Trainz Railway Simulator 2006 (PC DVD)

Wow! If you like the idea of driving trains and building lots of lovely tracks to drive them on, this game is for you. The Trainz franchise has been around for a good few years now, and Trainz 2006 builds on the success of previous titles by offering plenty of new features, such as fully interactive passenger stations.

By far the best thing about Trainz is Surveyor, the route building program. This is very easy to use and extremely intuitive, and with a bit of help from the manual you'll be running trains on your own tracks in no time at all. You literally just draw your tracks onto the screen - there's no messing around with fiddly track pieces - and sculpt the surrounding landscape with a few mouse clicks and drags. There's also plenty of terrain types, buildings, trees, stations and so on which you can use to populate your route.

If you need some inspiration, there are a couple of dozen or so routes in the box you can play with, and on the Content Manager (another part of Trainz) you can download any of hundreds of tracks created by other Trainz users. Rolling stock, scenery, buildings, and so on can also be downloaded, if you're unhappy with the in-box selection.

Some very nifty features are available to route builders. Model railway fans will be familiar with the concept of fiddle yards and off-stage areas; in Trainz, a special type of tunnel called a "portal" can help to eliminate the need for these. A portal is a one-ended tunnel that can make trains appear out of thin air and make them vanish just as easily again. Portals can be set up to generate new trains at regular intervals; they can also be made to remove trains from the route, to turn trains around, or to teleport them to a portal on a different part of the route, without the need to place lots of backstage/understage tracks and a large stable of rolling stock. There are even "i-portals" that can teleport trains across the Internet to a portal on someone else's route, opening up the possibility of co-operative online play.

The process of actually driving trains is immensely satisfying. Unlike Microsoft Train Simulator (MSTS), which was geared mainly around fixed activities, Trainz in most cases runs in a "free play" mode where you have the freedom to control everything, or else sit back and watch from the sidelines while the computer takes control. Having lots of AI-controlled trains zipping around your layout gives you the feeling of driving around a real railway, a pleasant contrast to the fairly empty and sparsely-populated routes of MSTS. Passenger schedules (another new feature) give you scope for building up a full timetabled service if you so wish, though actually getting the trains to run on time is another challenge entirely!

Trainz won't satisfy those who want ultra-realistic and life-like physics - it's a railway simulator, not a "train driving" simulator - but it's realistic enough for all but the most demanding enthusiasts.

It isn't just about trains, either. A super-fast Maglev monorail route is included with the game, and some users have created tram routes and even guided bus routes.

For UK rail fans, though, there is a distinct lack of UK content in the box and available for download, and what is available varies considerably in quality. The in-box traction includes diesel locomotive classes 37, 50 and 55, plus A3 (Flying Scotsman) and A4 (Mallard) steam locomotives, in a variety of different liveries. These models range from reasonably good to absolutely excellent - the green Class 37 in particular looks superb. There is a HST train included (in two different liveries), but unfortunately it is VERY amateurish-looking, with blocky textures and non-transparent windows. It frankly looks like something a child has done, and really detracts from the package. The coaching stock is similarly limited, and most of it (such as the blue Mk2 stock) has been "inherited" from previous versions of Trainz and therefore lacks the 2006 features. Only the "blood and custard" BR Mk1 coaches really stand out as decent - these are fully passenger-enabled, with opening doors, and are nicely detailed.

Some units, such as a Virgin Voyager and a better quality HST, are available only as paid-for extras. Although it's annoying to have to shell out more money just to be able to download a train you want, these units are at least designed to a professional standard, something which can't be said for some of the units supplied with Trainz.

Many UK stock types cannot be had at any price. The Class 140 series "Pacer" trains, the tilting Pendolino trains, and the Transpennine Express Class 185 trains are all common sights on Britain's railways in 2007, but you cannot currently obtain any of these models for use with Trainz unless you are skilled and talented enough to be able to create them yourself.

On the upside, there are some excellent non-mainline trains available for download, including Tube trains.

No "full" UK routes are supplied with the game at all. There is a semi-fictional Scottish route, a very small fragment of the Settle-Carlisle route, and a few small wholly fictional routes. Fortunately, Trainz users have stepped in and created some excellent downloadable routes. I think it's envisaged that Trainz buyers will spend most of their playing time creating and driving on their own routes, rather than driving on "out-of-the-box" routes, and the selection provided with the game reflects this.

One final thing. The "Just Trains" version of this title forces you to put the DVD into the drive every single time you play, which is both pointless and extremely annoying. The disc will eventually break (as one reviewer has already found out) and you will have to buy a new one. The original Auran version of the game, called "Trainz Railroad Simulator 2006", doesn't suffer from this problem and is otherwise identical.

Overall, Trainz 2006 is an excellent buy for more creatively-minded train buffs. Many UK train fans may feel a little cheated by the lack of stock, but for me, the flexibility offered by the game and the superb route-creating capability more than makes up for this.

Trainz 2006 is latest in a series of Train Simulators for the PC. Trainz is one of only two Train Simulators currently available, the other one being Microsoft Train Simulator. The latest version of Trainz is considerably better than MSTS for a number of reasons; Firstly, the graphics. Trainz is mush newer than MSTS, so it does have an advantage, although graphics are still no where near what we've come to expect of games in other genres. The biggest advantage that Trainz has is its editors. You can create your own scenary, including AI trains, static and dynamic objects. Best of all, the editor very easy to use, and easily make model railways obsolete. The only advantage Microsodt Train Simulator has is the realism; the physics engine seems much more realistic, as does general handling.

Trainz 2006 is good. The problem with it is that there is only one game to compare it with, and that is 3 years older! Still, if you have even just a passing interest in trains, this is the one to go for... it's simple for novices, has more advanced controls for users that want them, and good graphics.

Trainz 2006 is a fun simulator that beats its competitors hands down but there are two things I abhor about it.
1. When a train derails it blocks the track(s) FOREVER! There is no way you can clear the wreckage away. No wrecking crew comes out and removes the wreck and repairs the track. If it occurs on a single track, that's the end of the game.
2. In Surveyor there is a horrible jumble of items available, if only you know what they are called. Since they are listed under English, German, Spanish and Outer Mongolian languages, or just identified bY numbers, there is NO WAY to tell what is what. Example, is you are looking for a house it could be called House, Hacienda, Haus, or 12345. Or anything else. And it could be filed under Buildings, scenery, trees, tracks or anything other category. This applies to 99% of all available items and there are thousands of them.