My name is Chris and I just bought railworks 2 off of steam about a week ago, so far it's great albeit a bit frustrating at times. I grew up as a small boy completely fascinated with trains, as a child my dream job was an engineer. I had model railroads that would rival a grown enthusiasts collection, and had them set up in a pretty awesome diorama in my dads basement. I rode the Stasburg railroad twice, the Cass scenic 3 times, and took a train from Charleston WV, to Lynchburg VA, and D.C. all through my early teenage years by myself many many times to visit relatives for the summer.
However as time went on I quickly lost interest as a growing boy and found what I thought to be, cooler stuff to get into. My mother eventually sold my model railroad collection and I was completely over the interest by high school. Fast forward to 22 years old and whereas I am still pretty young I have quite the busy life. One cross country move and back, joined the Marine corps and trying to get into the West Virginia Police Academy, well, it's not hard to see I am a busy guy. I am an avid Microsoft flight Simulator and well, that's growing old, so I decided to give railworks 2 a try. I spent a long time deciding between this and Trainz. Comparing things like graphics, simplicity of use, and how much simulation was in each. It eventually came down to a visit to the forums where the Trainz forums was pretty terrible with obvious kids who couldn't spell correctly or use punctuation claiming to be engineers or other railroad workers and telling other user's how it was. Whereas I joined this forum at about 4am, and, well I was approved by a nice administrator within minutes despite it being 4am, and we then proceeded to get into a pretty good e-mail conversation. If you've never been to the trainz forums, well, count your blessings. I've been to many forums and this one is pretty spectacular.
I am currently going through the career mode and some particular missions. I am just gonna come right out and say it, I am most definitely here for the steam engines.
There is just something about them. I am having the hardest time driving them though, I always have automatic fireman on because I can't even master just the driving yet. I mean I complete the missions with steam locomotives, but mostly always horribly behind schedule while the AI locomotives blasting past me. I've printed out sections of the driver manual but I still am lost. I also don't know what some stuff does. I don't know what sanders, cylinder cocks and small ejectors do. Basically what I am looking for is a nice, down to earth tutorial to get me started. I know this stuff takes time, I cant count the hours of just troubleshooting and learning flight time I have on FSX, and I expect this to be no different.Also, I wanted to inquire about addons and payware. The steam store has LOADS of top notch quality content, any recommendations? Not just locomotive addons but expansions packs too. I saw two expansions that look particularly good, Project platform: Phorum Peninsula and West coast main line. The list of locomotives I want is quite substantial, most notable the big boy, and the Tornado..mostly because of that one particular top gear episode. However, I am open to absolute every free addon, locomotive and routes that I can get. I know in FSX adding downloaded stuff could be quite difficult, is that the same here? I assume when bought from steam it would have a quality installer, but what about the free stuff on the web, is the quality good? Easy to install? Also freeware recommendations are much appreciated.
I've tinkered with the editor just briefly. Just enough to realize that it is enormously complicated, and I need to watch all the tutorial videos on that to even begin. I have a lot of ideas, but I really want to recreate the Cass Scenic railroad. I know without a Shays locomotive it would be impossible to do the 9% grades but I'll figure something out. Does anyone know if anyone is working on a shays locomotive?
I just realized I made a huge post, and asked a ton of questions so I am going to stop here. Any answers would be greatly appreciated. I am glad that this game is as good as I was hoping it would be and I am also very glad that I found such a well mannered and mature forum for it.
Chris.
Welcome! Lots of questions this morning, eh? 
