Trainz re-visited...in pictures...

As mentioned in a recent thread elsewhere on this forum, playing Open Rails pretty intensely for the last few months converted me from a train sim dabbler - playing them intermittently, and as virtual MODEL railways - into a more serious 'simmer', wanting to take on more purposeful and realistic jobs.

Which led me back to re-trying Trainz, to see what I made of it, with the benefit of my new-found standpoint - conscious as I was of my memories, and other people's impressions, of Trainz as more a model railway sim, period.

So I dusted off my most recent copy of the game, Trainz Simulator 2009. I also have the first widely-released version, plus TS2004 and TS2006, but only played the first one much, the second a little and the other two, hardly at all. Time to see if I could belatedly get some bang from my recent Trainz bucks!

And I have to say that I am pleasantly surprised with TS 2009, in general. The content is all over the place, literally, with lots of routes, featurng to varying degrees Australia (naturally), France, Germany, Spain, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, the US, Canada and the UK, all with rolling stock to suit, in many varieties. All presented visually but awkwardly via a very long, ill-sorted listing in the 'Railyard' content viewing module (successor to the original 'My collection').



The Class 101 DMUs in this list don't come with TS2009; they are user-made freeware which worked in previous versions of Trainz but are listed but invisible when installed into TS2009, the fix if there is one being something I haven't found, yet.

Not a bad thing this variety, with the proviso that only a few of the routes and stock seem to take much advantage of TS 2009's improved graphics, being carried forward from previous versions. Those that do seem to introduce loading freezes when switching views on my system, like these otherwise rather spiffy Santa Fe and Burlington Northern SD-40s, which have better textures, more detail (inside and out) and animated roof fans:



These come with the last update for TS 2009 (Service Pack 4) but I reverted to SP3 (=uninstall/re-install) when I could not find a cure for the freezes. Which afflict the Conrail SD-40-2 (think that's what it is) that comes with the Tidewater route, even after binning SP4:



Regular Trainz users will notice that the track visible immediately above looks to be much the original stuff, complete with points with no visible frog or checkrails, turnouts which don't move but have animated point levers which, in many cases, the player has to set manually during gameplay. More detailed, animated pointwork seems to come with 'Trainz: A New Era' (T:ANE to its friends, and its enemies too) dating from 2014-15. T:ANE is not something I will go near till I can afford to splash out on P:ANE ('PC: a New Era'), a more modern system which can blow the proverbial socks off my current box of tricks.

Manual point setting is a big feature of one of the activities ('Sessions', in Trainz-speak) that comes with one of the best routes in TS 2009, namely Hawes Junction. This trip involves taking a brake-coach-less rake of three blood & custard BR Mark 1s (which unusually for Trainz pre-T:ANE, have opening doors) from Garsdale off down the eponymous junction. Your 4F is nicely detailed but it can be a real fiddling match to get the points set so the starter signal clears and you can be on your way. A nice touch is waiting for the steam and diesel connecting services to arrive before you depart...if and when you find the right point settings. Another nice touch is the outstanding scenery, which reminds me strongly of the sort of countryside I trotted and sometimes drove around around during Annual Camp in Warcop and Otterburn. I believe the route is part of a payware Settle and Carlisle for Trainz and it certainly leaves the original MSTS version looking rather barren.



A not-so-nice touch is that there are few sessions per route with TS 2009, sometimes only one. And the sessions you do get mostly lack the user-friendly aids of MSTS - you can track your progress using an animated map and view 'waybills' which detail freight tasks but unless the session-maker has added specific message boxes, you seem pretty left to your own devices. Trainz railways seem rarely to bother themselves with such tiresome details as passenger timetables.

