Custom Realistic Route Builder for Train Sim Fans
A drag-and-drop tool where hobbyists design their own fictional commuter or regional rail routes with believable station spacing, signalling, and surrounding town detail, then export a route file compatible with major train sims.
Model railway hobbyists and train sim players who want to drive routes inspired by their hometown or favourite Japanese/European lines but lack the time to learn full 3D modelling
- Procedural scenery generator that drops believable houses, level crossings, substations, and powerlines along a track the user draws on a satellite-style map
- Export route geometry to popular train sim formats, or share via a 'drive in browser' viewer that runs the route without owning the base game
- A community gallery where users can fork each other's routes, vote on the most realistic, and request feature additions from the dev
Running Train's 422-point HN thread and raving Steam reviews prove there is pent-up demand for highly realistic solo-made routes, but the underlying world-building took one person months of hand-placed assets; a procedural tool shortens that from months to hours.
Running Train's HN thread (≈302 pts on Social Protocols' ranking) and Kotaku-piece coverage confirm unusually strong buzz around single-author realistic Japanese routes, but the sub-niche of people wanting a *builder tool* (vs. ready-made routes) is much smaller than route buyers.Solo Dev's Train Sim Created Is Being Called The Best Ever Made - Kotaku ↗Quality News: Hacker News Rankings ↗
No drag-and-drop procedural route builder surfaced; existing routes are hand-built via Dovetail's TSC editor or documented in community manuals — ChrisTrains' developer docs and Steam's 220-page Route Builder's Reference show users still hand-place assets.Train Simulator Developer Documentation ↗The Route Builder's Reference Manual - Steam Community ↗
Dovetail monetises routes as paid Steam DLC and subscriptions, but I found no public pricing for a standalone route-building tool; willingness to pay for a creator-tool is plausible but unproven at the requested price point.Steam Publisher: Dovetail Games ↗Train Sim World - Dovetail Live ↗
Train sim has been a durable genre for 20+ years (MSTS 2001 → TSC → TSW 4, plus Run8, Open Rails), and the Japanese/European scenario-loving niche shows strong multi-decade retention.RUNNING TRAIN | 走ル列車! on Steam ↗
Outputs must conform to proprietary engine formats (TSW/TSC, Run8, OpenRails BLET); realistic signalling, station spacing and surrounding-town detail all require large hand-curated or procedurally-assembled asset libraries — months-to-weeks of engineering, not hours.How To Create A Real Life Route? | Dovetail Games Forums ↗