Nov 12, 2024

Train Sim World 5 Roadmap - November 2024

Train Sim World® 5 - DTG_Alex

TL;DR (too long; didn’t read) Summary

Dovetail Games Season of Reveals 2024
A new month-wide celebration across December, with exciting announcements and project updates each weekday, ending on the 20th with a special surprise to close off the year!

Content Up Ahead

MBTA Commuter: Boston-Worcester/Framingham Line – Releasing Today!
TSW5 Gameplay Add-on Bundle – coming soon!

Third Party Partner Updates

Announcing Mittenwaldbahn – A Brand New Route from TSG!
West Coast Main Line: Preston – Carlisle from Just Trains coming November 26th
Manchester Airport Commuter from Alan Thomson Simulation
Fife Circle Line Levenmouth Branch Update - Coming before the end of the year
Introducing Incredible Trains – A New Third Party Solo Developer!

Patches and Updates

WCML South – Major Improvements coming Early December
Train Sim World 5 – Released Updates
State of Play: Performance, Crashes and Textures
Mod Packaging Optimisations

Community Corner

Train Sim World: Tycoon – Play now on Roblox!

The Train Sim World Roadmap

Welcome to the next roadmap for Train Sim World 5, where we share insights into our progress on new content, updates and future announcements for developments from both our teams, and our range of third-party partners.

This Roadmap is your monthly check-in with our development teams and an insight into what to expect as we continue to move forwards from the launch and towards the new year. Read on for news from both us and our partners, including brand new announcements, updates and sneak peeks on our current routes in-development, as well as new ways for you to get involved with our community, and exciting upcoming events!

In this edition, we’ll be celebrating the launch of MBTA Commuter today, and announcing new TSW5 gameplay packs coming to gen9 and PC platforms in December. From our third parties, the TSG team have a brand-new route announcement to reveal today, with some initial screenshots, and then we pass over to Just Trains, Alan Thomson Simulations and Rivet Games for more updates on their upcoming add-ons. Finally, we introduce a new partner into the TSW programme with Incredible Trains!

December is about to get very exciting, because in this roadmap you will also hear about the Dovetail Games Season of Reveals 2024, a new announcement event coming up that spans across the entire month and celebrates the end of the year with a huge range of new announcements and updates across Train Sim World, and our other titles. We'll also have a grand reveal to end the year off in style, so stay tuned and get guessing as to what it could be!

Our development teams will continue the conversation around upcoming improvements coming to TSW5, in particular to WCML Improvements, as well as updating you all around the situation regarding performance and crashes we're seeing in TSW5. We will always continue to take on your valued community feedback, and we discuss more about how this has helped informed our improvements coming in December.

Finally, if you’re new or returning, be sure to join us for our Roadmap Livestream tonight (Tuesday, November 12th at 19:00 UTC), where we discuss all of the points below, and answer your questions! You can find a stream event link at the end of this article.

Content Up Ahead

MBTA Commuter: Boston - Framingham/Worcester Line – Releasing Today!

Train Sim World 5’s first Add-on is here, with an adventure across the east coast of the USA and the culturally rich city of Boston, MA! Get ready to go purple with the MBTA HSP46 and MBTA F40PH-3C diesel locomotives, including the BTC & CTC bi-level cars.

If you want to catch gameplay for this upcoming route, be sure to check out our First Look Video below, or watch-back our recent MBTA Commuter Preview livestream, hosted by our Executive Producer of Trains Matt Peddlesden, and our Community Manager Harry!

Earlier today we shared our MBTA Commuter launch article, which will give you a rundown of what you can expect from this latest US release, and if you want to dive head first into the full details, service layers, and get an extensive look at the history and operation of the signalling systems found across the line, be sure to check out our MBTA Commuter Deep Dive article

We hope you’re excited to return to Boston, and following the release on all platforms, we will be unlocking our MBTA Commuter feedback thread for you to share your thoughts directly with our development team!

Train Sim World 5 Gameplay Add-ons – Coming Soon!

Coming up in December, we’ll be releasing all-new gameplay add-ons that aim to bring more content for the routes included in Train Sim World 5; West Coast Main Line South, Frankfurt-Fulda and the San Bernardino Line.

As an important note, these gameplay pack will only be available for players on PC platforms (Steam and Epic Games) and Gen-9 consoles (PS5 and Xbox Series S/X).

