Railworks America

Well, just wondering, what should I buy that is UNDER 25 dollars? I have Sherman Hill, Cajon Pass, NS heritage, The California Zephyr, The BNSF ES44AC and sd40-2, and finally, the SD70 v2. (btw, I got all of this for under $40. :)

Stevens Pass

Any why stevens? I need a reason of why to buy an item.

ConrailHeritage wrote:Any why stevens? I need a reason of why to buy an item.

Because it's great! Also, you need to get the GP20, it's $10 and it's a brilliant diesel. Fun to start up and drive. Marias Pass is also a great route. The Cab Forward is $10, so are Big Boy and Challenger. Mike Rennie's Consolidated is only $10. For a great free route, don't forget the NERW right here in the file library.

Also older but still fun routes like Colton and Northern, Fort Kent to Eagle Lake, and Ohio Steel 2. I think they're $5 or $10 each.

Well, Do you need to have a high detail level to play stevens? Because I can only run the lowest settings....

ConrailHeritage wrote:Well, Do you need to have a high detail level to play stevens? Because I can only run the lowest settings....

In that case, might not be a good route for you. My high end system only gets 14 to 30 frames with TSX on, detail level at 10.

Those three others I mentioned are all older routes that don't tax your system. How do Sherman Hill and Cajon run?

I piked up Marias Pass & Stevens Pass. Both excellent routes. Still pondering on the GP20. As far as detail and running capabilities, start off with as low as you can go and start from there. That is what I used to do. If your computer can handle TSX I would think you shoul have little problems running either of them although you may not be able to run it with everything set to max. Just my opinion. Been away a long time but, alas I am back now.

arizonachris wrote:Those three others I mentioned are all older routes that don't tax your system. How do Sherman Hill and Cajon run?

They normally run fine, but sometimes, normally when there is weather or it is night, the headlight make it run really slow. Sometimes, every 5 real seconds is one in-game second.

Now, I'm wondering: Should I buy the Marias Pass and sd40-2 bundle (which I had for MSTS), Stevens pass, or Surfliner and ES44DC bundle?

ConrailHeritage wrote:Now, I'm wondering: Should I buy the Marias Pass and sd40-2 bundle (which I had for MSTS), Stevens pass, or Surfliner and ES44DC bundle?

All three are great, though you should bear in mind that Stevens Pass is quite heavy on the system in places like Chris mentioned above. The Surfliner route is more passenger oriented than the other two so I would factor that into your decision as well.

If you can only pick between one of those three packages and are looking to add additional scenarios right away, I would go with the Marias-SD40 bundle. It's basically getting the SD40-2 free since the route alone is the same price. Of course the same can be said of the Surfliner -ES44DC bundle but it looks like more of the add on scenarios for that route require more DLC items than ones for Marias. Someone even recreated three of the original MSTS activities for Marias with BNSF 4723 in the lead. Talk about a blast from the past. Browse the Workshop for scenarios that suit your interests and you can see what ones interest you most. You can filter by content by checking the boxes on the right for content you have or want to get. In the end you won't be disappointed with any of the three choices.

Ok, so I bought the Marias pass pack, and am now wondering: Are there any good scenarios I can do with all of my DLC?

ConrailHeritage wrote: I have Sherman Hill, Cajon Pass, NS heritage, The California Zephyr, The BNSF ES44AC and sd40-2, Marias pass, and finally, the SD70 v2.

There are a bunch of good ones on the Steam Workshop.

Buy what you prefer to run. I prefer North American routes and as such the only European routes I have are what came with the original Railworks 2009.

ConrailHeritage wrote:

arizonachris wrote:Those three others I mentioned are all older routes that don't tax your system. How do Sherman Hill and Cajon run?

They normally run fine, but sometimes, normally when there is weather or it is night, the headlight make it run really slow. Sometimes, every 5 real seconds is one in-game second.

More than likely this is due to a lower end video card (but we can talk about your system in Geek Speak if you want help and/ or advice) It's drawing in the next scenery tiles; more assets, more frame rate drop. Sherman and Marias are about the same, so you should be OK.

Grab that little GP20, you won't be sorry! There's even a free Pacific Harbor Line repaint for it here in the File Library. And, Merry Christmas!