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The Most Hated Man in the Southern States
by E. Porter Hopson
An absorbing fictional biography of one John Ephraim Haynes, a mid 1800's rail baron, founder and president of the Great Southern Company, whose actions during the Civil War garnered him the nickname epitomized in the title.
'As written by' journalist William Forbes Yancey.

In 2003, Pop Top released Railroad Tycoon 3. Amid much hoopla, touting their new 3D Graphics, RRT3 sold briskly. After 5 years of playing RRT2, fans were ready for the new genre.

Admittedly, the 3D world of this new version was quite appealing to me. Camera movement was greatly improved and the animation of the factories, maintenance facilities, clouds, weather, and water was pretty neat to watch.

There were also some vast improvements in the Editor. No longer did you have to understand scripting to set up events. Just point and click. Of course you still have to understand how events work, but at least you don't have to try and figure out how to write it, although the new 'point & click' scheme did limit event scripting somewhat.

This version also included a Map Builder, a feature that gives the opportunity to grab a small patch of land mass anywhere in the world, and create a map with close to real world terrain. Mountains and valleys are easily created.

Unfortunately, it would seem the creation of this 3D world gave rise to sacrificing some of the features that were available in the earlier version, that or the creators just decided to leave them out for some reason. No longer could you drop a shipment off at a station to be later picked up by another train (later added back in with the release of the 'UnOfficial' 1.06 patch). Hauling freight that was not profitable was also an option sadly missed. On top of all that, this version shipped with a gaggle of bugs.
Granted, Pop Top issued a few patches in an attempt to correct these glitches, and were successful for the most part, but it seems the developers just decided to abandoned their posts and RRT3 still has a few bugs that may never get worked out (a few of these bugs were addressed in the 1.06 patch).

In spite of it's shortcomings, end users managed to produce a proliferation of maps and scenarios, which can be found right here in the Map Archive. They've also created a gaggle of add-ons, which can be found on the User Created Add-Ons Page.
A vast collection of maps and scenarios can also be found at other sites, such as The Terminal, Railroad Tycoon Info, and ExpressWorld.

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