Updates

Twenty vehicles now have their own 3D models in the game: nine locomotives, three coaches and eight wagons. A diesel, two coaches, three cabooses and a wagon make one proper train. Last week they were boxes.

Flaws, visible in the pictures: steam smoke is a flat grey slab, a white lamp sprite floats ahead of one engine, the caboose roofs are blocky, and the green engine's paint looks smudged up close.

Towns get a window: advertise, fund new buildings, buy exclusive rights, pay for road reconstruction. The buildings come in 40 types and four stages of construction. They are still boxes with brick textures.

Roads are laid with the same path tool as rail, and a new long-haul start option gives you longer lines with passing loops. Starting that option freezes the game for five to seven minutes while the world builds. We know.

Today's newest full check run in the game passed 59 checks and failed 2, both in a new track-realigning step being repaired. The run before it passed all 64. Of 4,332 automated tests, 4,330 passed; the two failures are timing tests.

Steam engines get a pioneer look: balloon stack, headlamp, bell, cowcatcher and spoked wheels. The shadow side is lit now, so the wheels show instead of vanishing into black.

The electric locomotive stops looking like a coach with a wire attached: raked cab, louvres down the side, a pantograph on the roof.

A tank wagon joins the fleet: banded barrel, dome, walkway handrails. It is grey, which is allowed.

Level crossings now come in two kinds, chosen when you build: an automatic warning with disc, bell and lamp, or a bare crossbuck. The 3 October picture has barriers. These do not.

Laying track shows a curve plan, with cost and safe speed, before you commit. Two recommendation cards are fighting over the same corner of the screen. That is a bug, and it is in the picture.

The latest full check run in the game, on 14 October, passed all 59 checks at about 75 frames a second.

Tonight's full check run in the game passed all 55 checks at about 78 frames a second, back in the usual range after last run's 12. Nobody has explained the dip. It has simply been outlived.

A new Accessibility panel: colour-vision profiles for three kinds of colour blindness, high contrast, reduced motion and text size. In the check run all six profiles applied, and the top bar stayed readable after every switch.

Each option shows its recommended value beside it, and the panel follows the game's language. Shown here in English and in Japanese.

Not finished: in Arabic, one settings page did not flip to read right to left as it should. It has been written down.

Tonight's full check run passed 52 of 55 checks, but ran at about 12 frames a second instead of the usual 70 to 80, on a machine out of memory. The cause is not pinned down; the page keeps the last clean figure.

Where land meets the sea, a lake or a river, the ground now follows the drawn water edge: smooth curves instead of a stepped outline, and no dry strip between bank and water.

Clicking on a coast or a riverbank now picks the spot you actually pointed at. In the check run, every test click landed within a fraction of a centimetre.

Not finished: where two rivers join, the water can still sit on a small visible step. It has been written down and is waiting its turn.

Sound effects arrived. Buttons click, building and bulldozing make a noise, a refused action sounds refused, and money coming in is audible. In the sound-on check run, every one of them was measured above the background.

Trains now have engine sounds and the world has a quiet background of industry and daytime. The check run found the engine sounds playing while trains moved.

Ctrl+Z now undoes your last piece of construction and cancels a drag in progress. With nothing left to undo, it says so. After loading a save it forgets earlier builds, which is a bug, not a policy.

A New Game now starts fresh: an empty network, a coal mine and a power station close together, and the first-route guide actually turns up at the start instead of quietly skipping itself.

Tooltips come in layers: the name and hotkey first, then what it does, then the details if you keep hovering or hold F1. Every button on the build rail shows its hotkey.

A one-line help strip follows the guide step and the tool in your hand through the first hour. It leaves after your first delivery, or sooner if you tell it to.

Recommended cards: while you drag track, or on the day-length setting, a small card suggests an option, gives a reason with a number in it, and applies it if asked. One setting hides them all.

Ships in a new game now find their own way along the water. In the check run they arrived, and none of them was caught sailing on land.