Railroads Online

TLDR-Not recommended without bug fixes. I have logged more than a few hours on this one. It was a fun game on and off through early access. However, the finished product lacks advertised features and polish. That was forgivable for a work in progress but it isn't for a ‘finished’ product. The released version features a collection of locomotives that are interesting, but the performance and modeling is inconsistent and incongruous. Also, the big 2-6-6-2 that should be the big reward for slogging through the ranked XP system is disappointingly glitchy and borderline unusable. Two features that are advertised are completely missing. As of 6/23/2026 the store page on steam still shows that you can “upgrade and customize your existing locomotives”. This is not true without using third party save file editing software. Also, your are supposed to be able to manage your company, but there are no game mechanics that allow you to manage anything related to finance, billing, ownership of track or industries, nothing! All you get is the most basic reward for delivering cargo that you can use to expand your collection of trains. There is no risk involved in wrecking and no penalty other than the time commitment required to put the pieces back on track. The steam simulation is grossly inadequate, cutoff does not work properly, there is no injector or crosshead pump modeled, but you have to fill the firebox with fuel so you wind up filling half of the fireman’s role. It’s a bad compromise, either give me all the controls or none when it comes to firing and I will be much happier. Trains are capped at a laughably low speed that is historically inaccurate for many (not necessarily all) of the locomotives depicted. Curves can be laid hilariously sharp for no good reason other than to make it possible to navigate the maps which can be very cramped with huge elevation changes making everything difficult without building some ridiculous loops and switchbacks (maybe that’s the point?). Then there is no provision for train brake simulation, despite multiple locomotives and cars having all the necessary airbrake components plainly visible. On an insane mountain railroad this is just unacceptable. Train brakes were common on the narrow gage in the era depicted by this game; there is no excuse for them not being included. Multiplayer is not good, the in game chat feature is cumbersome, there is only one character model with zero customization possible and rubber banding is so visually distracting that it ruins the experience altogether. For a game that has ‘online’ in the title this is not acceptable. Then there’s the community. To be clear, I have no qualms with the player base, it has ups and downs, there are some real passionate players out there that have found ways to enjoy this game warts and all. I think that's great for them. Personally, I'm done until the bugs get straightened out. I've decided not to include what I think of the community moderators in this review, take from that what you will.