Trainz: A New Era is, as noted in the new naming convention, a new beginning for the Trainz franchise. In November 2013, a Kickstarter campaign for the game was launched to help fund the game and the new purpose-built game engine. The campaign reached its target funding level a month later. Contributors were awarded prizes ranging from desktop wallpapers, First Class Tickets for the Download Station, full copies of the game, and various additional content depending on the amount pledged.
The game utilizes a new custom designed 64 bit game engine, which features more far more realistic (lifelike) graphics, slightly improved train physics, and various other new features and improvements led by a top ten hit-list drawn up by the user community on the forums between September and November 2013.
Subsequently, a download only release, the 'TANE Community Edition' was released in mid-December 2014. The new game was officially released as a retail version for wide distribution on May 15, 2015, though it was rather bare bones, lacking many normal User Interface features such as Content Manager hotkeys, a working minimap and like UX multiplier factors.
A whole series of bug fixing hotfix software updates were forthcoming throughout the year, and often these would incrementally improve UI lacks and so gradually raise the UX. A long delayed Service Pack 1 finally passed a succession of hurdles which had new BETA Candidate Replacements updating the last until finally six-to-seven weeks late, a SP1 release build heralded a new stage of stability and capability in Mid-January, January, 12th, 2016 instead of Halloween. Major Kickstarter contributors also could participate in Beta testing in addition to a dedicated in-house employee team testing new code; so hundreds participated in moving the new technology into matured stability. Two hotfixes followed after just a month and a half, one after the other a week apart on March 11, 2016 (build 81190) and March 18, 2016 (build 81296), but normal UI to recapture UX operations of earlier Trainz aside from Driver, are still lacking in hotfix2. Several of the CM hotkeys were reinstated with the second hotfix, and N3V has announced that Service Pack 2 beta candidate builds will be forthcoming soon, implying the rapid rebuilding of the Trainz customary UX may not be far behind.
Source: Wikipedia, "[en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trainz%23Trainz%3A_A_New_Era Trainz]", available under the CC-BY-SA License.