Sid Meier's Railroads

Got the game today night ... and now it is 6 am when I am stopping for a little rest and maybe sleep :-)
Yes people, it is one addictive game !
I have never played any in the railroad series before - simply cos it never use to run on my old comp while I was at college : so the latest version is my first exposure to this set of games.

I am a sucker for two things - awesome beaches, and trains : both of which have been my obsession since childhood. There are games which I play just so that I can watch the beach simulated in the game ! (And if you are wondering, it is NOT easy to simulate a good beach - atleast I never got the hang of it). (To clarify: I like the beach - waves crashing into the sand : that sort of thing, I was not refering to who is on the beach in my statement above :-P)

This is the first game which fully satisfies my love for trains. The graphics, to put it subjectively, is fabulous : yep, there are bugs here and there (which you can exploit actually in your gameplay ;-) ) but this is one phenominally piece of work ! Best of all, it really does give a 'feel' of real trains and railroads. The AI is irritating and a bit too unpredictable (even things it MUST do, it wont if it is winning !), but the challenge is interesting.
Not sure how it compares to the predecessors : but this is one MUST play game !

It is really strange - I was mentioning to Vipin a few months back that we got to do a Railroad engine with terrain, engine/bogie, signalling type, infrastructure, etc pluggable so that the core could get adapted for any railroad age/location ... and Vipin's response was : we will think more after playing Sid Meier's Railroads (it had not been released then). As things stand, my plans to attempt an engine are scrapped :-)