Our teams have additionally been working on further improvements to support these core routes alongside these gameplay packs, for all platforms, to help improve the experience and address community feedback. In particular, thi includes extensive improvements for the WCML South route, which we share more news about later in this article.

Expect more details about the content with these packs in early December, with a new event coming up that we're exicted to announce to you all today!

Dovetail Games Season of Reveals 2024

As we approach the holiday season, we've got a real treat prepared that will fill the entire month with excitement and speculation!

We'll calling it the "Season of Reveals 2024", an event that will fold together all new TSW add-on reveals, additional news on announced projects and updates from a huge range of our third-party development teams! This will mainly focus on Train Sim World, but will also include our other titles, with a new look at our VR title, TSW VR: New York, future development details on City Transport Simulator: Tram and more!

The celebration starts on December 2nd 2024, and every day at 14:00 UTC we will release a new update video, in a similar style to our "Take a Ticket" reveals in our recent Dovetail Direct. It all concludes on December 20th with a special surprise that we've been waiting to tell you about for quite some time!

Oh, and you can expect weekly giveaways for TSW5 add-on keys throughout the month too! This should be a really exciting period as we round off the year, and get everyone on board for a fantastic new year ahead.

As a note, we won't have a December 2024 roadmap, but we'll catch you at the start of next month with all the fun reveals! There is just one new announcement we wanted to pull forward for you all today...

Third-Party Partner Updates

Announcing Mittenwaldbahn – A Brand New Route from TSG!

Get ready to head back to Austria and discover the Mittenwald Pass in TSG's newest upcoming route: Mittenwaldbahn: Innsbruck – Garmisch-Partenkirchen!

This cross-border mountainous adventure will be sure to leave you breatheless, and the TSG team wanted to further the excitement with a short teaser for the line.

And for a final spoiler, with Mittenwaldbahn you'll be adding the new ÖBB 1020 Krokodil locomotive to your collections, rewinding the clock back to 1989.

That's it, our lips are now sealed! We can guess many of you are extremely keen to find out more, so hold tight as our December Season of Reveals event will be the chance for us to provide more insight into the gameplay you can expect, and reveal all new details!

West Coast Main Line: Preston – Carlisle from Just Trains

If you've not heard about the impending Just Trains route, you may be stuck in the past - then again, this 1980s nostalgic route may just do that to you. West Coast Main Line: Preston - Carlisle will feature the electrified core of the WCML from Preston to Carlisle, riding the new Class 87/0 and offer DMU services with an updated Class 101 across the Morecambe Promenade branch to the seaside!

To kick things off with this section - after reviewing where we are with builds, we have made the difficult decision to delay the release of the Add-on until Tuesday 26th November.

This is to allow the Just Trains and our internal QA teams to review some final issues and polish the route.

Thursday's preview stream will still happen, as before, this Thursday (14th), in which we're looking forward to showing you the route in action with Thomas and Benedict from Just Trains - thank you for your patience as we get this highly-anticipated release into the best possible condition for you to enjoy.

We've shared a huge host of information for the line from our recent articles, with more from the Just Trains Development Blog, and today we be sharing details about the services you can expect with the route.

The trains, services and timetabling reflects the scene set in the northwest circa 1986 and features a wide variety of traffic from the era. The total number of playable services available with all layers included from other Add-ons is over 300, with plenty of additional AI traffic to see as part of the experience.

Class 87/2 = 100+ services
Class 101 DMU = 50+ services
Class 47/4 = 50+ services
Class 08 = 25+ services

It is worth noting that timetables are more than just a number, and on a route as complex as this, the totals are not always an accurate depiction of the experience. For example, there are multiple light loco moves, and they are split into parts, but on this route, only the first of these parts is selectable in the main menu, the rest you play by continuing the session after the first service. This will be explained further in the forthcoming preview stream.

Class 87 express services run the full length of the route from Preston to Carlisle. These vary from London Euston - Carlisle trains (arriving from off the map at Preston) to ‘cross country’ services running from the south of England off the map at Carlisle and onward to Scotland. These expresses almost always stop at Lancaster with some variation in services that stop at Oxenholme and Penrith. The Class 87 also works steel and freightliner trains.

The Class 101 operates stopping services alongside the Class 142 Pacer (which substitutes services for owners of Blackpool Branches). These mainly focus around Lancaster and run from Carnforth (originating from off the map at Barrow or Leeds via Skipton) to Morecambe. A few Class 101 services also exist from Preston through to Carnforth from where they head off map towards Barrow or Carlisle via the Cumbrian Coast.

