TL;DR (too long; didn’t read) Summary

• Blackpool Branches: Preston - Blackpool & Ormskirk – Coming November 14th!
  
• A New Route! Announcing a new Swiss route for Train Sim World 4 developed by Rivet Games!
  
• Rivet Games Gameplay Packs - Two new gameplay packs from Rivet Games: 'RhB Arosa Aggregates' & 'Engineering Express'
  
• New Partner - Introducing SimTrack Studios and their first gameplay/loco pack!
  
• Patches & Updates - We reflect back on the status of recent patches to Train Sim World 4.
  
• Winter Core Update - Our upcoming core updates bringing Formation Designer, Suspension Systems and Mini HUD Improvements!
  
• Progress on Improvements - Köln-Aachen's New Timetable, New York-Trenton Performance, Midland Main Line and TSW3 Updates.
  
• Updates & Announcements
  
• Community Corner & Highlights
  

And to cover the changes from the previous Roadmap Overview, we added new items and moved up content to fit into updated timeframes. Here's the list of changes:

• Revealed and named all content from this roadmap.
  
• Added Skyhook Games Gameplay Pack to 0-3 months.
  
• Added Mini HUD Improvements into the Winter Core Update
  
• Added Midland Main Line Improvements to upcoming patches.
  
• Added Regional Railways Class 323 Pack - SimTrack Studios
  
• Loco Pack - New Partner is now Loco Pack - SimTrack Studios
  
• Austrian Route has moved up to 4-6 months (previously from 6+ months).
  
• US Route has moved up to 0-3 months (previously from 6+ months).
  
• Additionally, our 6+ month upcoming German Loco will now instead be an Austrian Loco.
  

Yes, even our Roadmap overview images have patch notes now!

The Train Sim World Roadmap

What a list! Welcome to our second monthly Roadmap since the release of Train Sim World 4.
Once again, thank you for letting us know about your rail adventures since the launch, sending through incredible Photo Mode masterpieces, planning the routes of your dreams using our PC Editor, sending in crucial feedback, and of course thank you for your patience as we’ve released our improvements.

In this month’s Roadmap, we’ll be revealing a brand-new Swiss route from Rivet Games, and new Rivet Games gameplay packs for Arosalinie and the Scotrail Express, as well as discussing more for the upcoming Blackpool Branches route from Just Trains, introducing more third party partners and talk much more in depth about our released patches, upcoming planned updates, and core system improvements coming to Train Sim World 4.

Content Up Ahead

Blackpool Branches – Coming November 14th!

We’ve just announced in our Blackpool Branches – Coming Soon article, that our first add-on for Train Sim World 4 will be coming on November 14th – in just one week! For our Steam users, you can wishlist the upcoming Just Trains route now too. Today we have a First Look video to share for the Pacer!



We also want to share Just Train’s First Look video too, which showcases the suspension improvements on the Pacer in action! (More details on Suspension Improvements further on in our Roadmap)



You can also read more information for what’s coming with the add-on, such as updates to both the Class 47/4 and Class 08 (including retextures, lighting and smoke effects) in the latest Just Trains Dev Update.

In the meantime, we’ve spoken to the Just Trains development team to find out their favourite parts of the upcoming route, as well as share more screenshots! To read the Just Trains team's comments, read our full November 2023 Roadmap article, we'll just be sharing their favourite images below:

New Route: Bernina Line: Ospizio Bernina - Tirano by Rivet Games

Wrap up warm and make sure your photo mode cameras are fully charged, as our Marketing Coordinator James, working with Rivet Games, shares the very first details on their latest upcoming route, Berninalinie!

Set within some of the highest peaks of Switzerland, the RhB rail network connects vast expanses of remote and popular towns, villages and resorts within the country’s Canton of Graubünden, often bordered and overshadowed by the awe-inspiring, World heritage-status Alps.



Starting at the top of the Bernina Pass, at an altitude of 2253 m (7392 ft), we join the line at Opsizio Bernina, sat upon the bank of Lago Bianco. This alone ranks the Berninalinie among some of the highest railways in Europe being the highest rail crossing / passing place in Europe, and it also becomes one of the World’s steepest, as we embark on our journey, gradients as steep as 7% can be found – impressive for a standard adhesion railway!



The Berninalinie from Rivet Games will make the hairpin descent along the faces of mountains, and settle into the winding Alpine valleys, before making an arrival into the line’s southern terminus of Tirano – for the folks with their maps already open, they will note that this will mark Italy’s first, albeit subtle, appearance in Train Sim World.



