As someone who route builds and drives in both RW and Trainz...
RW does look more realistic than Trainz which, while the latter may not be cartoonish, it can still appear more akin to an expanded model railway or a faded pastel picture. Besides, RW has come a long way from those early days, just check out some of the screenshots being posted at UKTS of the latest GEML route - I had to do a double take they weren't actually prototype pictures.
Plus without going over the old cliches, RW has points (switches) and crossings drawn correctly by default with frogs and checkrails, more than can be said for Trainz. Occasionally you have to tweak to remove a blocked frog, but it's still better than no frog at all.
And with a scenario set up in the editor, you can drive your train without having to worry about manually setting up the next junction(s) or fathoming the path rule. The editor will also calculate your timetable for you and monitor performance against that in the sim (for passenger trains).
As regards paying for everything, not strictly true, there is plenty of freeware if you know where to look and don't think for an instant N3V wouldn't go down that road if the product was worth charging £24.99 per route add-on or £11.99 per traction add-on for. In fact, the TS12 SP1 approach to DLC already seems to be preparing the way for that and even freeware requires a AUS$24 pa subscription to the DLS to get the best out of it.
At the end of the day just have fun in any or all of the train sims and be glad our hobby which started from a tiny niche is still one of the most buoyant genres, at a time PC gaming otherwise is largely declining.
I agree with the looks of it, but every thing else I strongly disagree on.
For starters, the career system is a joke. Most of the career sessions are impossible to get a good score one with proper train handling. You have to go full line speed past yellow to keep up with the time table. And the lack of dynamic scenarios makes the game boring as all hell. This means that you cant do thing like work an industry the same as you can in Trainz. CMTMS wont work in Railworks ether.
As for paying for every thing, this is 90% true with Railworks, and 100% false for Trainz. You dont need any subscription to get to the DLS for Trainz. All the FCT dose it remove the limit on how much per day you can download and how fast you can download. As for me I have been with out an FCT for months now and am still happily enjoying the DLS. As for Railworks. Yea, there are lots of "free" things out there such as locomotives and routes and rolling stock. I say "free" because in more then once case I have downloaded something that latter said I needed an asset off of a payware locomotive that I didn't have to make it work. Or in the case of some "free" routes they require you to have another payware route or payware asset pack to work.
And the editor, or dear load the editor. I can see why people charge you out the wazoo for a route in Railworks.
I really dont like the direction that RW is going ether. With each new release they make a few minor tweaks, and spit out a new route. But you also get less and less content. If you dont own a previous version of RW, and you buy TS13 whey then update it you wont get all the same content that older versions had. Meaning you'll have to buy more crap. And Im sorry, but Ive sunk too much money into RW for very little return to warrent spending more money on. (Ive spent less on Trainz then I have on RW but got way more enjoyment out of Trainz then RW. Maybe $100 on Trainz and close to $250+ on RW.)
And heres another thing that irks me, no Raildriver support, but I can sure as hell hook up my XBox controler to my PC and play Railworks. At that point, you dont call your self a sim. At that point, your a game.
I will agree with your closing statement though, it is about having fun. Unfortunately, I have never had fun in Railworks Train Simulator 12 or what ever its calling its self this year.
Talking about Railworks makes me angry.....