(Steam) NIMBY Rails

August 9, 2023

This game is dedicated to building and operating railworks all over the world, but it has a lot of interest among players specifically related to Japan, and quite a few models of various Japan locations posted. It can be seen as successor to bahn, which after 30 years in existence, probably realistically does not have much room to significantly develop.

NIMBY stands for "Not In My Back Yard", a typical public sentiment when construction of a new railroad is announced. The game does exactly the opposite, by allowing you to build a train line in anyone's backyard. It operates a real world map (pulled from OSM), where you can build using a variety of built-in track types or your own mods, and once done, launch lines and operate trains. The number of trains that can run at the same time is essentially unlimited, or better said, limited by the processing power of your computer. Games with thousands of running trains are not uncommon. (Although I would probably not want to try to put the entire Japan railroad into it... if I can live that long to do it in the first place :).

You can design the timetables to your liking, pretty much whatever you want, with essentially one limitation, that is, the timetable is limited to one week (and when the week ends, the same timetable plays again). The more detail you put in, the more time though it takes. If you just simply want to launch a line to have trains run evey 5 minutes 24x7, you can enter this in probably 5 minutes (once the track is built, the line defined, and you have the trains). I have done a Tokyo Metro Tosai Line where I implemented real-time timetable, and it took a ton of research to find out what the real timetables are (e.g. how train layovers work at termini), where trains pass each other, how connections to JR Chuo Sobu and Toyo Rapid lines work, etc.

Also, it's hard to say how train rotation works in Tokyo Metro, but in the JR system, it looks like they set up a multi-day timetable and each train cycles through this timetable (typically spending each night at a different depot or siding). This cycle, done to ensure equal wear and tear on all trains, usually of course would not be 7 days long. But because NIMBY has one week timetable only, you need to change this to find a good way to make sure each train ends on Sunday night where it would start on Monday morning - or else add a service run to bring it there.

Trains carry passengers which are generated based on world population layer in OSM or other public sources. You set fares and want to watch to be profitable (not difficult), or you can play with unlimited money.

The game is still in Early Release, but has been around for 2+ years now, costs around $19.

Graphically the views are strictly from the top, no other angles. So you cannot get a FPV driving experience or similar. It is complicated and demanding enough on computers, where more extended graphics would likely kill it.

Example - traffic at JR Nakano Station