trainz railway simulator ultimate collection

It's ok for exploring new maps, if they have a scenario to go with it.Ī few of them are buggy writing scenarios is apparently a bit of an art form. The current scenarios are very literal - take this train down this track, obey the speed signs (dammit) and then hook up to this consist, shunt it to this yard, get a different one, shunt it somewhere else, run the passenger service from station x to station y, and deal with trackside works, slow trains and other 'random' happenings. The next release 'Yardmaster' is supposed to have more elements, including consist modification 'on the fly' (loading and unloading in the game), with better Scenario editing.

If you were ever into model trains, this sim is perfect - you can be happy-go-lucky, or extremely detail oriented with this sim, it has something for everyone. Overall, very much something that appealed to me. There are dozens of Trainz sites around the world, and the content is visually excellent. I've downloaded hundreds of megabytes of content from the Auran Download Station - all of it free.

The scenarios can be quite good, where you have to do certain scripted things on a specified Trainz layout. I spent many an hour futzing about in Surveyor, where you can create landscapes, lay down tracks, add trackside objects, and scenery objects (some of them animated, like Fork Lift trucks and Container cargo cranes), then you can 'texture' your creation then pop into Driver, add a consist (locomotive + rolling stock) and toot around your map. I recommend the 'Screenshots' forum for some idea of what people are doing. I had seen Auran's 'Trainz' before, and downloaded the demo, it was ok, a bit of a bizarre user interface, and tended to crash my system, but it gave you a decent taste of what they were offering.Īnyhow, Friday the 20th December I'm looking for something to waste time with over my 2 week holiday, and stumbled across Ultimate Trainz Collection (UTC) at the local Electronics Boutique - same price as the 'Trainz' box next to it, but with additional goodies (Paintshed, GMax, scenarios, animations of how to do things in Surveyor). Microsoft Trains looked ok, but the $AU100 price tag was a turn off, and there were known problems with it being not very robust. Over the years I had seen a number of train/model railway sims in the shops, but they were all really expensive, and/or looked quite daft.

Trainz railway simulator ultimate collection