Take the Glasgow to Falkirk route. This has one session, driving an obviously preserved Mallard over colour-light signalled trackage at the head of a short rake of maroon Mark 1s. The Mallard appeared with TS 2004 which IIRC added steam traction to the interactive industries from TS 2004 (you could watch your hoppers fill with coal, and later empty at the power station on a merry-go-round train) but the Mk1s are I think earlier, and have painted-on windows with no interiors. Still they make a pretty picture, once you make the mental transition to the stronger, brighter (dare I say, more model railway-like?) colours of Trainz, compared to MSTS's more pastel shades:



Despite the traction, this is a stopping service and the session maker has arranged it so that you get rather large message boxes popping up to warn you to stop at the next station. Not great compared to MSTS/Open Rails, probably a legacy from Trainz's 'model railway sim' orientation (complete with 'DCC control' as an alternative to 'cab control' and its more realistic physics). Here we are at such a stop, next to a train of blue-grey Mk2s, another carry-over from a previous Trainz version, with their painted-on windows.



Many of the items you find in Trainz seem to be user-made - I seem to recall this nice EE Class 3/Class 37 was made by modder Pikkabird, and that the crew turn heads and the vipers move:



If you're not into railways operated by Johnny Foreigner, even pukka ones who speaka da eengleesh (can I say that without somebody jumping on my head, virtually or otherwise? Apologies in advance for any offence caused, real or contrived), you might not want to read the next part, for we're off to more distant shores, as portrayed by Trainz. To get everyone else in the mood for a virtual trip further afield, I'll end this bit with a pic from just the other side of the virtual Irish Sea, featuring a 1990s-liveried 80 Class DEMU on the detail-intense 1960s route 'Along UTA Lines' and another shot of a Class 101 DMU power twin, repainted to resemble UTA AEC railcars 6&7, leaving Belfast York Road:





...to be continued!

I don't have Trainz, but I found the pictures and description of interest. Thank you for sharing.

Thanks Alec!

To continue...the first overseas route I turned to upon renewing my acquaintance with Trainz was the Harlem Line, one of a series of routes radiating north and east from New York. The line featured in the TS2009 route doesn’t go as far as the Big Apple itself but is a pleasing outer suburban type stretch with three sessions included. None of your mile-long freight trains here, or fiddling about shunting in railyards – my type of route.



The sessions begin with a little video clip intro, like a black & white home movie. This is the first trip, a loco-hauled passenger service going north. The unusual electro-diesel doing the hauling is a car-body type General Motors FL-9, designed to use the third rail where diesel power was unsuitable, though the electrification runs the whole of the included line (for EMU use).  The GM is in the attractive 1950s New Haven Railroad scheme and shares the quite effective engine and horn sounds of other Trainz US car body diesels (though I think the FL-9 actually had a whistle!). The Trainz FL-9 has animated roof fans and wheels, unlike most of the early diesel models. Apparently these 1950s units lasted into early the next century when this route is set, some restored into the old NH livery featured in the Trainz model.

In Trainz, you can turn your train over to an AI driver, or do that and issue him ‘go to’ and other commands; or indeed take over from one of the AI drivers running other trains in the session. But if you choose to drive yourself, there is little indication as to what you’re supposed to do. It’s not at all like the discipline of keeping to a timetable in MSTS, or real railways for that matter. The optional on-screen display does include an icon to display your ‘schedule’ but often or typically this seems to display no such thing. There's a ribbon-type activity display that can appear along the bottom of the screen and when I understand its icons I might find myself better informed. Still, even with no aids beyond the animated map to keep track, I still had a lot of fun operating a stopping service along the long stretch of line provided, passing other services at intervals. The Trainz graphics engine with its clean, strong colours seems especially well-suited to US locations and inspection of real-life station pics shows the Trainz versions seem to capture quite nicely the originals with their distinctive layouts and features.



These attractive, small but well-appointed stations have passengers aplenty, some 2d sprites, some 3-d, all static but the 3d ones can appear and disappear to simulate boarding. In this session I didn’t need to operate any points/switches on this dual line route and I seemed to be the first train headed north, so I didn’t ‘catch colour’ from the signalling on account of other traffic ahead of me.

