www.abithelp.com

I have always loved trains, as a little kid visiting my grandpa in Phoenix and he had some HO model trains. I was fascinated with them. Played for hours just going in circles on a small track.

When I got older and had money, I had a nice HO layout but it was huge, took up half the garage. Lost it all later on but that's a different story.

So I saw this a while back, but I wasn't gonna pay $50 for any kind of Sim, let alone this one. But last weekend, lo and behold! A SALE! On Steam! $32 plus I got some of the add on's for it.

http://www.railsimulator.com/

It's really fun, if you like this kind of thing. The train models are very realistic, as are the locations you run thru. It's not easy driving one of these monsters either. Which they also did very well. So far, I'm running the San Bernadino to Barstow tracks here in California. Actually I needed a break from online stuff and shooters so this one fit right in.

Really having fun with this sim. It's very realistic in the way that you drive the trains. They start and stop slowly, so you have to prepare ahead of time or you blow right past a station, or into another train.

A few screen shots of my latest steam loco add on, The Challenger:







this is one long ass train, with 3 "helper" diesel locomotives:


I love it when you "fly" the free roam camera next to the train and another train passes by:




That's all for now!

Can't believe I've played over a thousand hours with this sim, and have so many routes and locomotives. And, a lot of the DLC is "freeware" but some is payware. I've maybe spent $200 on this sim so far, but well worth it. Like my virtual train set, which I don't have room for a real one. Plus, the cats would tear it up, and it would cost me 10 times as much. Those little models aren't cheap, and none of it's free.

Yeah, us old guys, we love model trains, but, to me this sim is more about being realistic. If I wanted a toy train set, I should have bought Trainz.

I was born into HO trainers. My father after WWII started building HO train layouts. There was at one time we lived in a two family house. We had one half of the basement that was all trains. The layout was about 12' x 40'. I my self today have about $10,000.00 worth of HO trains. But all of it sits in boxes because my girlfriend and I live in a townhouse and have no more to set it up. I have played some of the trains sims too. Rod Stewart has a relly nice HO layout in one of the Model Railroader books.

http://mrr.trains.com/Videos/Issue%20Preview/2010/11/December%202010%20issue%20preview.aspx

Hi, Dave!

My mom sent me an e mail with a few pics of Rod Stewart's layout. That's fantastic stuff there.

I live about and hour from Strasburg pa. There you have the Strasburg railroad, Railroad Museum of Pa, Nat Toy Train Museum, & The Choo Choo Barn. Josh has a lot of stuff near him too like Steamtown USA and a train Museum too. Pa has a lot of train history.