Yup John Harrison, UK clockmaker.
True, in terms of creation. However, adoption on a universal scale by the public was based upon railroads where you could set you clock by the time they produced. Now we have time whose accuracy is beyond the day-to-day needs of the public. N3V has access to the NBS time (National Bureau of Standards). The lack of utilization in a productive manner is the issue I raise. That is, producing a process whereby the N3V world is managed by the NBS clock. From that the variety of manual and automatic actions by railroad personnel can be emulated on your home computer. ALL signals, crossings, routings and other activities are MANAGED. The weird slow-downs at some signals would no longer occur since they were not ordered by the "central system". Our sytems (routing, signaling, speed control, etc) operate independently and we have chaotic events that require the customers to alter config files, or worse, change the programming of a script.
An example of a simulator with proper "time management" is the Lockheed Martin flight simulator. Its systems have enabled customers to band together into a simulation of an air-traffic-control group that manages hundreds of virtual flights daily all over the world. Each flight is under the management of individual customers using a rule-based process akin the to the real ATC system. In-fact, many of the people who function as "simulated" ATC operators are the very same professionals who have a day-job running the world's ATC. So, simulated airlines around the world all operate in one system as do the real airlines thanks to Lockheed Martin - and Microsoft before them (FSX series).
However, if I want to fly without the rules of ATC I can. I simply do not notify them of my flight and they never see it on their screens - it is virtual. Under a proper system your railroad could also operate independently, or in coordination. All we need are the tools from N3V to do a proper simulation.
Tracks and cars/wagons are expensive. A portion of the rail system is thus shared among operators. Imagine if there were a group of experienced railroad dispatchers running the shared elements. Rather than constrain multi-player activities to one system you would have the same expansion of your world as the simulated ATC offers in the flight-sim world. Your little local railroad could offer transit to the "simmer" running a larger system but needs delivery to one of your customers. Or you could lease some unused cars/wagons to another railroad for a one-shot contract where they need extra capacity. The N3V system would "virtually" add to that railroads stock and reduce yours with a contract that says the items were due to return on a specific date. N3V could just adjust your inventory or you could send an engine to pickup a string of cars. A similar arrangement would share tracks. A lot more interesting than driving a train.
As a note" the Lockheed system is priced almost the same as TRS19.