The FL-9 cab view is 3-d, animated/click-able, shared by the other Trainz car-body GMs. It's rather low-polygon, low-resolution and thus dated by comparison with more modern trainsims, and it has no ‘cab sway’. But it’s reasonably effective and as well as mouse-panning about you can slide across from one side of the cab to the other and zoom the view to get a clear look at approaching mileposts or stations. The main issue for me is that the cab view reverts to the original 1500m view distance, which I pushed out to the 5000m max in external view. Plus Trainz seems to auto-adjust the display of objects at times to manage performance, so there’s a certain amount of visible draw-in going on sometimes and this is most apparent in the cab view and a bit more obtrusive than in Open Rails, if not vanilla MSTS.

AI trains you can take over include the slightly scary-looking Genesis diesel that’s an AI loco in MSTS’s North East Corridor route...



...and two variants of 'aloo-min-um' finish EMUs, an older one used also in push-pull mode...



...and the more modern M7 type which is seen below and has animated sliding doors:





In some places, parked cars must have been left unattended for some time as they’ve sunk into the ground up to their wheel hubs or worse, and there is much less moving road traffic than in MSTS, but the crossings work and sound as expected, even if they are well under-used.

The apparent lack of visible timetables in some or most Trainz sessions, and of on-screen support (that I've found so far anyway) to help in keeping to them, is a bit vexing compared to MSTS/OR activities, although partly compensated for by the ability to be so vexed in any train running during the session. It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it, and I find it sufficiently engaging, if not as much as decent MSTS activities.

The next TS 2009 non-UK route I ventured onto was Marias Pass Approach, a section from an HP-Trainz payware 'full route'. The 'Approach' bit included in this edition of Trainz covers the section from just south of Shelby going north-west to Piegan Falls. It comes with three sessions, one passenger, two freight. The former is seen with the train here at Trainz's version of Shelby. More sessions may be available on the Trainz Download Station - I'm finding even without a subscription it's much easier to get stuff there with the 'Content Manager Plus' programme that comes with TS2009 than I remember from earlier versions of Trainz, of which I have had three and played two.



All three Marias Pass Approach sessions feature reasonable levels of AI train activity. The next pic is of a double-headed grain hopper train in one of the two freight activities, crossing the bridge over Cutbank Creek at the town of that name. The scene is a lot more impressive than stock MSTS Marias Pass. Unlike the first pic, these locos are the improved SD-40s that came with the SP4 update...before freezes during gameplay caused me to back it out again, for now at least.



In the above freight session, you have to fill your rake of eight grain hoppers at Pardue Elevators south of Shelby, then drop them off in the yards at Cutbank where you pick up another set of ‘empties’ to fill at a different set of grain elevators, at Ethridge, further north. The fills are animated, complete with opening hopper trap doors and clouds of grain, and with multiple filler vents at Pardue and a single trunk at Ethridge, a nice touch of attention to detail winning over re-using the same assets.  The set down, uncouple and pick up yard activity is made trickier by (a) the need to set all your own points; (b) the fact the instructions can’t be reviewed again after they first pop up, unlike an MSTS briefing and (c) siding labels are hard to see in the animated map and can’t be tagged in the 3-d world like MSTS. It’s also easier to SPAD as you lack the convenient track display of MSTS. I did this after a loss of concentration leaving Cutbank Yard - the crossover the signal was protecting was set to direct me into the path of an approaching AI train, which had happily passed before I slid out onto the crossing with the brakes full on.

This is the view approaching Ethridge with the second rake of grain hoppers, which were in (CN?) grey rather than BN green:



While a comparatively short route compared to the MSTS equivalent, the visuals I find generally much superior to MSTS’s, original or modified, complete with convincing textures for rough ground, cornfields, billboards and so on. I’m definitely tempted to upgrade to the payware full route at some point, a version still being available that’s suitable for TS 2009.

We'll take a look at some more US and other non-UK routes and stock next.

...to be continued!