Picture postcard views await, as Rivet Games have used LIDAR data and custom landscape materials to produce possibly the most stunning and accurate rendition of the Swiss Alps possibly ever seen in a train simulator. As we see the breathtaking peaks setting the scene, the unmistakeable Brusio Spiral Viaduct dominates the picture, with its unique 360° loop of track, allowing for dramatic change in railway altitude while not making any further progress towards the Italian border.



Seen running southbound under the shadow of Poschiavo’s landscape is RhB’s versatile ABe 8/12 EMU. 3-cars in length and capable of hauling both passenger and freight stock, the “Allegra” features full dual voltage capabilities, with the 1000V DC operation of the Berninalinie, and the 11kV AC on Arosalinie, all selectable to take the train on either route. Rivet’s innovative announcer, as first seen on Edinburgh - Glasgow’s Class 385, also returns here, but with the added ability of being fully automatic and making announcements in three different languages.



From the valley views of Alp Grüm to the magnificent lakeside views of Miralago, the Berninalinie: Tirano - Ospizio Bernina from Rivet Games will offer all new metre gauge action soon in Train Sim World 4. Look out for more details from Rivet Games and on further roadmaps in the future!

Maintalbahn - Coming Soon!

Modern day diesel adventures across the portside town of Aschaffenburg, Germany are quickly approaching! Last month we shared a range of screenshots for our upcoming Maintalbahn: Aschaffenburg-Miltenberg add-on, and today we will be sharing more from our development teams, additional screenshots, and a sneak peek into the Mastery reward!



As a short recap for those jumping on the Maintalbahn train, we’ve got regional charm and a new DB BR 642 DMU, supported by the BR 363 offering local shunter freight across the route.

You’ll be relaxing alongside the Main river on this Diesel Desiro beauty. Set in the modern day, and layering in the Red DB BR 628 – a recent addition if you own Niddertalbahn.

The route will be priced at £24.99/$29.99/€29.99.



We spoke to Lukas, our Senior Technical Producer, who’s been working on the route, to share a little more on why we chose Maintalbahn as the next German route in Train Sim World 4, as well as showing you some lovely pictures from our beta team, who have been trying out the route for themselves!



Lukas: “We really wanted to bring another DMU into our German offering, but most diesel branch lines are pretty simple 1 train per hour deals. This route offers a more varied service pattern and quite a bit of industry, despite being mostly single track. From a gameplay standpoint it just made sense to pick this”



One of the more unique features on the route, is the Mastery Tile where you can launch a ship from the shipyard!

Lukas: “I’ve seen a ship launched from the shipyard in Erlenbach myself, so I really enjoy sitting at the bridge there and having a look!”

We look forward to showing you more details soon, expect to hear more from us around the release date, as well as the timings for our Maintalbahn previews very soon!

New Rivet Games’ Gameplay Packs

We can also announce two new packs being created by Rivet Games, coming on November 21st, bringing additional gameplay in the form of scenarios, new timetables, new liveries and rolling stock for both Arosalinie, as well as the Scotrail Express across Edinburgh to Glasgow.

RhB Arosa Aggregates

Rivet Games are bringing us back to the Swiss peaks, with all-new Swiss services, including a new Arosalinie timetable and 5 new scenarios to master. Pick up the RhB FAC Aggregate Wagon, as well as two new liveries for the RhB Ge 4/4 ii Electric Locomotive:

• No. 622 Haoke Tozan Railway
  
• No. 629 Neubau Albulatuneel
  

Engineering Express

You’ll be able to explore more gameplay on the ScotRail Express route, from engineering movements to daring drags, you’ll find 5 additional scenarios, an additional timetable across Edinburgh-Glasgow and two 2 new liveries for the Class 66, namely the:

• Ocean Network Express (ONE) Magenta
  
• Direct Rail Services (DRS) Blue.
  

..and it will feature a new emergency adapter coupler for the Class 66 to drag Class 385 EMUs. You will also be able to pick up the YGB Seacow wagon in both painted blue and unpainted grey liveries.

Both of these new gameplay packs will be available on all platforms from November 21st, and we'll be providing some more information in the coming weeks in the build-up to their release. They will each be priced at £9.99*/€11.99/$14.99.

*£9.49 on the PlayStation Store (EU / USD prices on PS remain as above).

New Partner - Introducing SimTrack Studios!

It is always a delight to welcome another developer into the Train Sim World Partner Programme, all faces old and new are welcome! Whereas so far Rivet Games, Skyhook Games and Just Trains for example are already established and published third parties for Train Simulator Classic, SimTrack Studios is a brand-new venture, and who else better to introduce them than the team themselves!

Question: Hi SimTrack! Great to have you on board, why don’t you start by telling us a little bit about yourselves, and where else people may have heard of you?

