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Central

The oldest map in the game has a bit of a history to boot. You might recognize the track layout from the in-game Iron Falls - Iron Falls is a very much revamped version of Central. So how did the map go from how it is in this version to how it is in the game? Well, let's talk about it, but first, the specifications:

11 trains
30 minutes
330 points

In the very first version of the game, there was only one map. There was no editor, no endless, no points for trains arriving at stations... just a time score that slowly ticked down and penalties for late trains. It was a very different time, and all you could do was play the tutorial or play Central. Oh, and there was no options, no pause button, and no way to quit the game other than closing it manually. If you were in full-screen, you'd have to alt-tab out in order to use the task manager to close it.
As the game progressed, the levels really didn't. Prague was added as of version 0.5, and by 0.8 you could play custom maps, although you could not save them. For some odd reason, though, Central was missing In its place was another stage by the name of "East Field". This stage was basically Central, but without the lower branch to Iron Falls and Minestown. There were next to no trains to dispatch and the level was quite dull.
But when Central returned in 0.9, it was apparent why the level was removed in the first place. There were tons of faulty features and the level was outright impossible to complete in a perfect run. The map used sinks outside of stations, trains changing train type, and trains spawning in on non-sink platforms. Overall, this made for a very buggy and incomplete level. Fortunately, not too many people seemed to play timetable levels at the time, so no one really noticed...

But I did. I saw these flaws and was annoyed. So, to start my life of creating levels, remaking Central was the stepping stone that got me started.
No more sinks outside of stations. No trains spawning on non-sink platforms. No type changes. The level would be fully possible in the game's version. I also renamed some of the stations; West End, Central, East End and Minestown were all renamed. Those names can all be found in Iron Falls in-game, but Central was renamed a second time later. In the remake, it was "Oak Avenue Station".
This is the level that's been uploaded here. It's the remake I made all the way back when I started building levels. The station names have been reverted to their original names, and the timetable is untouched.

Once this was done, well... not much happened. No one really cared too much, but I thought it would be fun to make it harder. So I made another version, "Central Chaos", and doubled the amount of trains without making the level any longer than it was before.
This level was a lot of fun, but sat unnoticed for the most part for a very, very long time...
In 0.11, Central was removed from the base game.

Then came the alpha giveaway. Angel, one of the devs, needed more levels for the game, and wanted to give some people a challenge and a chance at a free steam key. I picked up most of the level design for that, and as I was coming to the end of the levels, I thought to myself, "Central's gone from the game - what if we just use one of my remakes?"
I quickly grabbed Central Chaos and just slapped it in the files for the giveaway, not thinking twice.
Then, after two weeks, I thought twice. The score was 660... what if I made it 750?
So, three trains were added, and the level forgotten.

Then it was abruptly remembered again with only a week left until it was supposed to go live. The level was honestly quite dull looking. I'd recently been doing "revamps" of older levels to make them look nicer, and Central qualified for a revamp, so... back to the drawing board, some trains were remade and the branch line to Iron Falls and Edin Yard so it looked nicer. Edin Yard, Industrial Spur and Yard were all shortened by a few tiles. Oak Avenue Station was renamed to Runoff and Coach Yard to just "Yard" since we already had the Coach Yard mechanic in the game.
After that, it was published to the demo, and was the final giveaway level.

Just thought it would be neat to include some history of the game (and mostly this level) in the description, yknow? I hope it was interesting to read.