Because Railgrade does look like Factorio, Transport Tycoon, and Railroad Tycoon. They were able to capture the aesthetics, which is what I think was their goal. In this respect, they have done a superb job! At its core, it is all of these games, molded into a lighthearted puzzler, leaning more towards Cosmic Express - or, what was the name of the one with the Dogs? - laying tracks, removing obstacles, transporting wares, but without the added complexity of building and rebuilding facilities, micro-managing production cycles, money, and towns.

That's all it is, a charming puzzler, and it's one thing I like about it. What I don't like is the timer aspect of it; to earn tickets, you have to beat the clock. I get where the developer got the idea of S-Ranks, but a zen mode, deep thinking, would have been so much better. A pause function would also go a long way toward an otherwise relaxing experience. Just sitting and appreciating the aesthetics, riding trains, playing with the photo mode, watching the scenery, without the clock ticking. :)

Yes, signals, more complex track layouts, and some of the more advanced features you'd normally expect to find are sadly missing. I would not think that they would have diminished the fun aspects of Railgrade.

Or Exploding
Baaaaaam ;-)

A missed chance to make it more challenging and a broken promise I hope that they keep working on the game. Maybe a DLC that brings us signals, a sandbox, zen gameplay, a little more complexity without compromising the fun factor, which seems to have been front and center of their attention. This game can be way more than it is; the foundation is solid, and all the ingredients are basically there, so there's no need not to take it a step further.

Since you also play it; I've noticed that Railgrade and a baking process kept running after quitting the game. Could you please check this with the task manager?

There is a problem when a "like Factorio"-intertia happens in a forum thread, especially the release thread. A while ago there was a game where that happened and since there were some superficial similarities in theme (but a complete and utter absence in depth) I nearly took a dive under the completely wrong premise. Luckily, there was a demo at the time and that showed very quickly the developer had neither the intention nor the skill to pull off something Factorio-like, but sine I was really looking for a distraction at that point in time that could have otherwise been very annoying.

It does, though. I found a switch to disable ghosting (which is something at least) but then ran into a problem which would have been completely trivial to solve with a signal (even the completely dumb ones from Transport Tycoon, nevermind the modern ones you get in OpenTTD or Factorio).

All Railgrade* processes terminate as expected for me. However, since I'm playing this under Wine this might not tell you much helpful.