Railroader
Railroader reproduces the on-the-running-board experience of the engineers, the conductors, the brakemen – the railroaders: moving freight and passengers in transition era Appalachia.
First Person Railroading
Be on the ground with your trains: walk the train to connect the brake line. Get a little elevation by climbing into the cab where immersive 3D throttle, reverser, brake stand, and whistle cord await. Ride the pilot to the next couple, or settle into the caboose cupola until the next town. Railfan your train with a flying/tracking camera as it rolls down the line, or get a bird’s eye view of your switching work.
Multiplayer & Singleplayer
Run your railroad solo, or cooperatively with friends.
Realistic Running
Slack action, brake lines, gladhands, anglecocks. Dimmable forward and reverse headlights, configurable class lights and marker lights. All of the critical elements for realistic railroading.
Dynamic Gameplay
Run a timetable passenger train, switch industries on the local, or classify cars in the yard. These aren’t scenarios: your shortline has a lot of work to get done, and how it gets done is up to your train crew — or crews!
A Gorgeous Mountain Railroad
Tree-covered mountain vistas line your winding Appalachian shortline’s right-of-way as it follows the river between towns. On the ground to connect a cut as night falls, you’ll be thankful you brought your lantern to light your hike back to the cab. But the train is already rolling — guess the engineer decided you’re riding in the caboose. No matter, you need to study the switch list anyway. The lantern lights the sides of cars as they rumble past. Before long the marker lights of the caboose are drawing near. You climb aboard as the train starts to pick up speed, watching the track disappear into the distance.
Steam User 34
In short, it's excellent!
I came to this from Euro Truck Simulator 2, seeking a similar experience, but with a different mode of transportation. It was also my first foray into "train games" as a whole.
I wanted something like ETS2 in terms of progression, where I could go at my own pace, pick my jobs, and grow a company over time. It seemed like a lot of other popular train sims lean heavier into the "sim" aspect, which I don't mind, but that's just not what I was looking for.
This game blends those two things quite well in my opinion. The controls are just complicated enough to feel in-depth and interesting, but not so complicated that you need to watch a two hour YouTube guide to get the hang of. It helps that the in-game tutorial is very well designed!
As your save file progresses, new areas are unlocked and more difficult jobs become available. The rate of this progression feels good! I'm always worried about getting overwhelmed and confused early on in simulator-type games. Sometimes too much is thrown at you all at once, but this doesn't have that problem.
There are lots of locomotives and other things to play around with, and all of the ones I've tried so far feel varied in their strengths and weaknesses, which is good. It's never that fun or interesting when all the tools feel the same. As a diesel locomotive enthusiast, I am glad to say that the two that are available at the time of this review are very satisfying to use. Hoping for more options in the future!
The optimization is good as well, most of my PC hardware is pushing eight years old with a six year old GTX 1080, and this runs between 50 and 60 FPS comfortably on max settings. The sound design is minimal, but effective. The graphics are realistically styled, but not photo-realistic, which is fine.
All in all, this is a great project that I feel good about supporting. The logistics puzzle elements, cool train stuff, company management, and world progression aspects blend together very nicely. I would recommend this to anyone who thinks that blend sounds interesting!
Steam User 33
Early Access...
Edit: newest update spring 2025, has brought the results of the experimental branch to the main branch. Bringing the GREAT, game changing, comfort of life thingy “auto engineer waypoints”, among other things.
(updated review per late May 2024. I am now playing with NO crashes/game stops and the updates are good. Good job developers :-))
This railroad game is already GOLD. It ticks all my railroad fun boxes, and all in ONE game!
The one box that is usually UN-ticked for me is the dispatching. But here you can have it all :-)
You drive the steam trains + a couple of early diesels (or let the AI help you)
You shunt (you are on your own with this :-) )
You dispatch.
There are 3 driving modes:
In “Manual”, YOU are in charge of controlling the train.
In “Yard” and “Road” mode the AI drives the steam engine for you. You can easily switch between the 3 modes in a small window.
...and you can also play it in multiplayer. But I am solo player only. So can't really say anything about that.
...and you can put "watch", "observe" and "trainspotting" in there too. It is all one big lovely mix of (steam) railroading.
Next day you do the same as above...
But today is different from yesterday, because the mix of freight deliveries varies from day to day, depending on what contracts, and the LEVEL of said contracts, you have accepted.
You dispatch from a CTC dispatching panel in the station building at "Bryson".
In the beginning your railroad have not gotten access to the town of Bryson, so you have neither CTC nor any signals at the beginning of the game, and you must hand throw ALL the switches yourself. Once you have gotten access to the town of Bryson, it is possible to start building up the CTC.
Every day just happens to be a different driving and shunting puzzle for you.
YOU choose, how many industry contracts and therefore puzzle intensity you want.
Your railroad starts out small, but you can choose to re-build bridges (that was lost in a big flood) to gain access to more railroad, more stations, more potential costumers... by buying and delivering the freightcars with the needed materials needed to rebuild that bridge.
I suggest you start out SLOWLY accepting the industry contracts, and not just accept everything and max up the levels at once. Because at some point you will end up with TOO MUCH to do, in too little time, and on too few tracks.
There are many steam engines, and cars/wagons (passenger and freight) of varying sizes and prizes, and they look great. Even a couple of (expensive) early diesels.
