This game's simplistic take on the management sim genre is delightfully counterbalanced by the inclusion of cutthroat PvP in the form of competing railroad companies. Buying out and gutting your competitors brings a level of satisfaction that you didn't realise you were missing from other similar titles. This is what sets it apart from the rest, and in my opinion, elevates it.

Requires a very simple patch to fix the memory crashing issue, which can be found here: http://www.smrsimple.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/SidMeiersRailroads3GBEnabler.zip