Train Simulator 2014

I have been playing train games and train simulators for many years. The crayon board games Empire Builder and a host of others got played a lot over the years, and during the beginning of my "game madness" I had Avalon Hill's RAIL BARON which was basically railroad Monopoly. I admit I wish I stll had that one! I also had, though not from date of issue, AH's very first game from 1958, DISPATCHER and their reworking of it from the mid 1960a, B&O/C&O. More recently I've had the verious tile laying games, such as 1830 and Steam. When personal computers evolved to the point there were some rail games, I had to have them. I had three versions of Railroad Tycoon (RT2 was still the best in my book), plus various others such as A-Train (which became Railroad Empire, I believe) and some other transportation games.

Then game the early 2000s and Microsoft Train Simulator. I played the dickens out of that for years. The fan community picked up support after Microsoft canceled the sim, and there was a LOT of payware and freeware addon activity, as well as actual programming to correct physics and make things look better.

But I drifted away for a few years from about 2007 through early 2012. That's when I came back and found Railworks 2, which I got for a song. Why? Because it was an old version (RW came out in 2009 I believe) and once I'd loaded RW2 it automatically updated the Railworks 3! How cool was that?

So I began to play. And play. And play.

RSC, which publishes the sim, has done major updates each year for the last three years. Just in September (that's last month) they upgraded to Train Simulator 2014 (they pitched "Railworks" as a name with the upgrade to TS2012, possibly a bid to get the still spry MSTS market).

There are some issues but for the most part I find the sim runs reasonably well. I did upgrade my system (a dual core AMD of about 2008 vintage) with maxed out RAM and adding a low end GT250 graphics card. I still can't run with all the graphic bells and whistles but I get some mighty pretty simming out of my rig.

The beauty of the various sims is that it allows you to actually do what reailroaders do, at least in part. You can switch cars in and out of your trains, you can haul ffreight from here to there, you can respond to signals, you can operate the train in as real a manner as you prefer--you can even play Gomez Addams and crash those puppies if you like (Yes John Davies, I'm looking at you!)

TS2014 has a while pile of different routes available from RSC, as well as a number of third-party developers. Also rolling stock like you wouldn't believe, including steam, diesel and electric; historic and modern; British, American and German. There is also a pretty active railsim community that makes a lot of freeware, some of which is exceptional.

And if you are REALLY crazy (and I am) you can try your hand at designing your own routes, or learning how to reskin rolling stock, or build 3D virtual models to supply a need for some locomotive or building or whatever that isn't available yet.

As I moted there are some issues. There are some bugs that keep cropping up, and it can sometimes be frustrating trying to run down what is making "Something Bad Has Happened" errors appear as the program shuts down. Oops, they don't call them that anymore. :)

I like playing with trains. I have some N-scale stuff but it's still boxed up over at my mom and dad's, so Train Sim is what I turn to when i want to have some fun on the rails. It's sure a lot safer than playing on the real rails (kids, DON'T do that, ever, trains are big and heavy and you go smoosh real easy).

That's enough for my first hobby posting. Whatever you hobby, I wish you joy of it today. Me, I'm heading back to TS 2014 where I have a Britsh HST train halfway to Guilford waiting for me to get back aboard.

Here's a few more screenshots to conclude my rambling:

Til next time: keep being creative!

KNP