The landscape looks good, LOTS of trees, or none. (You can scale the density of the trees quite a lot in the settings). Makes a BIG difference in looks, and perhaps PC performance, which I am not troubled by. I am running high settings with lots of trees and get a consistent 60fps.
The basic core gameplay is already so much fun, that I don't quite notice that in some places, the game is still basic and EARLY ACCESS. Buildings are often lacking here and there, Railcars are empty. Passengers and cargo loads is there in numbers, but are invisible. Most fully loaded freight cars still looks dissapointingly empty. Coal cars, and perhaps others, do have a visible load that varies with the fill level.
And I do experience 'crashes'. Game seems to, sometimes, but not often, and under conditions I don't know, let the mouse clicks/KB commands seap through to the desktop and stop the game from running.
BUT. There are frequent auto-saves and I haven't had any big losses of game progression.
A BIG recommendation from me.
Steam User 14
Oh, it is so addictive. It might not be accurate down to the last detail, but as some reviewers on youtube have mentioned, they got the VIBE. They got the vibe down enough that I think even rivet counters can enjoy themselves. Plenty of camera view options. It feels nicer than any train sim I have yet played.
The game itself is stable. Even though it's early access, it feels pretty complete, save for some minor details, but hey! Early access! The gameplay is smooth and enjoyable. The ability to switch between sandbox and company modes on the fly is fantastic. The early game could be a little grindy, but because of that flexibility to switch those modes on the fly, you never HAVE to grind to get your big fancy locomotives if you really don't want to. I think the devs have a solid understanding of what makes their game fun. It is very clear a lot of time and effort went to making the gameplay enjoyable. I was satisfied with the game on day one, but it just keeps getting better with each update. I mean, I've put in 681 hours, according to Steam, so if I was going to get sick of it, I think I would have already!
Oh! Also worth noting, you can just drop what you are doing immediately and save your game. Like, there is no waiting for a scenario to end or anything. There is no time jump when you hop back in. The save system is super smooth and takes no time at all. I've been playing single player this whole time, so I can't speak to the multiplayer functionality... HOWEVER, if I need to do something else urgently, I'm in and out of the game quickly and smoothly, even on my potato of a laptop - which is more than I can say for pretty much every other train sim I've ever played. I have no regrets. Even in its early access-ness, the game is plenty of fun, and I've been enjoying the crap out of it!
Steam User 15
As an ex railroad brakeman, I gotta say its like being back on the railroad again! Definitely one of the more realistic train games that I have played out of all the train games I have! Oh, if the developers read this and want some feedback, message my profile if you can
Steam User 11
i purchased this game the day after it came out, and was genuinely suprised by it. the locomotives models alone are to be commended. however, before purchasing this game, i would definitely keep a couple thing and some pros and cons in mind
1. this game DOES NOT simulate accurate steam locomotive tendencies, (I.E. you don't need to keep an eye on the firebox, steam locomotives stay at working pressure, wheel slippage is not present)
2. this game is still in early access, though i will argue i thuroughly enjoy playing it as is. you will run across the occasional problem/bug
3. this game CAN be compared to others like it (I.E. Railroads online) though each has their own unique way of playing. in this game, you don't have to lay the tracks by hand, you do so in milestones by placing cars in a certain section of track
keeping these in mind, another point to make is the primary play style of this game is driving the locomotives and delivering cargo to its destination, as with any other transportation game. HOWEVER, the game still allows you the freedom to decide how big you want your railway to grow, the milestones ARE there, but if you don't want to extend, that's totally fine!
don't want to serve a certain industry? that's fine too.
want to stay as a short line with the starter locos? you absolutely can
want to become a mineral hauling heavyweight branch line? you can do that too!
now for the cons that i found
1.early access, which can make it a blessing and a curse. no game is perfect. all games take time to become perfect
2. controls, though now i have gotten used to the controls, it did take me a good while to get used to all the controls, so don't expect to hit the ground running, you WILL need to do the tutorial in order to experience the game well and not get frustrated, which brings me on to my next point
3. the tutorial itself does not progress automatically, with it,again,being early access. it can be easy to get lost if your now 100% following along with it, so be mindful when you're done reading, click the next button on the tutorial
overall, i do feel this game is a genuine addition to the genre and the railroading community as a whole, and i hope to see it do more
Steam User 12
This is the railroading game I’ve been waiting years to play. As it stands now, even in the Early Access state, Railroader has so much to offer and a lot to do. Its primary aim is to simulate railroad logistics in the Transitional Period, covering everything from yard switching and freight to passenger service as well. Don’t go into this expecting in-depth operation of locomotives—the controls are simplified in order to make the overall task of running a short line much more approachable to a wider player base. And that’s completely fine by me, as this is a video game at the end of the day.
When it comes to the equipment itself, there are a wide variety of steam locomotives to choose from, as well as a couple of diesel engines that serve as more of an “end game” acquisition. While I enjoy operating the different steam engines, I’m certainly looking forward to using more diesel down the line (I’m a diesel guy after all).
Highly recommend picking this up if you’re a railroad nerd!
Steam User 10
Day One purchase. While I've had my fair share of bugs, the dev team has been wonderful in replying, and subsequently fixing / making note of said issues.
At the time of this review, I have almost 703 hours of near constant playtime. That's almost a month of my life stuck staring at virtual rolling stock.
The game is worth the price tag.
Also, Southern Railwayisms.