I mentioned the FL-9 carbody diesel-electric cab and that it was shared by the other F-series General Motors types in Trainz, so here's a pic taken of a Milwaukee RR model as it waits for a CN freight headed by more modern SD-40s to clear its path, in the Tidewater route. Rather low-polygon and low resolution like I said earlier but it works and it's 3-d.



This route is one of TS2009's better ones but being fairly scenery-intensive it's not the most FPS-friendly. Here's a view of the same service from the outside, not long after departure:



This is the cab view used for most of the modern US 'hood' diesels, whether GM or as here, Alco, on Robe River Australian route, which is a fairly early one but good for all that.



And for comparison, here is what your SD-40s get if you upgrade to SP4. It's the much superior cab (note the different detailed layout) that's illustrated as one of TS2009's improvements in the official Auran/N3V site for TS2009, but featured in few of any of the sim's locos prior to the upgrade...which I had to back out. Yor can slide the cabside windows open on this, as well as read the labels more clearly. The brake gauges are a bit harder to read though, unless you zoom in a bit at the expense of field of view.



Back to routes, TS2009 has plenty of these but few activities per route. Most have been around since at least TS2006 I believe. There are six UK ones, some 'model railway style', non-prototypical continuous runs or end-to-end, some realistic like Glasgow-Falkirk and Hawes Junction already illustrated. In the 'model railway' category I would be inclined to put Electric Commuter, a longish end-to-end, double-track overhead electrified route suitable for high-speed running (ie no 'train-set' curves as seen on some of the looped routes). The HSTs seen here have painted-on windows (except for the cab), a driver figure who looks like an HO model in a OO loco...and blue roofs/valences.



Returning to non-UK routes, from a  quick count (and excluding what you can get from from the Trainz Download Station, and get to work with your version of Trainz) TS2009 has about as many routes as out-of-the-box MSTS has activities, albeit with 1-5 sessions per route. There is one German-Czech route, Bad Schandau-Decin (the railbus below has animated sliding doors, so its customers can get to the well-fenced-off brewery in the background with the minimum of delay):





..another six German routes, mostly not of the train-set variety, including Dresden-Nuremberg...



...Winter in Germany...



...Wirtschaftwunder, which is one of the model railway ones I think but being German that's no insult...



...and this one whose name escapes me...



Most of these have intros and instructions in German only, but tend to have more sessions that most, so if you can get past the language barrier, alles ist gut.



The single Spanish/RENFE route is a long end-to-end one and rather good as well as having several sessions. While now replaced by more modern units on Cercanias suburban services, I can get to drive the 447 Class EMU I remember from earlier trips to the Costa del Sol, in the attractive livery its succcessors still carry:



There's a couple of French routes in TS2009, Tire Buchon...



..and a faster, more mainline route, Roanne '07:



The first pic is one of the few I've taken with shadows on; the second is one of the few routes with a backscene, a relatively recent introduction to Trainz when TS2009 came along.

Next, we'll look at routes from beyond Europe.

...to be continued!

This being Anzac Day, I'll finish for the evening with a short illustrated summary of TS2009's routes from Down Under. I count five of these. The first one I've mentioned before, Robe River. As befits the actual locale - and this is based on a real mining railway - scenery is sparse but that's good for frame rates and doesn't much detract from a fine visual impact, complemented by Trainz's trademark lighting effects. I thought my four Alcos would make easy work of this long mineral train but I was struggling to get above 10 KPH at times, my trip being often on rising grades.



This next pic is I think from Razorback Classic:



This one's from Queensland East Coast if I recall right...



...and I think this is, too:



This one is from Wadalbavale, set on the New South Wales coast...



...while this pic illustrates one of the featured Australian steam locos:



Yes that's actually a Big Boy, on the Tidewater route; just checking you're paying attention  This is one of the real Aussie steamers, seen in a steam tutorial session:



...to be continued!

Before leaving mainland Europe behind (Brexit for Trainsimmers?) I'll make the exit a soft one, avoiding a cliff edge if not a hard border, by featuring a definite Euro-train, a probable Euro-route, and one that could be nearly anywhere...but is in an Anglophone country, so easing our transition to Trainz 2009 routes of North America.

