Railfan Technology > Railroad games to hold patience for railfans?

how come we don’t have a forum for train games? There’s many train games out there that can entertain us but when the game gets too hard or too expensive we need to get help and advice

nick

Posted from iPhone

Good question..  There used to be one as far as I can tell..  When you click on "Discussion" in the Left Menu, there is a board that was used back in 2012 named "Railfan Gaming".  I was not part of the site during this time, but always had fun with Train Simulators with discussions and photos on another site..
 

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RailFanAZ Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Good question..  There used to be one as far as I
> can tell..  When you click on "Discussion" in the
> Left Menu, there is a board that was used back in
> 2012 named "Railfan Gaming".  I was not part of
> the site during this time, but always had fun with
> Train Simulators with discussions and photos on
> another site..

It was deactivated about 9 years ago, along with a few others.  You can still read them, you just can't post anything new to them.  The stated reason as the time was the sheer lack of posts on them.  The Railfan Gaming Board for example had multiple posts a day at the beginning but by 2012 it was literally getting about a dozen posts in one year.  Nor where any of the posts commented on much either, most have one or two replies.  I think the interest of most Trainorder viewers were towards modeling and phototype railroads and not gaming.  It could be that railfans tend to be older and thus might not be into gaming as much as younger individuals, but of course not anybody fits that mold of course.

Back in the mid-90s, I enjoyed using a beta copy of TrolleyTime Challenge. By today's standards, it had rather basic graphics, but it offered a chance to learn some rudiments of operating a streetcar, like coasting to save the cost of electricity and activating track switches. There is still  a site offering this and other games, but it appears that they were not updated for later operating systems beyond XP. I suppose one could run them in Windows 10 using compatibility mode. 

I've never explored other rail-related games or apps, but I would imagine that there are still a number of people who enjoy this pastime. 

I don't think that "patience" has anything to do with it. It's just that the train simlation hobby has a good home elsewhere.

There are some of us on this board who are still active in railroad "gaming", although I think it's preferable to call it railroad simulation. I run Open Rails, the open-systems successor to the original Microsoft Train Simulator (MSTS), as well as Run 8, and Train Simulator. I have commented upon these in the past, and I think some of those comments were outside of the old Railroad Gaming forum. One TO member, "funnelfan" (Ted Curphey) has made some substantial and valuable contributions to rail simulation with MSTS- / Open Rails-format cars, locomotives and various appurtenances which have been posted for download on trainsim.com. I've downloaded a number of his excellent contributions, and use them in Open Rails.

All that said, I also have been somewhat surprised through the years that there has not been more discussion here on Trainorders. But I reached the conclusion some time ago that it was probably due to the fact that the train sim community has its own cast of websites for general content, as well as sites specific to one of the simulation packages. I think that those of us who are interested in simulation software like MSTS, Open Rails or Run 8 have simply gravitated to those websites, and we find what we need there, particularly content downloads, which this site is simply not structured for. Sites like trainsim.com, uktrainsim.com and elvastower.com are highly oriented to content downloads (cars, locomotives, routes, scenery features, utilities, etc.), which can demand a somewhat different architecture than I would guess that Trainorders is may be operating upon. And naturally then, the discussion forums for the simulations simply gravitates to such sites, too. I would bet that there are other Trainorders members like me who also simply gravitate to the simulation sites for content and discussion relative to the sims, and come here to TO for prototype discussion and news and photos, and maybe also a little physical scale model railroading.

I realize that might not seem logical given the fact that the Model Railroading forum here on TO has regular traffic. However, by comparison to other dedicated model railroading websites, the number of threads here on TO is quite small. When you consider the fact that the simulation sites focus mainly upon content downloads (some are very large files of several gigabytes), it's not that illogical that discussion of use of the simulations would also find a well-used home on those sites.

MC



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/26/21 20:28 by ironmtn.

ironmtn and others within rail gaming experience: Which of the simulators out there is your favorite?

I know that's a loaded questions, as I'm sure they all have pros and cons.  I used to run MSTS years ago when it first came out.  I remember loving the graphics, but being horrified by the physics (particularly the way braking was simulated).  My previous experience to that was with the TrainMaster software.  It had very limited graphics, but much more realistic train physics.

Which of today's simulators do you prefer for simulating modern-day U.S. routes/equipment?

Thanks!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/09/21 08:36 by DivergingClear.

i use train simulator, open rails, and run8...........

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