Hello 3rd,
It's possible that Railworks 2 is leading at the moment, though fans of Trainz may think differently.
Personally, I am a fan of Microsoft Train Simulator (MSTS) and there is simply a world out there when it comes to add ons and free downloads. I understand that MSTS is quite an old sim but there are many who will stay "faithful" to it. MSTS has also fairly simple controls and it is quite easy to handle the trains. The MSTS disk is also very cheap (A$ 7.00 in India). If you visit
www.trainsim.com , you will see the abundance of downloads available for MSTS and most of them are free. I must admit though that the graphics are not that great and SSE is way beyond. Railworks has better graphics than MSTS.
MSTS poses its own challenges when it comes to downloading and installing routes and all the rolling stock it requires as you will need to be very patient with the error messages that show up. It is mainly due to to the fact that some consists / locomotives / wagons have not been installed which the route requires. But they are all there and searching will always give you positive results. In the past week, I downloaded the Newark & Jersey City route and it took quite a while to eventually get all that was required but if you have the 'never say die' attitude you will succeed. The route after installation threw 23 error messages and I cleared them all by reading on the Forum and using searches. I now have 19 freight activities to try out. India has a huge railway network and Indian fans have created routes too on MSTS. Just yesterday I downloaded a route which runs from Bombay to Pune. The activities (missions) included operating the local commuter trains in Bombay and since I know Bombay well I was impressed with what the route gave. What really amazes me is the generosity of the route creators as they have put in many hours of hard work to create lengthy routes and they then put it up for a free download. There are also many Australian routes which you may find interesting.
The other aspect of any train sim is what you are more interested in - passenger activities or freight activities. I find freight activities more challenging. There are some routes in which you go from Point A to Point B and they can be as long as 5 hours (eg, Maple Leaf Tracks). I am sure there are many who would enjoy this train ride just for the scenery.
I had also checked out Railworks 2 at their website. It seems that you have to buy all the add ons and they are a bit on the expensive side.
If you are familiar with
www.trainsim.com you will notice how MSTS rules there. See attachment - it gives you an idea as to the amount that is available as free downloads.
Regards
vin_sun