SimTrack: “Hi DTG! Simply put, people won’t have heard of us as a developer before as this is the very first time we’ve worked together to develop something. You may recognise some familiar names in the community, but this is the first time we’ve worked as a team. We come from a variety of backgrounds, from working in the railway to being software developers, and we’re hoping this variety of skills will help us develop some great products.”

Q: What is it that made you all want to come together and form a brand-new studio?

SimTrack: “Train Sim World does a great job at delivering a wide variety of experiences to players, but we wanted an opportunity to deliver some more specialised content for players to enjoy. At the time of our start up the public editor wasn’t a thing, so we set out to get involved with the partner programme.”

Q: We often suggest that developers cut their teeth on add-ons which they can deliver while also getting used to the entire process, what pack have you decided will be your first?

SimTrack: “Our first product will be the Regional Railways liveried Class 323, alongside a set of scenarios that bring a splash of colour to the Midlands. We picked this as getting reference material was straight forward, alongside that Cross-City is a popular route and lots of players will be able to enjoy this.”



Well, that’s a nice surprise addition to the Roadmap, and great to see Cross-City getting some more gameplay! We are also now able to reveal that the UK Loco Pack - New Partner currently on the roadmap (in the 3-6 months window) is... a SimTrack Studios product!

SimTrack: “We’re not done introducing colour, and this time it will be a splash of BR Green…"

We will be continuing to work with SimTrack to bring their first brand new loco to Train Sim World, keep an eye out on future roadmaps for more updates!

Thank you very much for your time, we look forward to hearing more from SimTrack in the future, if you’d like to keep up with their work, be sure to follow their SimTrack Facebook and SimTrack Instagram pages!

Patches & Updates

Xbox Crashing & Missing Entitlements

A couple weeks back in October, we announced we were able to finally resolve the remaining issues causing certain Xbox systems to crash to the menu upon startup.

Additionally, we’ve also managed to solve almost all of the missing entitlements across our different platforms, except for a couple final ones we’re working on resolving currently, which are listed below:

• Class 700 on Epic Games Store
  
• Great Western Express on Epic Games Store
  
• DB BR 204 on Xbox Consoles
  

We know that these issues have been frustrating for those who were affected during the launch of Train Sim World 4, and we want to thank you for your patience while our teams have worked hard, and continue to work hard, to find solutions.

Patch - 31st October

We wanted to address the elephant in the room with the last week's patch. Whilst there were a lot of things that actively improved players' experiences across the platforms they play on, there were a couple of specific issues we saw with our most recent patch (31st October), which we wanted to acknowledge.

The patch did not go out how we planned, and we wanted to start by holding our hands up and apologising for the inconvenience caused to the PS players affected by crashes brought in by the update. Whilst we resolved the issues as swiftly as we could (thanks to all those who helped raise them to us), we don't want to be spending time fixing things that we ourselves have broken with new patches. As well as being a very inefficient use of our time, it also diverts time away from other improvements and quality of life updates we want to focus on. Things will slip through the net on occasion, but introducing something like a crashing bug is unacceptable.

Now the update is out, and we’ve managed to address the crashes happening, we'll be taking some time to review within our Development and QA teams what went wrong, and how we can prevent this in future patches. We will continue to release regular patches and aim to target the areas you've told us you'd like improved (so, please, keep your feedback coming!).

The proof will be through action though, so we will endeavour to bring you great content, without the corresponding issues.

Patch - 31st October - Community Mods & Testing Processes

Additionally, whilst we don’t actively support PC mods, we also understand how important they are to some of you and your gameplay experiences. Our latest patch was intended to improve the modding ability on TSW4, however it ended up affecting other core mods instead, so we reverted this change shortly after we rolled it out. We will be revisiting this improvement in future, and as an action we have gathered a series of unofficial mods that we will use in our testing process for new updates to understand more of the impact that our changes may have on popular community mods.

Winter Core Update

Work is continuing on bringing awaited Formation Designer and Suspension Improvements, as well as a range of updates and Mini HUD accessibility changes, taken directly from your community feedback. We’re bundling this together into a Winter Core Update.
This is still a little while away from launching, but we hope to bring you good news between now and December's Roadmap on progress.

Formation Designer

We’re continuing work on Formation Designer, and it’s coming along well; you can view a preview of the UI and menus from our previous Roadmap update.
Expect demonstrations of our teams using Formation Designer coming soon, and the aim is to bring this to your hands with our Winter Update.

