New and interested.....

[mwg]

Hi all, I am new to the forums and train simulation world. I have seen Railworks on Steam for quite awhile now and it has always interested me so I finally decided to do some research into it...and thus I found these forums.

The game has always looked interesting but the never-ending pay "add-on" packs on Steam has kept me away. While I appreciate the hard work people put into add-ons and such and believe they should make whatever money they can get, I am not a rich man and have a hard time justifying paying a lot of money, continuously, for games. (If I was rich, I'd be playing Star Trek Online, which has a monthly fee just to play the game! Ridiculous!! (to me, at least)).

My background - My main game of choice is the original "IL-2 Sturmovick" World War II combat flight simulator. The game is about 10 years old, but it has a huge, online mod community that is all free and has kept the game going. The community is very dedicated to improving the game and making it historically accurate. I enjoy military history and my interest for Railworks is in American Civil War era and WWI & WWII era trains. Along with the Civil War, would go the building of the transcontinental railroad in the post war years.

In researching Trainworks, I am pleased to find that it is not all pay add-ons and that there is a nice community dedicated to the game. It looks like there is a lot of free content out there and that one can make their own maps, trains, content, etc.....so long as they have the time, talent and patients. Not that I am completely cheap, I am sure I would find some add-ons that I couldn't live without.

I have yet to take the plunge and buy the game. I recently discovered and downloaded the original "Rail Simulator" Demo from 2007, the predecessor to Railworks, and like the game play.

What are the limits to making content? Is there a map, or route, size limit?

Thanks for letting me ramble....really just wanted to introduce myself, I am sure I will have lots of questions once I make the plunge to buy the game.

Mark
Doylestown, PA, USA

[barnez]

Hi, and welcome ...

the community for Railworks is quite active and there is a lot of free content with more being added all the time. At this exact moment, things are a bit off kilter from normal because everyone is adjusting to the changes brought on by RW3 (Trainsimulator 2012) but more good things are yet to come.

RWA has a pretty extensive database of free content, UKTS (uktrainsim.com) also has a large database - obviously primarily European oriented, and of course, trainsim.com has a lot of free content also, just to name a few of the big names - there are also a number of developers who maintian their own websites to showcase their creations.

What are the limits to making content? Is there a map, or route, size limit?

Time.

Really, that is pretty much it. Aside from that I believe there is a restriction in the maps of 600 miles radius from the starting coordinates, so theoretically you could model a 1200 mile long line in one map. Whether it would run without error is a whole other issue. Most routes are around 50-80 miles in length, but there are several that have been made that are much longer. Again, really it comes down to an issue of time to lay the track, paint & populate the landscape, set up signalling and scenarios, but if you have the time, then within reason, pretty much anything is possible.

Have fun!

-barnez

[bsrrco]

For some freight & passenger cars fitting your time era check here http://www.golden-age-rails.com/index.html

Locomotives click here http://dickyjim.com/

You can also find some items in the F/L here but it may take some digging

[mwg]

Thanks for the nice Welcome guys! And the link help. Looks like a good game so far!!!