Railroads in a good city simulator

Alas, what we wish for but cannot have. The new SimCity does put thought into the way traffic sounds are done, for instance, but alas, there are absurdly placed graffiti and over-saturated flat textures in the actual game (and not that's not even counting the fundamentally broken things in there).

Over the last past few years, I've really thought about the way trains should behave in a city simulator, focusing on a new concept: like the military bases from SC2K, railroads are bought and run anywhere they please. In addition to saving costs, it creates an exciting new obstacle in which you must work around your railroads (which are greatly beneficial to your city), and bring new challenges, and trade-offs. Overpasses and underpasses can allow traffic to go through, as well as giving a quiet zone.

One benefit I realized since writing that post is how with multiple trackage and unbroken crossings, trains could park for hours, if not days (or weeks, or months, or years--though those only typically tend to happen on semi-abandoned tracks). That would be beneficial to your city: the longer unbroken sections of track you have, you could gain a small sum of money. While a bit unrealistic (the train company owns the track and does whatever they please), it would give a bit of incentive to you, the city builder (although train companies have been known to offer up cash to close off a railroad crossing, though this doesn't happen very often)

This is, of course, to compensate for the fact that you're not actually the one being held up by railroads. In the case of near me, there were two main crossings (Villa Maria Road and Harvey Mitchell Parkway) that were giving people grief, especially when trains came through right during rush hour. And when the 5 pm train comes rumbling through and you're not being stuck, it's a great feeling. Except, of course, that "pay off" doesn't happen in a game, in fact, it might be more fun to watch traffic jams reach legendary proportions.

Either way, there should be a way to help you realize that the train going over or under is the better way: compare major East Coast cities to cities elsewhere. There's hardly an at-grade crossing in site. The other thing about railroads is that railroads "coming through a town" is much less important than before: in fact, train companies and cities would rather route freight lines out of town if possible today (unless there were freight spurs), so it would be best to have some sort of 19th century simulation when railroads were truly all the rage, which would only add to the cost of the game. That's why they have expansion packs, I guess.