in the United States. And just for fun, Rail- works created three fictional routes located in England, the Alps, and Colorado. Two of the English routes are fairly flat, high-speed corridors. The third is backdated to the 1950s with steam and climbs a steep grade over a range of hills in England’s south. The German route, the Hagen-Siegen corridor, covers a busy electrified freight and passen- ger line. Probably the most appealing route to U.S. fans is Cajon Pass, which covers BNSF’s Cajon Subdivison from Barstow to San Bernardi- no, Calif. Equipment-wise, there are Union Pacific ES44AC’s and SD40-2s, plus a generous selec- tion of rolling stock. It’s notewor- thy, however, that no BNSF loco- motives are included. BNSF engines must be purchased sepa- rately.
Railsimulator.com has a vast selection of North American locomotives and cars in a variety of paint schemes available for download. This simulator has absolutely incredible graphics, but to experience its full potential requires a higher-end graphics card and CPU. The locomotives and rolling stock ex- hibit amazing detail, as does the scenery it- self. Going over Cajon, the landscape is real- istically covered in a blanket of scrubby bushes. Having been there, I can say the cre- ators have captured the look of the pass very well, with the exception of a few minor in- frastructure flaws. Unlike Microsoft Train Simulator, the Railworks simulator lets you tilt and pan the view seamlessly inside a very convincing cab interior. And when driving in rain, the
raindrops actually hit the windows and im- pede visibility until you turn the wipers on. The sounds are pretty good, too; the
ES44s have that classic GE chug. The only real shortcoming is with some of the horns, but high-quality, free replacement sounds are available. The best site for replacement sounds I’ve found is
trainsim.com. Go into the file library and search “sound*” (without the quotes) and set the file section to “Rail- works: RW Misc”. This will bring up replacement sounds for en- gines included in the default game and for those in add-on packs from
railsimulator.com. Railroaders and advanced simmers may notice the physics are not always accurate for some of the equipment. After running a 125-car loaded coal train up Cajon, I figured out that the sim- ulator was using the empty weight of the cars for the loaded ones. I was able to get more realistic perfor- mance by making some modifications to the cars’ .xml files. PDF’s can be downloaded from
railsimulator.com which explain what the different numbers in the files mean. If you buy this simulator, which I highly recommend, the best way would be to do so online at
steampowered.com, where you have these purchase options: the above-men- tioned routes and equipment for $34.99; the deluxe version for $39.99, which adds the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Horseshoe Curve route from Altoona to Johnstown; or the Haulin’ USA Pack for $71.99, which adds Horseshoe, Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, and SP’s Donner Pass. — SEAN KELLY
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