Suspension Improvements

If you missed it in our Blackpool Branches section, with the release of the route (coming out this time next week!), we worked closely with the Just Trains team to implement the new suspension improvements on the Pacer locos, ahead of the planned release of this improvement to TSW4 content. You can see a showcase of the feature in action on Just Train’s Class 142 video.

The Just Trains team have worked with our teams to implement a prototypical, but much simpler setup of the Suspension Improvements as part of their work on the Pacer - as the Pacer does not contain air suspension or bogies, it's a simpler process. You can see this working in-game in the First Look - Pacer video we published today. Look at that bounce!

We'll continue to work on the core improvement for TSW4 locos, with the current plan to retroactively add the improvements to new locos included in the TSW4 Standard Edition routes, as well as Maintalbahn's DB BR 642.

Mini HUD Improvements

We want to thank you all for sharing your thoughts on the new HUD UI that we’ve introduced in Train Sim World 4. In our Winter Core Update, we’ll be adding much more customisation to the Mini HUD, via a range of toggleable HUD elements, to allow you to customise exactly what you want to have displayed on your screen. These additional toggleable elements include your Speed, Distance to Current Objective and Tracker Markers (Platform Markers and Sidings).



The track monitor will also look ahead and scales the distance depending on your speed. If you are travelling at 0-80kmh, you will see a 1.5km distance ahead, which scales up to a 6km distance the faster you’re travelling. (Platform markers are the blue bars on the track monitor)



Additionally, the countdown progress bar now has the option of 1km, 2km and 4km distance.

You will be able to modify these settings in the HUD Type options, found in ‘Main Menu > Settings > Accessibility > HUD Type’.

Progress on Improvements

New Köln-Aachen timetable

We also wanted to check back in with Joe, who has been upgrading the Köln-Aachen timetable for Train Sim World 4! We initially spoke about this back on our August 2023 Roadmap, and today we have new screenshots to share of our progress.

New York-Trenton Performance

With October 31st's update, we implemented a core improvement which we believe should vastly improve performance for players on the route.

We've seen positive feedback thus far, so, if you've previously experienced problems on PC platforms, please give the route another go, let us know your thoughts, and as ever, we'll continue to review your feedback.

Midland Main Line Improvements

We want to share some news on a range of improvements we have planned to come to Midland Main Line, courtesy of our friends at Skyhook Games. Summarised below (but not limited to) is some of the headliners of the planned updates:

• Route Scenery Improvements (More Vegetation, Clutter, Scenery fixes)
  
• Snow build-up feature for terrain and track.
  
• Improvements to Station and Route Signage
  
• Station Lighting Improvements (Leicester and Nottingham Station)
  
• HST Adjustments and Fixes (Notably to Livery Designer, Cab & Coach lighting, and Driver seat camera height)
  
• (TSW4) Updated all Scenarios & Timetable to use TSW4 Scoring 2.0 and Platinum Medals.
  
• (TSW4) Scenario Planner AI Portal functionality
  

These improvements will be coming in the future to both Train Sim World 4 and Train Sim World 3 (excluding the TSW4 feature specific changes), we don’t currently have a release date planned, and we still need time to test these changes prior to their release. We’ll keep you updated when we’ll be ready to get these live.

For users on Train Sim World 3, these changes will be included our Train Sim World 3 Updates rollout plan, detailed in the next segment.

TSW3 Updates

We want to keep you informed on our progress for improvements coming to TSW3, so today we’ll be sharing our intent for a multiple stage update rollout.

Our plan is to release improvements in four patches, rather than all in one go, which will allow us to get some improvements to you sooner and help our testing teams focus on each batch of updates one at a time.

The first batch of improvements will be undergoing testing with our QA teams this week, and we will keep you informed on the release date for this.

The later batches will include the Midland Main Line improvements listed above, and Trenton will be the last batch, as we want to be confident that player experience won't be negatively impacted by this change, and so that it can follow on from a number of improvements to core performance.

Train Sim World 4 Soundtrack

As mentioned in our Scotsman and Vectron Out Now article, everyone can now listen to all 9 tracks of the official Train Sim World 4 Soundtrack, by heading over to their favourite music platforms (including Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, Amazon and plenty more!)

Wrap Up

And that’s our 5000 word-marathon for November! Thank you for your continual support and key feedback over the last few months, please keep sending over your thoughts through our forums and community spaces and be sure to join us tonight for the Roadmap stream.

Roadmap Livestream

Exec Producer Matt, and Community Manager Alex, will be talking about all the things we’ve featured above, and answering your submitted questions in tonight’s Roadmap Live Stream, from 18:00 UTC on our YouTube and Twitch channels.



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

Find out more about Train Sim World 4 by following @trainsimworld on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok.