My Favorite Freeware Routes

You might remember that I got my start early in the Train Simulation world with the Virtual North Eastern Railroad. Bob Artim was one of the key folks in the selection of the routes that we would employ as well as instrumental in the development of our first vNERR ‘owned’ route. At the top of my list is the NERW – PA Division route. Second on my list is the NERW Lafayette Division route.

The NERW PA Division route is fictional and it is not prototypical either. The DEM data came from about 20 miles below Pittsburgh, PA. The rest is fictitious except for the New Wadsworth area which is slightly modeled after Wadsworth, Ohio. Many liberties were taken. If you drive this route you will see there are a lot more signals than on a prototype route, this was done to help AI traffic negotiate the route better. In years it also lets the engineer see which way the switches are set. It is 50 miles long and there are many industrial sidings and passenger stations. Work started in June of 2010 and over 19 months (2,00 man hours) have been applied to it so far.

The NERW Lafayette Division route is more a preview route than a route in its final form. It has its issues but it’s fun to drive.

RW&A Lakeside is the next on my list. The Riverside, Waterton & Atlantic was a bridge line that connected the city of Waterton and Riverside from 1914 until sometime in the late 1970s. This is a short (13 miles long) route but there is a lot to do on the RW&A. While this route isn’t a Freeware route, it is Donationware so I listed it here vice in my list of favorite Payware routes.

All of the above are available at Railworks America.

The Ohio CSX route pops up next in my list of favorites. This is another fictitious route based on the area between Columbus, OH, and Pittsburgh, PA. I think it’s on my list merely due to its location in relation to where I live. The route is fun and I’ve had lots of hours of enjoyment driving on this route.
The last route, and not least, is the C&O Allegheny 5 route. This route is 71 miles in length and is based on the 140-year-old C&O/Chessie/CSX Allegheny subdivision located in southeastern West Virginia and southwest Virginia (the old “C&O Mainline”).

I’m sure more routes will come to mind and I will add them to this post. For now though, you can be assured if I’m on Train Simulator 2018 one of the above routes are providing my enjoyment.