I love simulators as they’re usually a relaxing computer game to play while you learn something about what they simulate. Along those lines, some train simulators I’ve tried in the past weren’t very good nor very realistic. But I stumbled across a video I’ll post at the bottom for Run 8, and it’s an actual simulator as attested to by this former railroader below. So if trains interest you, it’s worth a look.
And beyond just running larger trains, you can do a lot of industry deliveries and pickups, sorting, sorting with the hump yard… You can play it and just dispatch trains, or be a conductor with an AI engineer… And there are online servers with busy tracks running a lot of industry where you can join others and contribute. Or just keep it simple by solo running trains as you choose. And the game has been pretty fun managing DPU fences and not breaking couplers, or taking a large train down the Cajon Pass. And the graphics not being hyper realistic means it should run pretty well if you don’t have a new computer with high end graphics. I’m running on Windows 10, but it’s supposed to run fine on Linux as the switchover date is in October when my last Windows machine switches to GNU/Linux.