Railway building game

[LNERW1]

Just thought I'd share here a video game called NIMBY Rails. In short, it is a railway building game that allows you to build anywhere on a map of the real world, with several different types of track, ie 350km/h high speed, 160km/h medium speed, and 60km/h tram lines. I get the feeling it's suited for this forum as you have the option not only to replicate the current Irish network (or that of anywhere else in the world, for that matter), you can also rebuild closed lines that you think should still be open, or leave out those you consider pointless. I found it a while ago after stumbling across the Reddit page for the game and have since began working on my own Irish network, pictured below:

The trains are colour coded based on purpose/operator, colours are listed below:

Dark green- Iarnród Éireann (mainline)

Light Green- Iarnród Éireann (suburban)- at the moment only DART

Light Purple- Luas

Dark Turquoise- NIR (mainline)

Light Turquoise- NIR (suburban)

Red- Trams/Metro outside Dublin

My network is far from finished, but I thought it would be a good example for what can be accomplished and frankly I'd love to see what this forum could come up with.

Some links that may be helpful:

Wikipedia Page

Wiki

Steam Page

Subreddit

Since I found this game I've been desperate for someone to share it with and I decided this forum was probably the best place. I also wanted to show off my own network as I am very happy with how it's coming along.

I hope I've helped someone find a game they'll enjoy.

All the best,

LNERW1

[leslie10646]

Thanks for the Heads-up @LNERW1. Looks interesting.

I got into railway building games when I discovered "1829", as developed by the late Francis Tresham. It is so called because the map of GB is clear of main line railways - the Liverpool and Manchester opened the next year.

I first bought the game in Liverpool about 45 years ago.

There are now many versions, depending on the country -

1825 (the date of the Stockton and Darlington);

1835 is Germany (a brilliant evolution of Tresham's original idea);

1853 India;

and lots of US versions such as 1830 (US generally); 1876 (Texas)etc.

Their great plus is that you play with other people.

My pals and I (typically 5 or 6) would start at 10am on a Saturday, adjourn for lunch about 1330 and then play through to about 7pm. We'd go out for a curry and then disperse to the four points of the compass.

My younger son met Francis about ten years ago, and he was interested in doing 1834 (D&K in case you've forgotten), alas I hadn't the time to get it moving!

If anyone is in Surrey or near Reading, I'd be delighted to host a game of one of the six versions I have! It can be played with two or more.

Leslie

[Branchline121]

I used to enjoy playing a game called ‘Railway Empire’ (Wikipedia) on the Xbox years ago… it even had a map of Ireland to build on, but most of the game was based around the Great Plains of America — and the stock for the Ireland + GB DLC was mostly recycled French locos. I think there’s a sequel by this point but I never got around to playing it, but I might at some point as the first one was a fairly decent strategy game.

[LNERW1]

Thought I'd share a newer network, started a couple of months ago as my early mistakes were proving troublesome.

Whole Island:

Galway (the start point of this attempt):

Limerick:

Kilkenny:

Belfast area:

Greater Dublin Area and beyond:

I've also got two closeups, one of Dublin proper:

And one of Drogheda McAleese HSR station:

I really can't reccomend this game enough. The "world" you build on is in fact OpenStreetMap, meaning you can build anywhere-and I mean literally anywhere- on the planet and the tools at your disposal are simple but allow almost any level of detail, plus there are a huge number of buildings, track types, trains, map styles and translations available. I really do recommend the "show existing railways" map overlay as it allows recreation of networks that you can then improve, or just play around with.

Syra_One on YouTube has a couple of tutorials, it's probably best to check them out here before you get started. I didn't, and now I have to deal with a frankly messy network unless I completely relearn how to use the software. Well, I say software, really it is just a game.

It does take a bit of memory to download but the game itself is very unlikely to cause any performance issues even on older and/or less capable computers, so even if you only have an old work laptop, it is not at all performance intensive, unless you want to do something silly like recreate Japan's entire rail network down to every siding, with thousands of trains. It's currently €18.49 on Steam (the page is linked in my first post), and all mods can be downloaded for free, safely, and usually within only a few seconds from the Steam Workshop, in fact they can be downloaded and enabled while the game is running. You can literally pause for a moment, open up a side menu, and in about a minute have a brand new train model to run. There's a respectable amount of good quality IÉ and NIR stock available, and absolute swathes of British stock. There's also different tracks available, with the appearance modified to represent narrower gauges, tram tracks, metro tracks, and even bus lanes, trolleybus wires and sea and air routes, all of which have supported vehicles, although it's all still nice and simple as it's only re-textured tracks and trains. I cannot recommend the game enough as the sheer scale and level of detail possible is incredible and really is worth the price.

[jhb171achill]

What about a Luas-type thing from Derry to Letterkenny?

[LNERW1]

For something like that I plan on using something akin to Manchester Metrolink, where the vehicles can run as both trams and mainline vehicles. Luckily I was too lazy to use accurate 1600mm gauge track, so interchangeability shouldn't be a practical issue, though it may draw some logical concerns!