Sid Meier’s Railroads!

I love Railroad Tycoon 3, in spite of a few annoyances, so I expected this to be somewhat similar, unfortunately it's unlikely to scratch the itch for fans of the Railroad Tycoon series. In terms of track management, there are tools for laying parallel track alongside existing single-tracks, and you can choose where to place points for trains to wait/pass one another. At first glance this should be fun to manage when combined with the Hard routing mode that prevents trains from passing through each other. However, in practice the system doesn't scale at all as there is no way to limit track to a particular direction, which means that trains will automatically pick any track that looks free, only to encounter another coming the other way and become grid-locked. To overcome these issues requires a lot of work and strange solutions, and doesn't result in a very realistic or efficient railway, it's also more frustrating than fun as it's easy to get stuck with leftover pieces you can't remove or replace properly, along with visual clutter like signals. In terms of the actual mechanics of the game, the industrial model is simplistic; RT3 had businesses appearing organically to meet demand, but prohibitively expensive to build yourself, with goods making their way own over land, passengers wanting to go to specific destinations etc., Railroads! has none of these things. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it's not just simple, it's far too easy; except at the very beginning of a game it is just too basic to be rewarding and you're soon floating in more money than you can spend. The single scenarios are likewise underwhelming; most have very difficult initial objectives, followed by a massive stretch with no challenge and nothing to do. In RT3 even a company doing well was in a constant struggle with its board and financiers, plus there were usually meaningful events to keep things interesting. While this is graphically pretty, Railroad Tycoon 3 is by far the better game.

I get that it is not as complex as Railroad Tycoon. However, it is a small game with simplified mechanics and low stress. It's not the greatest economic model, but it is nicely rendered, has good sountrack, plays fast, you can pickup a level and play for an hour without the planning required by other games like RRT. Regarding the crashing, there is a patch available online which fixes this issue.

Works fine on my Windows 7 64-bit. Doesn't have trouble with multi-monitor setup either. Game itself is very familiar since I played the original DOS version way back. A lighter management game which is what I was looking for. I never enjoyed the more "realistic" successor games. For me the thrill was in connecting new cities and imaging passengers and mail finally being able to ride in style and comfort. Maybe I'm still missing where it is, but I miss the old station view and all the individual upgrades you could make to individual stations. Its more than worth it to see all my old familiar engine friends again! Looking forward to letting my 7-year old lose on it to see what he makes of it.

This is truly a GOG. Like most of Sid's titles it seems almost simple and cartoony but to play it well is not as easy as it looks. Very good graphics for it's day, good sound track and replayability and priced right.

Look, this is what put Sid Meier on the map. There is something so satisfying about making a functional rail system, running your competition into the ground, and knowing that it will work with or without you. Every entrepreneur should play this game.