Hey dispatchers,
We’ve got something new to share today, and we’re really excited about it.
We’ve started working on Rail Route’s next DLC, and it’s called Expect Delays.
If you’ve spent any time managing a busy network, you know the feeling: everything is running beautifully. Trains arrive on time, signals behave, switches click smoothly. The whole system settles into a kind of rhythm. It almost feels meditative.
And then suddenly, it doesn’t.
A signal stops responding. A switch starts acting up. A train breaks down on your busiest corridor at the worst possible moment. That carefully balanced network of yours suddenly needs a dispatcher who can truly dispatch.
That’s what Expect Delays is all about.
Not disasters. Not random punishment. But the challenge - and satisfaction - of keeping your railway running when real-world problems start creeping in.
Your hub for readiness and recovery. This is where you unlock and manage the DLC’s core systems.
Real, controllable units that appear directly on your board. They’re yellow, hard to miss, and very good at what they do.
You route them just like any other train - through signals, across switches, and along your tracks. But instead of carrying passengers, they keep your railway alive.
Each service locomotive can handle three kinds of work:
Rescue - tow a broken-down train off the main line and get traffic moving again
Repair - reach a failed signal or switch and restore it to working order
Maintenance - travel along a corridor and restore infrastructure condition as they go
Tracks, switches, and signals now degrade with use. Busy high-speed corridors will need more attention than quiet branch lines.
Condition drops gradually, so problems don’t appear out of nowhere. You’ll notice warning signs before anything fully fails. A well-maintained network will stay reliable. A neglected one will eventually make you pay for it.
From trains breaking down on the line to delayed border arrivals throwing off your schedule, each disruption creates a different kind of pressure.
Some block track segments. Some slow down critical junctions. Some quietly ripple through your timetable and create bigger problems later.
But all of them are recoverable.
We want to be clear about this, because the framing matters to us. Expect Delays is not a chaos simulator.
There are no weather disasters, no random catastrophes, and no unfair spikes of punishment. Infrastructure wears down gradually. You get warning signs before failures happen. Every disruption has a solution. No situation is unrecoverable.
You always have the tools to respond. The fantasy here is competence under pressure. Things go wrong. You react. You recover. Your network stabilizes.
If some of this sounds familiar, that’s because many of you have been asking for these features for years.
Infrastructure wear, service trains, signal failures, track maintenance - these have been among the most requested ideas on our suggestion board since 2021.
We’ve been reading your posts all along.
And we’ll have more to say about that very soon.
The Expect Delays Steam page is now live.
If this sounds like the kind of challenge you’ve been waiting for, please add it to your wishlist. It really helps us, and it ensures you’ll be among the first to know when the DLC launches.
We’ll be sharing much more about how these systems work in the coming weeks. Next time, we’ll show just how many of your specific suggestions made their way into this DLC.
Spoiler: it’s a lot.
Until then - keep those trains running.
While you still can.
Rail Route team