A Railway Simulator?

I grew up in a family which had a close association with the railways. Not only did my Dad have an interest in them, but close friends of the family did too...and that (not surprisingly, I suppose) rubbed off on me too. I've since developed that into a fascination with engineering (guess what I do for a living!), science and physics, but the first time I encountered that sort of human creativity in the "real" world was through the railways in my home town. It's not something you ever forget, really.

When I was little my Dad built model railways (nothing unusual there, really!) and at the time I always wondered what it would be like to build a model of the old station as it was during (say) the 1960s, rather than in the dilapidated state it was in by then. It is a thought that has (looking back) stayed at the back of my mind ever since, Needless to say, with pressures of work, family money and space that never happened, and now it's even more unlikely.

However, there is now another way to do it, and one which I must admit I stumbled on my accident: an interactive computer simulation. It's an interesting idea, but as I've no 3D or graphic skills whatsoever it is not something I thought I was at all likely to succeed at. However, it turns out I was wrong, and it's a lot easier than I thought...

There are several railway simulators on the market including Microsoft Train Simulator (MSTS), Trainz, BVE and Rail Simulator. Of those Rail Simulator has a reputation for being the best for "in cab" realism, but Trainz as being the easiest for building routes. To my eyes, it seems "good enough" - and that's generally what matters.

Trainz has a couple of other advantages, too. For one, it has a very active user community (most rolling stock is available for free download, which isn't the case for Rail Simulator) - including the Class 31 and 37 locomotives I remember most from my childhood. Most of the models also seem to be of very high quality. Secondly, you can build rather long routes in it, with prototypical distances between stations. In fact, one of the most recent Trainz Editions - Trainz Classics 3 - features the entire Settle-Carlisle route, including a highly detailed model of Carlisle Citadel - itself no mean feat:


After spending a fair bit of time reading reviews and exploring the forums I took the plunge and bought a copy at the end of last year. TC3 is the platform I've settled on to try this experiment, so let's see how far we get, shall we...?