The timetable said July 24. For once, no delay.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4540370/Rail_Route__Expect_Delays/

Hey dispatchers,

Rail Route: Expect Delays is out now. After months of building, testing and one very lively public beta, the DLC is live on Steam, together with the free update 3.0 for everyone.


The short version of everything the DLC adds:

• Infrastructure wear. Tracks, switches, signals and sensors wear down with use. Things get slower long before they break, and nothing ever traps your trains. Full story: Things Fall Apart (Slowly).
  
• The Service Locomotive and the Maintenance Depot. A yellow work train you drive like any other. It repairs what it passes over, and it couples to broken-down trains and tows them away. It lives in the Maintenance Depot, the new building for buying and stabling your fleet. Full story: Meet the Service Loco.
  
• Incidents. Breakdowns, storms, power outages, late arrivals. Every incident is visible, every incident is recoverable. Full story: What Actually Goes Wrong.
  
• The condition overlay. Press M and see the health of your whole network, green to red.
  
• Service route automation. Draw a maintenance route once, then a loco drives it on its own, on demand or on a schedule, repairing everything it passes.
  
• Operating hours. Named time windows for your contracts, so the commuter line runs only in the morning rush and the night freight only after dark.
  
• Construction takes time. Building and bulldozing are work now, with crews and progress you can watch. Expanding in rush hour is a plan, not a click. One checkbox turns it off if you prefer instant building.

Expect Delays works in Endless and Timetable modes on any map, and is fully compatible with Happy Passengers.


The DLC does not travel alone. Update 3.0 is live for every dispatcher, DLC or not: waypoints to steer contracts down exactly the line you chose, and custom contract periods from 5 minutes up to 12 hours. The full tour is in Waypoints for Everyone, and the highlights are in the changelog below.


This DLC started in your suggestions, on the forum and on Discord: maintenance, service trains, random failures, things going wrong. It was shaped by everyone who voted, argued in the threads, and then spent the beta weeks breaking it faster than we could patch it. This is your railway too. Thank you.


Get Expect Delays on Steam. Things go wrong. You fix them. That is the real test of a dispatcher.

The bitrich team

---

The jump from 2.3 to 3.0 is the biggest update in Rail Route history. The highlights:

• Waypoints. New Tier 2 system upgrade. Place a marker on plain track, add it to a contract, and every service passes through it, without stopping. Named and colored.
  
• Custom contract period. New Tier 2 system upgrade. Set how often a repeating contract runs, from 5 minutes to 12 hours in 5 minute steps (hold Ctrl for 30 minute steps).
  
• Schedule preview. While planning a contract, station timelines now preview every repeat of the proposed service, so a wrong frequency is visible before you accept.
  
• Performance. A dedicated optimization pass for large saves: per-frame allocation hot spots removed, train simulation and UI rebuild costs cut.

• Condition. Wear on tracks, switches, signals and sensors, with speed and switching penalties that grow before anything fails. Run-throughs damage switches. Timetable maps can start with pre-worn corridors.
  
• Maintenance Depot. Buy, stable and dispatch service locomotives. Sell locos for a full refund. In Timetable mode, service locos wait ready at your borders instead.
  
• Service Locomotive. Repairs infrastructure as it passes, rescues broken-down trains by coupling and towing. Full manual control from the bottom bar: go forward, reverse and continue, couple, detach, stop.
  
• Service route automation. The Service Automation upgrade lets a depot learn routes and run them on demand or on a schedule.
  
• Four incident types. Train breakdowns, storms, power outages, late arrivals. Each toggleable, each visible on the board with live countdowns, each recoverable.
  
• Operating hours. Up to 8 named time windows per game, assignable to contracts, editable on accepted contracts.
  
• Construction takes time. Building and bulldozing take in-game time, with visible progress. Toggleable per game.
  
• Seven new system upgrades across the maintenance and contract chains.

Full patch notes for the beta builds are on the Discord[discord.gg].


https://store.steampowered.com/app/4540370/Rail_Route__Expect_Delays/

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Expect Delays releases July 24, and it does not travel alone.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4540370/Rail_Route__Expect_Delays/

Hey dispatchers,

The DLC arrives together with the free update 3.0 for everyone. Most of the new systems belong to Expect Delays, but the update carries a few perks for every dispatcher, DLC or not. Here is the tour.


Sometimes a train picks a path you did not want. Two lines run between the same stations, and the express takes the slow one. Waypoints fix that. A waypoint is a small marker you place on plain track. Add it to a contract in the schedule editor, and every service must pass through it, without stopping. No dwell, no timetable entry, no lost travel time. Just your trains, on exactly the line you chose. Each waypoint gets its own name and color, so a busy map stays readable. It is a new Tier 2 system upgrade in the base game, free for everyone.


Until now, every repeating contract repeated once per hour. Take it or leave it. In 3.0 you set the period yourself: from 10 minutes up to 4 hours, in 10 minute steps. A commuter line every 20 minutes, a heavy freight every 3 hours. Your timetable, your rhythm. Also a Tier 2 upgrade in the base game.


We have been showing the DLC piece by piece over the last months. The short version, if you missed a stop:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4540370/Rail_Route__Expect_Delays/

• Condition. Every track, switch and signal wears down with use. Things get slower long before they break, and nothing ever traps your trains. Full story: Things Fall Apart (Slowly).
  
• The service loco. The yellow train that fixes it all: maintenance sweeps, repairs, rescues of broken-down trains. It lives in the maintenance depot, the new building where you buy and stable your locos. Full story: Meet the Service Loco.
  
• The incidents. Breakdowns, storms, power outages, late arrivals. Each one toggleable, each one recoverable. Full story: What Actually Goes Wrong.

And three more systems we never properly showed. Let's fix that now.

Your railway is not equally busy all day, and now your contracts know it. Define named time windows, up to eight per game: "Morning rush 06:00-09:00", "Night freight 22:00-05:00". Assign a window to a contract, and it runs services only inside it. Together with custom periods this is real timetable control: a commuter line every 15 minutes, but only in the morning, and the same platforms free for freight at night.


The depot can maintain your network without you. With the Service Automation upgrade, the depot learns service routes. You draw a route once in the route editor: click destination after destination, signal by signal, add a reverse move where the loco should change direction, save. From then on it is a single Dispatch click. A free loco rolls out of the depot, drives the route on its own through your auto signals, repairs everything it passes, and comes back home. You can even put a route on a schedule and let the depot run the morning sweep while you run the morning rush. Manual signals stay yours. The loco waits there for your word, like any other train.


New tracks do not appear out of thin air anymore. With Expect Delays, building is work: a bright line grows along the track under construction, and the element enters service when the crew is done. Track takes about 2 in-game minutes per square, a signal 10 to 20 minutes, a new building around 30. Bulldozing takes time too. Expanding in the middle of rush hour is now a plan, not a click. You build ahead of the demand, not behind it. And if you prefer the old instant building, one checkbox in the settings turns the whole thing off.

That is the picture: update 3.0 for everyone, Expect Delays for those who want the pressure. Wishlist Expect Delays if you have not yet.

The Bitrich team

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4540370/Rail_Route__Expect_Delays/

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