I mentioned TS 2009's Spanish route, Iberia Interior. Well, after a bit of hunting about, I found what I really wanted to run on this, a more modern Cercanias (shuttle) EMU, the Civia series that replaced the boxier 447 types on the Malaga-Fuengirola line that many of us will know from hols in Spain. This unit is available for TS201X but also for Trainz on the bi-lingual website of IberTrainz: http://zatovisualworks.eu/ibtz/  And here she is. I made a mistake in creating this set from its component cars, by including a second pantograph-equipped one, but that's easily remedied. The cab view is like something out of a Windows 95 game but looking at her from outside, I can practically hear the whine of the power train, the Spanish passengers chatting loudly and that female voice on the speakers announcing 'Proxima parada -  Torreblanca.'



This is how it should look, with just the one pantograph-equipped vehicle:



To get a new train running in Trainz, the easy thing to do is load and edit an existing session/activity in the fully-integrated Surveyor route-building module. You can then replace or add to the existing trains, save the session under the same or a different name and off you go. Or you can get more creative and use Surveyor to make more dramatic changes or even program a brand-new session. I don't think the Malaga-Fuengirola line is amongst the Spanish routes available - possibly it appeals to 'us Brits' more than the locals - but the route included in TS2009 will do nicely for now, for me.

The probable Euro-route next illustrated is Maglev Project 2006 and I think it's set in Germany. A bit off the beaten track (ouch!) for me, this one, but at some point, for variety's sake, I will give it a run, or a hover or a float or whatever you call it.



Speaking of modules just now leads me, not especially neatly, to the next route pictured, which is called Modula City Demo. Like Marias Pass Approach and Hawes Junction and as its name suggests, this is part of a payware route, just a smaller, more limited part. It's a modern urban tramway, set in an un-specified but from the signage English-speaking country.



The demo has one session which auto-runs when you load it. You can click on each tram and use the usual Trainz menu to stop it, after which it will obey your commands, but not from the cab view as far as I can see. As well as elevated sections, the trams run down the centre rather than the sides of wide carriageways, where their passengers are clearly in grave danger of being run down by people not considerate enough to use public transport; although happily, there are few of these in Modula City. Day changes quickly to night as the demo session runs, highlighting some fancy searchlight effects. Either they are expecting an air raid or aren't much worried about their electricity bills, or perhaps both.



It's small scale, being part of the parent route but if you're into street tramways, more than a pleasant diversion.

OK we've now left mainland Europe behind; that wasn't too bad, was it? Project Fear was laying it on a bit thick, as we all now know, though they still do it when they think we're not looking. Anyhow and be that as it all may, we're off next across the pond, to drop in on Trainz 2009 routes from the US and Canada, beyond the couple we have already seen.

...to be continued!

As regards TS 2009 routes from North America, at seven by my count there are slightly more than the total number of routes in out-of-the-box MSTS. This excludes duplicates - for some reason there are some of these for some routes - for example Highland Valley and Highland Valley Industries, with sessions for them split between the variants. Some routes have numbered sessions with some missing. This may be because TS2009 reportedly dod not introduce any new routes, but broke some sessions from the included routes from previous versions due to changes in the session-building code. TS 2012 is reportedly the first version of Trainz that came with new routes only.

I've mentioned Highland Valley/HV Industries so we'll start there. It's said to be inspired by the Canadian Rockies and is a model railway-type continuous run with visible edges to the world in some places and raised areas as the line traverses higher ground. The overall effect I find quite pleasing. If I recall right, this route came with the very first Trainz c.2001 and I reckon the 'Industries' variant is an update to incorporate the TS2004 facility to have active 'industries', these being locations to which you can have a waybill to deliver or collect some commodity, with the loading and unloading thereof being animated. Commodities I recall seeing are containers, articulated trailers, crates, coal and grain.

