Džejk Em. Stýmpsn

While I do agree that SimRail's main focus is on realism, there honestly aren't that many alternatives. Neither TS Classic or TSW are capable of multiplayer, RO is based around American wild west with a limited map size, and Run8 only focuses on American freight (plus each line is a $40 DLC). The only other feasible train game that comes to mind is Trainz, but that one is not only twice as expensive as SimRail, but also very poorly optimised.

Regarding the recent train racing drama in the Discord server, why not just create a separate server for these sorts of things? Humans are humans, it's in our nature to do dumb things for entertainment, and this way all the shenanigans could be contained in one place instead of being spread out over the 30 odd servers and causing problems for everyone. I personally don't have much experience with multiplayer, but in other games I've often found myself in pretty much a sandbox setting where I just hopped on a random train and drove it around without much care for time tables so I could take my mind off things. Yes, it's not realistic, but it's fun and that's what matters to me.