TrainMaster Review

Note: Click on any screen shot for a full size view.

Winter Park, on the Moffat Subdivision, lives up to its name.

Introduction

I suspect that many people have looked at vehicles and wondered what it would be like to be the person at the controls. Could I fly that plane? What's it like to be sailing that giant ship? Or, since it's the current topic, what's it like to run a train? Trains are perhaps the most intriguing since they offer the least possibility of a real world experience. It is possible for a regular person to get a license and fly a plane (a small one at least) solely for recreation. It's certainly possible to operate boats of various types and sizes too. And everyone has a car so road vehicles are hardly novel. But there's very little chance of the average person being able to experience what a train engineer does.

There are plenty of car sims. Virtual pilots have long had flightsims to try their hands at but for some reason trains have been overlooked, by the bigger software companies at least. But now with TrainMaster 4 it's possible to get your hands on the controls of a train and see if you have what it takes.

Both freight and passenger trains are sometime encountered, though always at the same spots and never in motion.
The observant reader will note that this is TrainMaster 4 and yes, there were earlier versions. However, in my mind it's not a real simulator unless it provides a 3D out the window viewpoint and TM4 is the first version to offer that.

What's Included

TrainMaster 4 is a simulation of modern day American railroading. It includes only diesel locomotives and only routes within the United States.

When operating TrainMaster 4 you have two major choices to make each time: which train to operate and which route to run. If I've counted right, you have a choice of 45 different trains. These vary from light commuter trains to high speed Amtrak trains and from a freight with a load of empties to a heavily loaded freight with helper engines. Once you've chosen your train you can run it on one of the 11 available routes.

Examples of different bridge types.
All those different trains require some imagination, as you never actually see the train you are operating. Unlike many other sims, there is no exterior view option so all your operating is from the engineer's seat looking out the window. What makes all those trains different is the physics involved--the weight of the train, the number of cars it's spread over, the number of engines and their available horsepower. With so many trains to choose from you can simulate almost any type of modern train you are likely to see running on American railroads. The only obvious omission is electric trains and particularly the very high speed passenger trains but just about anything else is available.

Your choice of routes is more limited. Though there are 11 track files what you really get is five routes that can be run in both directions and one route that is an out and back, both starting and ending at the same station. So what you really have is six different routes all of which you can see in either running direction. Let's look at this in more detail.

Included Tracks:
Potash: Cane Creek Subdivision (Utah) of the Union Pacific.
DRGW: Portion of the Moffat Subdivision of the former Denver & Rio Grande & Western.
RF&P: The CSX mainline between Fredericksburg, Virginia and Washington, DC.
B&O Met: The former B&O mainline from Brunswick, Maryland and Washington, DC.
Dickerson: A short branch of the B&O from Dickerson to Potomac Electric Power's Dickerson Run Power Station.
Horseshoe Curve: The famous Horseshoe Curve near Altoona, Pennsylvania.

Track Files

The available track files do offer some pretty good variety. Two of them offer typical commuter rail operation with lots of stations and a big

Rocky mountains as seen from the Potash route.

city as a destination. One offers a world famous location often run as a tourist operation. Others offer mountain locations where heavy freight is hauled.

Several of the routes are commuter rail routes around Washington D.C. and suitable train files are available to go with. Operating these routes gives you a taste for scheduled passenger operation with numerous stops. Learning to stop right at the station and get going again with minimum time wasted is a good challenge for the beginning engineer.

The commuter routes can also be run by Amtrak through trains and freight trains. However, several routes are specifically designed for freight operation. A good example is the Moffat route of the D&RGW. It doesn't sound like a particularly long route, at about 60 miles in length, but dragging a freight through the high Colorado mountains will take you about three hours to complete the trip. Depending on your load you may need helper engines, which is one of the sim's options though to do this you must choose the right train file at the start.

Entering Horseshoe Curve westbound.
The view out the window is fairly realistic. Depending on your location you will see tall city buildings, huge railroad bridges, high mountains, suburban houses, trees, cars and truck at grade crossings and so on. However, if you know the route in real life you probably won't be fooled by the TM4 simulated version, and most users will soon notice a rather generic quality to all the scenery. Creating 3D objects is tremendously time consuming so one apparent shortcut taken in creating TM4 was to make a group of objects that could be used in a wide variety of locations rather than trying to create the actual buildings, bridges, etc. that would be seen along the real routes. This is an understandable trade-off but will likely disappoint many users.