The Class 47 features on a variety of freight and passenger services throughout the route.

The Class 08 is used mostly for the shunting of parcels stock at Preston whereas at Carlisle it is used for coaching stock shunting at both ends of Carlisle station, but also sees service on freight trip workings originating in Kingmoor Yard and running to various places in Carlisle itself.

As mentioned in our Coming Soon article, a total of 6 hours of shunting is available using the Class 08.

When split out by service type, the number of services for each type of train is as follows:

Class 87

21 Intercity West Coast Diagrams
24 Cross Country Diagrams
12 Sleeper Diagrams
11 Mail Diagrams
11 Intermodal Diagrams
8 Steel Trains
6 Speedlink Diagrams

Class 47

2 Passenger
4 Additional Passenger Diagrams
4 Railtour Diagrams
3 Steel Diagrams
3 Mail Diagrams
2 Limestone Diagrams
2 Ballast Diagrams
5 Oil Diagrams
3 Speedlink Diagrams

Class 101

52 Carnforth/Lancaster - Morecambe Diagrams
10 Preston - Barrow Diagrams

A Note for players on 8th generation consoles, after reviewing performance we've amended the timetable to provide a suitable experience for those on Xbox One and PlayStation 4. This will include the provision of a streamlined timetable and an absence of road traffic throughout the environment.

Read more about additional service layers and notable AI in our full November 2024 Roadmap Article

As a reminder, we have our West Coast Main Line: Preston - Carlisle preview livestream this week on Thursday November 14th, joined by Tom and Benedict from the Just Trains team, and giving you a full showcase of the line ahead of it's release.

And to close off this section, the Just Trains team wanted to leave you with a final teaser before we head into our December announcements:

“No need to pant with excitement! In the Top Ten, this DLC will Hit That Perfect Beat especially for those with Suspicious Minds as It’s A Kind Of Magic.”

Manchester Airport Commuter from Alan Thomson Simulation

In our last roadmap, we introduced Alan Thomson Simulation to the community, with the announcement of their first route in TSW: Manchester Airport Commuter!

You'll be able to explore an improved Manchester Piccadilly, multiple modelled depots along the route and two branches of busy commuter traffic to get stuck into.

That's all we'll share for now, as we'll be back in our December reveals with new screenshots and information for the route, and we look forward to showing you the progress for ATS's first TSW add-on.

Fife Circle Line Levenmouth Branch Update

Coming from our partners at Rivet Games, we’re heading back to the Scottish capital with more details about the upcoming release of the Fife Circle & Levenmouth Lines in Train Sim World 5.

If you're only now learning about the Fife Circle line route, be sure to head to our Fife Circle Out Now article, and discover the 52-mile loop around Scotland, starting at Edinburgh Waverly station and splitting into a Main and Loop line at Inverkeithing, following the iconic sight of the Forth bridge from the window of the ScotRail Class 170 Turbostar.

This new update, coming for free to owners of the Fife Circle Line add-on in TSW5, will feature:

5.5 mile route extension for the new 2024 Levenmouth railway link
Over 40 new Timetable services on the new branch
2 brand-new stations to discover and explore
16 additional collectables to find whilst riding the extension
Fully playable Conductor Mode within timetable services

As a note, the ScotRail Class 158 Rail Link livery from Skyhook Games will not be releasing alongside this update, and will come out at a future date. Additionally, the Fife Circle line add-on will have it's route name amended to reflect this new branch being included after the release of this update.

The Leven branch is a re-opening of an old railway line, branching off East from the Thornton North Junction near Glenrothes to the seaside town of Leven, Fife. It goes via the first new Station at Cameron Bridge, then on towards the coastline, terminating at Leven Station.

You'll even be able to encounter the famous ScotRail dog Loki at Leven station, featured in many ads and social posts from the real world!

Introducing Incredible Trains – A New Third Party Solo Developer!

We always love bringing in new third party developers to help us build the best version of Train Sim World possible, and today we have an exciting new solo developer joining the programme: Johannes Hartmann of Incredible Trains

Let’s introduce them and hear some thoughts about their first project.

Q: Can you tell us more about yourself and your background in development?

“Hello! I’m Johannes, founder of Incredible Trains, the latest addition to Train Sim World's third-party developer community. As of now, I’m the sole developer at this brand-new studio, and I'm thrilled to announce that my very first UK route add-on will be joining Train Sim World soon.

