Wednesday 28 December 2016

Land of Make Believe


Well I might just squeeze in another post before the New Year. This post title is the name of a song from the Moody Blues, my favourite music group.
Make believe is what we get involved with when we create model railways. Some make believe better than others but as long as you are happy with your end results, that's all that matters.
Currently we are going through a period of very hot weather and I haven't ventured from the house towards the shed. I can still fill in a day doing various projects I have to do.
Another time waster that I have enjoyed over the years is the train simulator game called Trainz 
I believe this is an Australian produced game. Although this has never really a big part of my time , I have enjoyed playing it over the years.
They have just released another version centered around re-creating a model railway. This can be accessed through the link to Trainz above.
What this game allows is the ability to be able to create your model railway set up and let you operate and test various aspects before you commit to your spending money on your model railway.
If my shed ever burnt down and the layout was gone then I would have to be happy playing this game instead. Once past the initial purchase price, everything is free. Unlimited track, points, rolling stock, locos, all the accessories you could think of to go with it. It even has the ability to say load a coal train with simulated coal, then you can take it to a power station and unload it. There are many other features best found out by looking at the site.
Having moved over to On30 modelling, when I checked out Trainz, someone had produced some NA locomotives, the G42 garratt and some VR narrow gauge rolling stock to go with it. 30" track is also available to allow you to build your system.
I had a go of building the Beech Forest layout as I found this to be the most interesting narrow gauge plan compared with other stations that mainly had plain parallel sidings.
Although I am not building this location it was fun to do. Once built and sceniced, you can place trains on the tracks and have some operation fun. The NA works OK, but for some reason the G42 doesn't have any sound. I no complain, the guy who built it has done a good job.
This latest version of Trainz has the ability to take screenshots, and I have taken a few to show how far you can take this game too. These are really basic shots as you can spend hours super detailing the scenes.
Approach to Beech Forest. NA arriving from Colac and the G42 on its way to Crowes

While the detail in this programme is acceptable you can see there is room for improvement for crisper and more detailed realism. With the rapid advances in computers I am sure this day won't be far away.


Another heavily timbered region complete with trestle bridge
So these above images show a few things you can do with this Trainz programme. Time waster or just having fun, who cares, as long as you are enjoying your railways.

1 comment:

  1. I too have played around with the Trainz software over the years. A while back I found an Oberon to Tarana route which was a lot of fun.

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