It's finally on sale @9,99$(instead of 39,99$) on Steam. (they seems to have,again, a server problem and can't access the store...)
Now waiting for the Acela Express to get on sale again(lowest was 6,99$ instead of 19,99$)

NEC is a very detailed route. It came with precious few scenarios, though, and many on the Steam Workshop require the other NEC related DLC so I can't play them.

Quite a change of pace from my other US freight routes. Still, there appear to be ample opportunities for freight hops between the small industrial sites along the main passenger run. I don't know enough about the schedules and real traffic to try to build any decent scenarios, though.

I'm not really a fan of passenger routes; my previous train toys as a child were always the diesel freight ones. How's that 90-mile of track for freight?

same thing as me, but when there is a high speed train involved than it's ok


Havent really tested, but I ran the 1st scenario and 1st thing I noticed is that the default train(donL't know the name sorry) have some internal radio chatter wich adds a lot for immersion. Than I passed a red light and suprisingly the scenario didn't end there... but it seems there was an other train comming my way.... did not end well

That's funny, but I like the ICE 3 train.... is that what you mean? I can do high-speed runs, but not the stop-every-5-minutes-for-the-inter-city-metro.

Care to post pics of the scenario? Like an AAR? Would love to see it!

Hi Adlabs, if I recall correctly the lads that run NER (North East Rail- a virtual railway for the Trainsimulator series) have a few really good freight scenarios for the NEC (and other routes). You might want to check them out.

Kind regards,
Dave

Thanks Leaf, I shall check into that.

ICE, as for freight on the NEC, there were no included scenarios which featured freight run (at least that I recall). But the sides of the main NEC route are filled with urban and industrial types of areas with small sidings. I can easily imagine that short runs between these points would work.

The only trains included with the route were the electric passenger loco and cars, which seem to make frequent stops in the included scenarios. Apparently the faster Acela Express makes longer runs between stops, but I'm only guessing.

A sweet freight route would make this a quick sell for me, but with just passenger trains, especially the wonky-looking ones, well, I'm not really interested in those.

Well, all the default engines included with the US assets are an easy fit. I built a test scenario about a year ago using one of the default SD locos and freight cars, and it was interesting, aside from my time tables and tracks for the AI traffic having no realism.

It is a route that, in my opinion, hasn't been very thoroughly explored by scenario makers and yet has potential to be one of the more versatile routes put out by Railsimulator (or whatever they've decided to call themselves now). There is a plethora of industry and a lot of side-trackage that appears to be serving those areas. I believe part of the problem in getting designers to more thoroughly look at NEC was the lacklustre quality of the initial release with some improvement coming in later patches and a lot of us still haven't returned to explore the route better. There are a few decent freight scenarios on the workshop for NEC but they tend to rely on add-ons. It might be worth sifting through, however, in case you find one using stock engines.