We are pleased to announce that Railroader 2024.6 is now available on the main branch after several months on the experimental branch! This release brings major new features like Auto Engineer Waypoint Mode and Timetables, along with new engines, new scenery, and numerous other enhancements and fixes. Check out our announcement post for a full overview of what's new:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1683150/view/498314610455086160
An important note for those of you who were using mods with Railroader 2024.5: please check them carefully for updates for 2024.6! Many 2024.5 mods are incompatible unless updated! (Railroader does not yet officially support mods.)
Also, a reminder that we plan to remove the 2024.5.x branch on March 17th.
What's Next for Railroader?
We expect to continue building out scenery as well as refining our equipment, but there are two key features that we plan to focus on over the next few months: Maintenance of Way and the Tutorial.
Railroader's current tutorial is functional but we see a lot of possibilities to make it much more visual and engaging. One of our goals is that Railroader be accessible to players who are interested but don't know a lot about trains, and we see this as an integral part of that.
Maintenance of Way is something we've been talking about internally for a long time. Aside from being an interesting part of railroading to simulate, we think it would add compelling tension for mid-to-late game players, as well as being a natural means of making completing milestones more immersive. We have a lot of ideas we're excited to work on, but this is a very large feature and we expect it to take some time before we have progress to share – or a new experimental branch to try it out!
Thank you to our Railroader community for your support! We're happy to finally share all of the progress in 2024.6 with you, and look forward to making Railroader even better in the future.