Model trains and simulators

Owning a model train set can be so much fun! But finding a place to keep the contraption, putting it together, and keeping it safe and unbroken can be something of a pain. Not to mention all the repairs and maintenance that it takes...



Or if you're rich and live in a palace like the owners of this silver train, you can use it to amuse your guests at dinner! But since most of us don't live in a palace we need some other way of having fun with model trains.

This is where Rail Simulator comes in:

Gamezone

Rail Simulator is much more of a simulation and is meant to place the player in the seat of the train, so to speak. Players can view the train they are driving from the outside view, which is a little behind and to the left of the locomotive, or in the cab, where they can see all the controls. As I’m not very familiar with train simulations, I chose to use the “simple” mode, which is the easiest.


The route I picked was in California and all I had to do in the beginning was to drive my train out of the yard. This sounded easy, but turned out to be difficult due to the fact that I kept derailing at a junction. Supposedly, according to the manual, all one had to do in simple mode was use the “A, S and D” keys to drive and brake. Nothing else required. Why, then, did I keep derailing before I even got out of the yard?

I realized I was evidently supposed to change the last junction’s settings. After looking at the keyboard shortcut list, I learned that using the “G” key would change the junction’s setting. Practicing led me to the discovery that the “open” junctions had blue highlighted track leading up to them in the little driving menu on the left, and the “closed” junctions were grey.

Once I figured this out, it was smooth driving after that. I opened up the throttle and cruised out of the train yard, heading to the mountains. I soon switched to the cab view, which was really neat. I enjoyed just sitting back and watching the scenery of this realistic rendering of a real train route in California. This particular mission required me to mainly to just drive the route with a few stops here and there, but the later missions were more involved, with switching loads and trains and the like.

The game comes with 5 completely made real-life tracks. Four of them are in Europe. Included in that list is one from Germany, the Hagen to Siegen line. The other three are in Britain; Oxford to Paddington, New Castle to York, and Bath to Temple Comb. Europe will have eight trains to start while North America will have just two. Experienced gamers can make their own objects, trains, and tracks in an external 3-D program and install it in Rail Simulator.