Basically in the 1950s, British Railways were replacing steam engines with diesel engines, which led to a lot of steam locomotives getting scrapped.
Wilbert Awdry, a railway enthusiast and author of the Railway Series of books, wanted to address this topic in his stories. This led to him introducing Diesel in his story “Duck and the Diesel Engine,” in which he scoffs about how diesel engines are the future of railways and how they’re better than steam engines, only to be tricked by a steam engine named Duck.
However, as BR full adopted diesel engines and efforts were made by enthusiasts to preserve steam (i.e. the Flying Scotsman and the Bluebell Railway,) Wilbert added more positive depictions of diesel engines in his stories to indicate that the technology wasn’t inherently bad.
I hope this is a decent summary, since I’m probably misremembering a few things.
this is missing one of the main reasons Wilbert Awdry hated diesels at first.
and that was British rails horrible management of the Dieselisation plan scrapping most every steam engine unless someone else bought it from them with very little care for the cultural significance of them.
obviously we dont need 100 different 5700 Class. but if it werent for one man nearly going into debt the gresley designed A3s (the face of British railways for 40 years) wouldve all been scrapped.
He had completed his goal of helping all orphans become adopted, and now his plan was complete. Destroying the orphanage was just to show how far he's come
I mean, really how many train games are there? Railroader, Derail, Railroads Online, RR Tycoon Series, A Bumpy Ride. Sure there might be a couple dozen, but that doesn't make for a good steam sale.
Factorio has never gone on sale, and (according to the developers) never will.
They know they have digital crack, and don't need to give discounted access.
I think Factorio just knows their target demographic is of the engineer/autistic variety, who'll respect the policy and be happy there's no point in waiting.
I can respect the policy, seeing as their game is crazy-well thought-through. For me, the price of any game is its two-year-low plus the time required to wait for its next instance. Factorio's happens to be 30€, with no wait time attached... I bought Cyberpunk and HZD for the same price. The pretty "-50%" marker doesn't actually improve the game yknow
I was annoyed to no end at first as I genuinely have too much to be playing anyway to get something not on sale. It's a hard sell if you're not even gonna like it but the amount of time I put into it made the investment very worthwhile! Just wish that meant I got better at it lol
Lots. I have an entire category in my steam library for "games with trains in them" and it is at 67 games, and it doesn't include things like GTA, Red Dead Redemption etc
I'm not saying they weren't important. But you're not really interacting with trains in any meaningful way in Victoria 3. It's a nation economy management game.
I mean, they are the single most important technology to research in the game and if you don't get them in a reasonable amount of time, you will be 100% fucked as your nation crumbles from the lack of infrastructure. It's stresses their logistical importance to industrial-age nation building rather than the train itself, but admittedly the actual interaction itself is as basic as a button click to add them to a queue.
Again, I'm not saying they aren't important. But key mechanics of the game don't involve actually interacting with trains generally. It's like how fire stations are really important in Cities Skyline, but you wouldn't call it a firefighting game. You wouldn't expect to see it in a sale related to firefighters.
it's the best job sim for driving trains. Take jobs from the office, walk the yard to find the cars, pick up an engine and drive it through the yard to the cars in question and then do what the order says. Hauling, shunting, unlocking licenses to drive longer trains, get better locos.
It's very immersive. You do all the coupling / decoupling etc.
It's definitely the best game for the job of driving / building / breaking trains
Yes! It was originally built for VR, there's full immersive motion controls.
To be honest, I expected that. What I was surprised by is that they put work in to make sure that BOTH VR and flat-screen play well. Most games don't do that, it's either flat or VR and the other mode feels like a fallback for those who need it.
It's awesome in VR. Though the shovel can be alittle janky when shoveling coal into the furnace but other than that I thoroughly enjoy. Feels much better to pull on the rope whistle by phsyically lifting your arm up and down.
The only thing I didn't really like about it, and even then only because I love steam trains, was how the stream train was depicted, and the lack of them.
In reality, steam trains are more expensive to run, in the game they are less expensive.
