In my opinion, the shadows lack the dynamic to lighten them up accordingly.
you can see that in the picture by @stanz especially in the trees on the right.
(everyone according to his preference 
)
i also believe that the details in the shadows of this scene are rather unimportant elements.
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one more try
Sunset scene_DSC08448.ARW.xmp (15.7 KB)
You were able to draw out the structure in both the highlights and shadows. Compared to your other take:
1 The denoising patterns in the darks are more apparent.
2 Saturation has gone up in the brights. It is alright in the sky but isn’t as natural in lit foreground.
If someone could light the foreground and have the sky closer to @Jade_NL’s, it would be nice.
to 1: the stronger noise in the shadows is caused by the tone mapping, but this gives me clearer structures. the moire on the house on the left is also clearly visible.
To 2: yes, there is “too much” blue in the foreground, but I don’t find it disturbing.
so far i have found my first attempt more pleasant overall, it carries more the mood of the sunset for me and doesn’t distract me with too many details.
… give it a try so that we can learn from each other 
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hear, hear! The contrast is stunning, I just painted some contrast equalizer on the roof of the train to make it pop just that liiiittle bit more.
It’s a Canon FL 50mm f1.4 lens. I think this is shot at F8.
At F1.4 the image from this lens is very soft and dreamy. I just love it.
Sorry I"m late, been in the woods with dodgy internet.
But, I’ve been playing with images like this, thought I’d use yours to illustrate a different take on tone management. I’ve been trying to wrest a filmic curve to lift such shadows, but have been left wanting in the highlights (my filmic is not @anon41087856’s, so YMMV). Got to thinking about the movie folks’ love affair with log encoding, so I gave it a try using a loggamma function I got from here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_Log-Gamma
and followed it with a control point curve that I shaped to my liking. Here’s the result as a rawproc snapshot, with the curve shown in the parameters pane:
Food for thought…
i like this editing.
for me it is already a bit too dark, but the significantly fewer details do not distract from the actual natural spectacle.
i also like the noise texture. 
thanks, by the time I scale it down to 2048px along the long edge and then that gets scaled down again for the preview by the forum software it gets pretty hard to read anything in the shadows, but looking around at 100% in darktable there’s a fair bit going on still. I think it would make for an interesting print actually.
always playing with fire trying to cram so much into the shadows though, the slightest variation in brightness on your screen compared to someone else’s can ruin the whole party. I can only hope people are seeing it the way I am!
Nobody should have to chose between legible shadows, textured highlights, and preserved local contrast.
DSC08448.ARW.xmp (46,2 Ko)I always hope so too
(…and always imagine that everyone has a calibrated super mega high end monitor available… 
)
everyone sees their own colors 
why not ?
in my opinion, too many details can distract from the essential image content. especially with B / W pictures.
my last two versions are far too detailed for me, but it’s also fun to crack the possible, even if it’s exaggerated
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Because it’s a failure to provide a reasonable tool to convey your vision ?
It’s good to have the option available, even if you choose not to exercise it every time.
hmmm … the imagination and creativity is up to you.
for example, the picture by black_daveth exactly meets my taste, and that although there is hardly any shadow drawing (even if it is a bit too dark for me :-))
Anyway, the main thing is we have fun with it … 
I said :
“have to chose” means “forced to chose”. You do whatever you want, but that should be a true creative choice, not a forfeit to abide by your software’s limitations.
Personaly, a black blob with sharp railways is more distracting and odd to me than understanding what’s going on in there in a glance : you spend the whole time trying to figure out what’s there, rather than getting in the mood. I prefer to feel like I’m in the picture, maybe with a twist, but still with some connection to what my eyes would have seen on the spot.
Photoflow:
DSC08448.jpg.pfi (41.2 KB)I have a mac with a retina P3 display: macOS supports 10bit HDR on these displays (I think you may need Big Sur, but it might work in Catalina). It works seamlessly: HDR windows display highlights brighter than white in the rest of the UI. If I turn off the highlight rolloff and save the file as an EXR image, then the sunset looks amazing if you open the EXR in Preview.app (also the train has bright red lights on it!).
The .exr is 33MB but if anyone is interested I could upload it. Hey @Carmelo_DrRaw, Photoflow does real HDR images! Unfortunately, it can’t display HDR (and last time I looked (which was a few years ago), GTK’s interface to Quartz was pretty broken - it just tags everything as sRGB).
