I have 16GB of ram and the loading screen mod. I don't think it's just having too much stuff. I recently cleared my assets and started over, but I used to have way more stuff than I do now and the game ran fine.
I just don't know what would cause an incompatibility here though.

That could well be the cause, some incompatibility between mods. And the game gets RAM hungry very quickly once you start adding mods/assets - trams or others. How much RAM do you have? Do you have the loading screen mod installed?

I don't know if I'm getting confused about the cause here, but ever since I tried adding some different kinds of trolleys like this one (to see which cornered best, etc.) my game has been hogging way more memory.
Again, maybe a mod screwed up or something, but before I started trying out trams things were going fine I think.

alright, for that time I'll go with white line colored ones

I'll keep it in mind for the next version of the BN.

or just the part that's orange on the SNCF version in the line color...

Would something like a white tram with line colored stripe be possible, too? Because I'm running CLRVs, ALRVs and Tatra Trams and they all have this kind of paint scheme