This is a pic from Highland Valley/Industries showing a rake of hoppers headed by two CP General Motors FT carbody diesels. I'm not sure what the facility in the background dispenses - cement perhaps. The track is pretty well original Trainz with sleepers that sort of turn down at the edges, details that blurr with distance (no worry over moiré effects there!) and no checkrails, frogs or animated blades.



Here's a pic from the hilly central zone of the route, with a CN steam-hauled passenger service at a lower level as the hopper train crosses a bridge. Another industrial facility - grain silos I believe - is visible above the signals at which the passenger train is held.



The next route is another Canadian one, Toronto Rail Lands. I can't recall whether it's end-to-end or continuous run, but it's basically a 1950s route with both steam and diesel services, as you can see from these pics.





The next route is a US one and a fictional continuous run type, called Industrial Wasteland. While as its name suggests it's designed to concentrate on the interactive industries, the terrain is temperate grassland not the arid zone yopu might think from that title. Here's my SD-40 with some crates I just picked up, passing an airport whose airliners come and go, happily avoiding some idiot in a light aircraft who buzzes the area at intervals.



The next pic is from a narrow-gauge line, Northbay County. This is a nice little taster for this area of virtual, or virtual model, railroading.



At some point, if it works with my version of Trainz, I will get the County Donegal Railway route I've seen on Youtube - I'm not an NG fan but it's hard to resist those red and cream railcars and the nice countryside.



It'll be a good complement to Along UTA Lines, which being built for an earlier version does work in TS2009, this clip featuring a BR Standard 2-6-4T repainted to resemble preserved LMS NCC 'jeep' number 4, and showing at the start the use of in-session driver commands to direct a train...



...and this clip the NIR 80 Class 'thumper' DEMU, possibly on an earlier version of that route also called after a book, in this case 'The LMS in Ireland':



But I digress. Back Stateside, we have another model railway route, City and Country USA in two variants, which split the sessions between what are apparently identical routes. These basically do what it says on the tin. From what I could see as a nipper in 1960s Tri-ang Railways catalogues and train picture books, my ideas of US railways  - sorry, railroads - will always be heavily based on the two types of motive power see here on this route, the GM carbody diesel (here in the justly-famous Santa Fe 'warbonnet' livery) and the Budd Rail Diesel Car. At some point I will add the Tri-ang 'Transcontinental' versions of both to my modest Tri-ang collection, to keep my Davy Crockett 2-6-0 (bought originally to play out the adventutes of Casey Jones, as then seen on TV) company!





The RDC's in CP livery but I think this pic was taken on the US route.

The other US routes are ones previously illustrated - Tidewater and Marias Pass Approach. I'll finish with another pic from the latter, showing my SD-40s on the grain run crossing the bridge over Cut Bank Creek. From real-life photos online, my jury's out on whether this or the more barren depiction in MSTS is actually the more accurate, but the Trainz route certainly captures the topography better for me, than stock MSTS Maris Pass anyway.

Trainz+SP4:



Trainz+SP3:



Stock MSTS (but with reskinned locos):



MSTS MP 3 or 5:



Apart from Donegal and UTA routes, all those featured here are included in TS 2009 which can be had very cheaply online these days (beware of buying second-hand copies of Trainz - these should work normally but as the serial number may have been registered for the original user's account with the developers, you will likely not be able to access the Trainz Download Station for additional content, unless a PM to the devs via the Auran/N3V Trainz forum can sort that out.

For all the extra content available online, it's my impression that Trainz cannot remotely compete with MSTS for UK content, or in the number of activities available for any given route. It somewhat makes up for the latter in the ability to control other trains in a session - the pic below shows a session on one of the half dozen or so UK routes included with TS2009 - Banks Heath I think - with the on-screen display fully active and the available trains with their drivers in the stack over on the left.