With a background in Computer Science, I first got into game development by modding for Transport Fever 2, creating UK rolling stock and asset mods. My proudest achievement as a modder was likely the Transport Fever 2 Timetable Mod, which significantly expanded gameplay options for the community.

I also have some experience in 3D modelling, so when I started experimenting with the TSW PC Editor, it quickly became clear that Unreal Engine would be a fantastic platform to learn new skills while building something I love. What began as a side project during my PhD has since grown into my first game studio, and I’m now gearing up to release my debut UK route add-on!

Dovetail’s fantastic third-party developer program, along with the support of their developers, made it possible for me to turn this vision into reality. I’m so excited to share more about the route in the coming weeks leading up to release.”

Q: What is it that made you want to develop content for Train Sim World? And what's the nature of the project that you're working on?

“I’ve always been a passionate train enthusiast. Though I’m not originally from the UK, I’ve long been fascinated by its railway system. Now living here, I spend a lot of time on the local routes, and this upcoming release will actually feature one of my regular journeys.

I also have a strong love for creating virtual worlds. Over the years, I’ve recreated real-life places in multiple games, but I often felt limited by each game’s constraints, particularly when it came to replicating railway realism. The Unreal Engine provides me with the creative freedom I’ve been looking for, while Train Sim World delivers the realism I want to bring my visions to life.

Originally, this project was intended as a small learning exercise in Unreal and game development. However, I was ambitious from the start, choosing a significant UK region for my first route. I quickly learned what a massive undertaking route creation is, and eventually narrowed my focus to one line that I’m excited to share soon.”

Q: What part of the development process are you really enjoying?

“Developing a route for Train Sim World is incredibly multifaceted, and I’ve come to enjoy every part of it.

Laying the tracks, adding trackside details, and setting up the signalling system were particularly rewarding. I loved learning about the intricacies of UK railway operations and translating that into the route’s functionality.

Then, of course, there’s the scenery. Recreating real-world locations as accurately as possible is a huge part of my work. Modelling and texturing the local buildings, and then seeing everything come together, is incredibly fulfilling.

Gameplay design has also been a highlight for me. Creating a timetable was a detailed process involving the study of real train movements and ensuring smooth interactions between different services. I also enjoyed designing scenarios with little story elements to help players feel fully immersed in the route.

Lastly, there’s the rolling stock itself. This route will feature a train I’ve dedicated a lot of time to. Getting it into the game was challenging but immensely rewarding. Driving my virtual recreation of this route has been especially nostalgic for me, as I now live farther away from it than I used to. It’s a special feeling to relive those journeys in the game, knowing that each detail was crafted from my own memories and experiences.”

Thank you, Johannes! We’ll be back in a couple of weeks with our December Season of Reveals event to lift the curtains on this first new route from Incredible Trains. Oh, the excitement – but where could it be?

Patches & Updates

WCML South - Major Improvements coming Early December

Following the launch of TSW5, we’ve been listening closely to your feedback for the West Coast Main Line route, and we set in place a commitment to bring you all a range of improvements that will help deliver the best possible experience for the line. Since then, we’ve shipped multiple changes with fixes and minor changes over a series of post-release updates, and today we’re happy to announce that our teams are ready to deliver the large-scale route enhancements we’ve been working hard on, with support and collaboration from key community members.

This overhaul will include 800 new timetable services, with additional rail tours, a rework to freight gameplay with new layers, a range of large scenery improvements including tweaks to nighttime lighting, terrain and water texture updates, 710 stop markers and route-wide fixes and tweaks. Alongside this, we'll be adding the Class 350 suspension physics, and we thank for your patience as we've implemented this.

See below for a full breakdown of what you can expect:

Gameplay Improvements

Added new suspension physics to the Class 350

Timetable Improvements

Over 800 new services added. Bringing the total of services to 2000+ with over 990 being playable
Freight fully reworked with multiple layers, unloading, shunting and correct speeds/pathing.
New freight layers (New TSW5 Gameplay pack, HOA, JNA, MFA and TEA wagons)
Fully reworked London Overground and London Underground services (Credit to Fawx for layers, and additional support, testing and research by Vieon).
Marston Vale full services including playable ECS moves
87 'Friday Charter' rail tour
Flying Scotsman 'The Cheshireman' rail tour
Class 390's timed for 125mph
Brent sidings and other yard statics
Sleeper static
Fix incorrect/missing service numbers and portal destinations linked

