Steve,
I'm a frequent user of Microsoft Train Sim, having a love of North American railroading. The closest that we come to the massive locomotives that you have up there, such as the Dash 9 type, are all over in Western Australia, hauling 5-mile long iron ore trains.
My favourite pay-ware packages (route and appropriate locos and rolling-stock) are, without any doubt, those created by Maple Leaf Tracks.
They are superb in every way: the research, graphics, sounds, prototypical Activities......they have a close working connection with Canadian Pacific Rail and, being a Canadian business, trend towards simulating CPR routes and 'stock.
They have, however, created an excellent package which features Southern Pacific circa the early 1990's and the "Cascade', or Williamette division.
Other pay-ware packs that I lean towards include the Tehachapi, Donner Pass and Cajon Pass, from Brad Brown's 3DTrainStuff, and, just recently Marc Nelson's 3DTrains "Feather River", a Western Pacific package set in the 1960's (so that the lovely F7-hauled "Zephyr" can be utilised
).
Pay-ware aside, there are some brilliant free-ware routes also available and I've collected all of Bob Wirth's BNSF routes that cover from Barstow, CA to Clovis, NM, plus the Phoenix, Glorietta Pass and Raton Pass subs.
Finally, the Milwaukee Road's electrified subs between Harlowton, Montana, and Avery, Idaho, by Jerry Sullivan, plus all the locos and stock, rounds out my current working collection. Many others are on DVD and get dusted off occasionally.
I've created many, many Activities but have only uploaded a handful or so to train-sim.com.
It is a genuine pain in the bum to create these things, requiring many hours testing and tweaking when there is AI traffic to be included. But when the end result works sweetly, it's all worthwhile!
There's not all that much that I would require of Train Sim II to buy it.
The simulation definitely needs cab movement.........even the smoothest and most rigidly-maintained permanent way causes jolts and swaying, particularly over crossings. So they need to reproduce that effectively.
I've also been involved with BVE........I created a couple of packs for that little freeware sim. It is still regarded as the best cab-view-only simulation available. Brilliant sound and physics.
A German sim, by the acronym 'Zusi' is arguably the best simulation of operating trains over a network, where AI trains work to a timetable and you are driving but one of many such trains along a specific route.
Constraints are that everything is in German, basic untextured graphics (but that results in excellent performance), and the creative tools are very difficult to master....mainly because everything is in German!
But the SOUNDS and the PHYSICS! Absolutely brilliant!
I was hopeful of doing something with Zusi but became frustrated because of the language barrier, so there you go.
Tom's comment regarding Murchison sums Trainz up for me.
The program could almost have been devised with Murchison in mind.
So I reckon I'll be sticking with MSTS for a while, at least until I see what Train Sim X is like, and also the new Kuju offering.
Regards,
Bruce