The number and variety of routes built-in to TS2009 is certainly impressive, even if accumulated from previous Trainz versions. The Surveyor route and activity builder is reputedly comparatively easy to use - it's seen open here with one of the far from non-existent but in MSTS terms comparatively few user-made UK routes available, covering Brighton-Horsham-Shoreham:



Comparisons can be invidious as they say and there's no reason particular reason to play just one trainsim, or other kind of sim for that matter. Anyway I hope the pics and comemntary have given anyone not overly familiar with Trainz some insight into the sim. I'd be interested to hear on this thread other forum members' impressions of playing Trainz in its different incarnations.

Ivor

If anyone wants to try Trainz, I see that TS2009 is at time of typing (13 May 2018) available as a free download, for a limited period:

http://ts2009.trainzportal.com/free/

Since writing the previous posts I have found that there is an extra route or two and a lot of additional stock that doesn't show up when playing routes in the 'Driver' module, because no Sessions/activities are associated with them - a simple enough thing to do, tho for the stock from nations not featured in TS2009, it's necessary to find a suitable route on the Download Station/DLS.

The stock includes the aptly-nicknamed 'Dog's head' EMU from the Netherlands:



...a Swedish Y1 Class railcar and RC4 electric loco...





...this Japanese EF81 electric...



...this 'Italian job'...



...and this Canadian trolleybus-like vehicle:



As for routes, there may or may not be other additional ones, but looking at the list of these in Surveyor, I noticed what appears to be the full Modula City (not just demo) streetcar one, just needing the use of Surveyor to add a tram or two from the different types available to produce a Session you can then drive. Modula City is quite a pleasant resort-type location with a couple of offshore islands accessed by long bridges over tropical-looking lagoons, and lots of shopping for those so inclined:





Happily, by fiddling with some file settings, I have been able to get Pikkabird's MetCam DMUs, available from the DLS, working in TS2009, though with only the Class 37 cab so far  - one is seen here on the Hawes Junction route:



Worth having a look at TS2009 while it's available free - it's a 2.9 Gb download (once you have registered for the Trainz newsletter) which I'm grabbing now for a possible second install, to see if I can get the Service Pack 4 version working without the long freezes swapping from cab to external view...it would be nice to get those superior SD-40s back...

I own every version of Trainz from the Trainz Community Edition in 2001 to TANE SP2

Not installed here any more and i wouldn't touch any new versions with a barge pole.

Physics are toy town, no working AWS apart from clear and warning sounds. Doesn't actually stop the train, if you SPAD.

Most of the UK cab views are ancient and poor quality, from very early versions of Trainz.

I personally have come to terms with the fact, there is never going to be any prototypical realism, associated with Trainz releases.

Much the same as DTG's TS2018 and TSW, Very pretty but games not simulators.

Mike.

Some new rubbish from N3V.

https://bit.ly/2jPGUwI

Each to their own! Having been playing Trainz 2009 a lot of late (mostly a second concurrent installation for the freebie version which comes pre-patched to the latest SP4 version), I've decided I rather like it.

I still prefer the high level of ready-made activities to routes and the driving aids of MSTS/OR but Trainz has some nice features of its own, A new favorite is the freeeware Severn Valley Railway route. Using Surveyor, I took a few minutes to plonk various BR locos, DMUs and rolling stock at various points then had a blast driving the blue & grey version of the Class 117 DMU, which in its 3-D cab has a functional gear lever, complete with those markings on the rev counter thngy which tell you when to change up and down, and you can practice the real drill of cutting the power before you change.







And in between, I'm still enjoying driving shiny Metro North push-pull sets on the Harlem Line...



...running Aussie double-headed passenger services on the Wadalbavale route...



...or Cercanias EMUs on Iberia Interior...



Heck, even the very early Trainz Robe River route seems to look better in TS2009.



Anyway I'm getting my money's worth, and will probably grab a more recent verion of Trainz when I have a PC with a few more horses under the hood.

I own every version of Trainz from Trainz CE (Dec 2001) up to and including TANE SP2 and TRS19

Just doesn't float my boat anymore buddy.

Mike.