Scenery Improvements

Scenery enhancements along the route, including distant and track side scenery
Updated water materials
Added 710 stop markers
Added PIS to Euston ramps with new Euston concourse screen
Added disused Primrose Hill station. Now a starting point for freight.
Added disused Brent Sidings
Added Willesden 'F' sidings as playable area
Added blue glow to Wembley arches
Added rusty rail ends
Fixed light sources not having ToD 4 emissive values
Fixed light baking at Primrose Hill tunnel
Removed foliage overlapping tracks
Removed excessive light sources around original Bakerloo section to help performance
Terrain and foliage colour correcting (Tree LOD's match model colour, grass matches scenery objects grass etc)

To keep you informed of our progress, we are now in the final steps of development after working with our beta teams for their feedback, and we’ll be shortly moving towards QA testing and then assigning it to builds, ready for the release around this time next month.

We are extremely grateful for the community support our teams have received when developing these improvements and wanted to thank you all for sharing your feedback and waiting patiently for an update on our progress. We hope these changes will give the WCML South route the full experience many of you have wanted since our first announcement.

Train Sim World 5 – Released Updates

Since our last roadmap, we've continued with our series of post-release updates to stay onto of key communit-raised issues and address immediate feedback we're seeing across a range of core content.

October 15th – First major patch to TSW5, with range of improvements across core content.
October 28th – Crash fixes and various core route improvements.
November 7th – Small update to UI, localisation and preparation for MBTA Commuter.

State of Play: Performance, Crashes and Textures

In this section, we wanted to share with you an honest update for where we're at with regards to overall performance, crash reports in TSW5, and linked to these is also the discussion around textures appearing at a lower-resolution than expected for console platforms. All of these are tied to available memory budgets being exceeded, and our teams have been investigating ways to save memory and help reduce the impact and frequency of these issues.

We've been able to identify small improvements and optimisations we can make, some of which have already been shipped in patches released so far, and the team are constantly reviewing performance data across core content, looking at FPS averages at key stations across the routes, and tracking the overall volume of crashes for each platform.

These issues remain a clear focus of our teams to improve, work is ongoing and profiling continues, but to stay transparent with everyone across our community, it's unfortunately not something our teams will be able to deliver this side of the holidays. We will continue in the new year on our plan to bring you further optimisations with the aim to further reduce the volume of crashes we're seeing in Train Sim World 5, and allow for the best performance possible.

We are grateful for you all staying patient whilst we keep at it, thank you.

Mod Packaging Optimisations

For those of you who enjoy diving into the community modding scene, we've got more good news coming soon, in the form of improvements to optimise loading times when booting with several mods. This primarily affects any modded content that doesn't contain AssetRegistry files, vastly reducing the amount of time needed to load these when booting the game.

As an example from our testing, we've found that with a sample of 50 mods installed, these improvements reduced the time taken to load from roughly 7 minutes, all the way down to 1 minute.
Additionally, alongside this update we have more changes:

Add-on manager will now fully support scenery overlay mods with dependencies.
Added mod support on the Microsoft Store/Gamepass version of the game along with the ability to use the Public Editor with that version of the game.

These changes are not yet implemented, but we look forward to supporting our community everywhere we can, and we hope for those who enjoy using community-made content, this will be a big QoL boost.

Community Corner

Train Sim World: Tycoon – Play now on Roblox!

A couple weeks ago, we released our first game onto the Roblox platform, Train Sim World: Tycoon, which has since seen over 5000 positive ratings, and a staggering 1 million visits! We are so excited to see such a positive welcome for this new title, and we can’t wait to keep developing it further with our friends at the Talewind team.

If you’ve not heard about it, this is a multiplayer experience that allows you and a group of friends to build and run your own train stations, and drive a range of locomotives around a charming, stylised world – with easy driving controls that are perfect for all ages! Be sure to check out our TSW Tycoon website to find out more details!

Our journey has only just begun, we've got many more improvements and new content coming up in the future that we can’t wait to share with you all! If you're interested, why not join our Dovetail Games Roblox group, where we can alos see your initial feedback and thoughts!

Roadmap Livestream

To wrap up this roadmap, join Executive Producer Matt, and Senior Community Manager Alex as we talk about all the things we’ve featured above and answer your submitted questions in our November 2024 Roadmap livestream. The stream will begin from 19:00 UTC on our YouTube and Twitch channels.

Have a question for us? Put it in our November 2024 Roadmap Q&A thread, and we’ll answer as many as we can live tonight!

Find out more about Train Sim World 5 by following @trainsimworld on X/Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok.