Train Sim World 3: Game doesn't start / crashes on start

Introduction

Train Sim World 3, the successor to Train Sim World 2, a fully-fledged train simulator from Dovetail Games, was released on the 2nd of September, and now came to Steam and Xbox Game Pass today, on the 6th of September.

However, even though the game is not that old, players already experience problems getting the game to even start. Some platforms allowed the game to be preloaded so you can play instantly on launch day, but that preload causes some problems.

Dovetail Games issued a Day 1 patch to Train Sim World 3, and apparently, when you preloaded the game through your platform of choice, the application of this Day 1 patch corrupts an important file, preventing the start of the game.

Solution

The solution to this error is quite easy, just completely uninstall the game and download and install it again. Some platforms also have the possibility of verifying and repairing the game files, however, from my experience, it seems like this does not fix the problem since the repair itself errors out instead of fixing the corrupted file.

I know that, for some players, this solution will be quite frustrating since TSW3 is roughly 30 GB big and, with a slow internet connection, this can take some time.

But it seems like, until Dovetail Games issues a corrected Day 1 patch that doesn't cause this problem, the redownload is the only successful solution to the crash happening upon starting the game.

Players who have downloaded the game on launch day, when the Day 1 patch was already out, do not seem to be affected since the patch doesn't have the chance to corrupt the file in question in the first place.

Once your game starts successfully, I wish you a blast playing it!