Like Trains?

Like trains?

Dad had lots of scale model railroad sets when we were growing up.

He did lots of very detailed model work. I don't remember getting the chance to run them very much, but I do remember one scale model table he had built in my early childhood home. It seemed to take up over half the room in my child's mind. That was the same room that would become my brother's nursery-room.

The detail on them always fascinated me.

I never really got bit by the model-railroad bug, but later on my brother and dad would build a small-scale train table together.

One of the first games we picked up in the 1990's for a newly purchased Apple Mac was A-Train. It was a black and white railroad line sim game. It was really fun, but I never really got around to playing it very much. College classes and all that.

So as I was surfing around the other day, I came across Simu-trans.

It's a well developed railroad simulator. Not of the "Railroad Tycoon" or Microsoft's "Train Simulator" type. This is more a "Zoo Tycoon" type of build. Alvis would feel really at home with this thing.

The download is a 18MB zip file. Just unpack the file and run the .exe The graphics quality is very nice (for the type of game it is). And there are also a large number of custom add-on packs you can install as well. Unpacked size is about 53MB so if you have a really big USB flash drive, you can take your trains to work! Just don't blame me if you get caught.

Oh yeah. The game is 100% freeware! Windows OS. (Other OS's are supported in an earlier version.)

There is a really large fan-community supporting this game with tons of help guides, pictures, and statistics. Take your time looking around the website. Take it all in!

Go play with some trains.

--Claus