Guess I should post some updates from my test game. It's 1941 and Nentwood Transport have expanded a lot - £50,000 tax bills and large dividend payments are not uncommon. (For more information on
that, see Villages Is Villages)
The centre of the passenger network has moved to Flinninghall Central, with multiple lines terminating or running through. Steam is a big feature here, but you can also see some of the third rail 4-COR EMUs which run down to Nentwood.
Speaking of Nentwood, it's rather more bustling than it used to be.
That's a mail train just arriving, and one of the things I realised while playtesting is I need parcel versions of most of the early carriage types or playing with Villages Is Villages set to harder settings will be a nightmare.
All of this was paid for by a big gamble in the early 1900s where the fledgling Nentwood Transport decided to risk building a narrow mountain pass to carry quicklime down from Marborough Kilns to the coast. Originally operated rather slowly by tank engines, there were 30 years of service from Robinson 8Ks before a recent upgrade to Stanier 8Fs. With the upgrades to motive power allowing heavier trains, the original single track pass from the turn of the century is still plenty of capacity.
I've been pleasantly surprised to find the set pretty much complete and fun to play with from the start - there are some small tweaks to make like balancing the cost of passenger carriages (currently there's no reason to ever buy a multiple unit, and certainly not two of them coupled together) and making fast, powerful locos a bit less of a running cost bargain but that side is mainly okay. Mostly it's just bugs and increasing the diversity of stats in early loco types.
As regards vehicles, the initial screenshot was something like 120, the roster is now around 200 although a lot of the increase has come from multiple generations of wagons. A few of the additions you can see up-thread, the rest I want to keep as a surprise for people on their first play-through. Currently you'll get new vehicles from 1900 through to 2020, although it's a little sparse post-2010 as I haven't (yet) drawn and coded the various express and bi-mode units from recent years. Long term plan is to extend back to around 1800 (probably with earlier introduction dates for the people who really want to suffer through 100 years of horse drawn wagons) but I have to limit scope somewhere or I'll never get anything out.