWR route next year, if they can extend SEHS, then they can electrify all of the GWR route down to Reading.
