It's quite fun and enjoyable, but also a very good way to pass the time if there isn't much to do, each in-game day can last a full real day depending on your settings, and how large your line is, you also do not need to pilot each loco manually, you can tell locomotives to go to places, or to couple to things, and they'll just do it.
In addition, the game is based on Unity, which means you get access to loads of mods via UnityModManager, even though the game is still in EA, there are plenty of mods made by very talented people that add in Locomotives, new businesses to deliver cars to, the cars themselves, cargos. There is even a mod that flattens the Red Marble Grade, one of the toughest grades in the whole game for locomotives to conquer.
Overall it is quite a fun game, it is a little bit pricey for what the base-game contains, but it's nowhere near the cost of something like TSW and its millions of DLCs.
PROS:
+loads of mods and easy to mod
+excellent for just passing the time
+sandbox mode
+nice looking rolling stock
+options to toggle how much shunting/switching you want
+runs well on Linux using Proton (you can even mod it, provided that UMM is being ran with WINE, Rail Loader also works on Linux natively too, but it no-longer is offically distributed because of controversy surrounding it and the creator. It is required for most map mods.)
CONS:
-some keybinds are a bit of a pain to find
-mightve needed a tiny bit more time in the oven
-graphics of the terrain aren't very good, and grass can be a performance hog
-a few of the cargos in the game do not have a model, so the wagon they are on looks empty (devs have said they are wanting to fix this in the next update)
-no way to tell a loco to go and refuel itself
-some steam locos have weird interactions with the fueling stations, like water hoses clipping into the loco model (do not worry, none of the fueling stands for steam and diesel locos have a collision, so its just visual)
-i spent so much time playing that my dog sold off my house, and i am now being evicted.
OVERALL
8/10, would definitely recommend if you are into trains, especially late American steam locos and early American diesels, there is also much talk of MoW work trains being added in a future update, so you can maintain trackage aswell, I do not think there is any other train simulator that has this feature on the market, not even Derail Valley.