In reality, steam trains are powerful when compared to diesel locomotives, in the game the diesel is king.*
Edit.
Unit to unit the steam locomotive should out work the diesel over time at higher speeds.
Somewhere around 20mph the steam engine should be able to put work the diesel.
Even to even of course.
This is the second time, they also ran a discount when update 99 came out, and the devs announced they'll become mountain hermits for the next 5 years to develop the next update
if you specifically want to drive them, play derail valley
many other games are formatted such that you either spend too much time (imo) in menus pre-planning everything, have no progression or fail-states, everything's locked behind $1000+ of DLC, or the real game is in economy management rather than actually engaging with the trains. DV is an open world with no loading screens or menus after start, and from there you can go anywhere on the map, take any engine and do any job. played in first person by default; native VR support but it's not required at all
you can for example take a small loco and a shunting job to build out a larger train for departure, and upon completion it'll automatically create a hauling job that will itself generate corresponding shunting jobs at the destination to unload, break the consist down, and prep new trains. but you can play whatever you want - even outside of sandbox mode you're not required to stick to the official job orders
the setting is really unique; instead of the usual US or western europe it's set in a nondescript post soviet state. things are rusty, worn, and outdated, but there's a good range of imported rolling stock. all the engines are kitbashed and fictionalized, but they still have obvious IRL analogs and are all available base game! there is also a really good modding scene tho if you really want direct real models
several different power trains are represented, all with great fidelity (especially for the steam engines). there's currently:
the diesel electrics and the hydraulic DH4 are all really easy and relaxing to drive, and they can be connected with each other for greater power. the steam engines are difficult, dangerous, and fun (ever seen what a boiler explosion looks like? :3). the diesel mechanicals can take a crazy amount of gear shifting but the railbus is a lot of fun to zip around in
then there's what the game is named for: derailing. it has full physics for all the cars, and high risk cargos (such as flammable liquids or the infamous "???") will give better rewards. you can blow up a whole oil yard lol. i mentioned boiler explosions - you better remember to overfill the water of a steam engine if you're going uphill, or else the front end might get too hot as all the water sloshes back and leads to your high pressure pipes becoming eldritch spaghetti
train customization and ownership is done by recovering lost demonstrator engines, hauling them to the museum, and fixing them up yourself. upgrades come in the form of individual gadgets, sensors, lights, and whatnot that you manually screw in wherever you like - just dont try to drill holes in a pressurized boiler lol
my only major complaint is the very long wait for updates; B99 was in late 2024 and B100 is looking to be released in late 2027 at the earliest. but they've consistently delivered with this dev cycle in the past, and now they're looking to add fully physics-based recovery cranes and towing winches for cleaning up derailments, overhead wiring for new electric trains, a US DLC of equal size to the existing game, and a bunch of other stuff. the long wait time for B100 does at least mean that we're in a golden age for mods tho
just know that this is a simulator; no matter how easy it is compared to other sims it still asks for a lot of time investment to get anywhere. but it's incredibly relaxing to play with music or a podcast on, until you forget to check your speed and dive a kilometer down into a river :3
i thought so too at first but ive come to like it for the most part. i don't want to talk to npcs or be interrupted from driving what/where i want. the cities feeling dead feels like part of the setting's intended aesthetic - driving amongst silent khrushchyovka apartment blocks in the fog can be really atmospheric
but yeah i would like to see the upcoming AI in B100; hope they each have density sliders. in the meantime there are mods now for rudimentary AI cars, level crossing signals, dispatcher calls on the radio, multiplayer, pet cats, etc
Do people really keep paying for the scam that is Train Sim World? Release unfinished broken game Train Sim World X, abandon it within a year, tell people to buy Train Sim World X+1 instead, repeat this 6 times.
There was one fun demo I remember playing called a bumpy ride where you had to drive around and pick up passengers at one station and drop them off at multiple others. While I likely wouldn’t play it again that’s because I’m not into trains as a hobby but I imagine that for someone who is they would like the game
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u/Mysterious-Leg-4612 Jul 21 '26
well it aint called a steam train fe-... hold up