[a_bonobo]

It wouldn't surprise me if Japan has its own market for train assets. There's a big community of train simulators! Go to the Kyoto or Tokyo train museums, they have dozens where you step into a replica of a train cab and then drive a photorealistic simulation (sometimes also just film) - the ex-keyboarder for Casiopeia runs a train simulation game company that makes those since the 90s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoru_Mukaiya). There are some Nintendo Switch train simulators like Densha de GO that are only available in Japan.

I'm sure there's a treasure trove of already-built high-quality assets of Japanese trains.

[nokeya]

You can buy them overseas from online secondhand stores like mandarake and play on your switch, because there is no region lock. Interface will still be in Japanese, but it is pretty obvious what to to and how.

[dhosek]

I was looking at the controller support and apparently there are game controllers designed to follow the layout of a train operations controller with the same two levers that you can see in game.

[a_bonobo]

I mentioned Densha de GO above, they have a designated controller like that for the Nintendo Switch too :)

[dhosek]

It was below when I left the comment.