Train Files

There is a much greater choice of train files than there are of track files for a couple of reasons. One is that the train files used are compatible with the previous version 3.2 and so did not have to be created anew. Plus, a train file is a much simpler design than a piece of scenery. Owners of v3.2 can take advantage of all this by using the train file editor that was included with that version to create new trains files for TM4.

A typical suburban residential area, here on the Dickerson route.
Train files simply define the physics of the train being moved. They set the weight of the train and the horsepower available to pull that weight and in some cases give the option to add helper engines for additional pulling power. Decided how you want to operate (a commuter train is run a whole lot different than a through freight) determines which file you will choose when starting out.

Sim Features

The operator has quite a number of options that can be set before starting out. One option of major importance is the chance of getting a stop signal along the route. A simple box lets you set the percentage chance; set it to zero and know you can run straight through without worrying about signals (a good option for beginners) or set it higher and challenge yourself to really pay attention to each signal. Learning the signals will be a challenge too as the manual includes three full pages of them (though it's not clear how many of these will actually occur during a run).

An example of the fog effect. The top image has no fog while the bottom has maximum fog. There is a noticeable difference in the sky but range of visibility is still pretty far.
Also good for beginners is the option to ignore signal penalties. It's also possible to ignore speed penalties (for derailments and auto-emergency brake application) and to ignore over speed limit demerits.

In the area of enviroment the user has a choice of three screen resolutions (one way of controlling frame rates). Also a fog density setting is available, though it's really not all that effective. One of the screen shots demonstrates this, showing the same location with no fog and with maximum fog; some limitation to visibility is apparent, but not really enough to increase the difficulty of operation.

The biggest effect on what the out the window view looks like is the "configure view quality" settings. There are quite a few of inter-related sliders and check boxes here and each user will need to experiment with these to get the best possible results. Some settings will result in a view that's pretty ugly, but it's nice that these options are available for people with slower computers.

Running A Train

Entering the city of Denver on the Moffat Subdivision

Now we get to the real core of things--actually operating a train. Unfortunately, I have never had the opportunity to do this in real life so it's impossible to accurately judge how real TM4 has managed to simulate this. But it certainly does feel real. After having done some reading through the manual to understand the various controls, as well as some outside reading, everything operates as I would expect it to. If you do things wrong, like apply power too fast, problems occur, like wheels slipping. If you don't take care to plan ahead on power and brake setting changes you will bust speed limits, blow past stop lights or miss the station platform.

Running a train would seem easy, but it's not--you have to constantly think about what's coming ahead and plan for it as well as watching for signal lights and also be aware of where you are on the route so you know when speed limit changes are coming.

The cliffs at Point of Rocks are one of the landmarks on the B&O Met route.
The sim offers help, some of which a real engineer would not have. In addition to the out the window view a second window is available which shows the upcoming terrain. Knowing when the hills are coming makes it possible to plan your power and brake setting changes. An acceleration meter shows you immediately what effects your settings are having. You'll spend a lot of time watching the terrain and this meter if you want to keep your train under control. This is not exactly how a real engineer would do it, but it's a reasonable trade-off since the seat of the pants feel of acceleration, terrain, etc. is not possible to simulate.

You're also giving warnings of upcoming speed changes and mile posts. Knowing your mile post location allows you to plan ahead by using the route charts that are included in the manual. Unfortunately, this is a bit buggy (though improved with the v4.05 update) as the routes and the

Brunswick, on the B&O Met line, a typical depot.
book don't always match. The book also tends to include a much greater portion of the route than is actually modeled in the track file, which can lead to some confusion. You may well end up making your own route charts, or at least annoting those in the book, as you get to know the routes and this will lead to more successful runs. Just as in the real world, experience counts.

Conclusion

This has been my first experience as a train operator, and in general it's been an enjoyable one. Initially, the differences between the route charts in the book and the actual routes was a great annoyance, but as I learned the routes (and as TM 4.05 fixed many of the problems) operating became more enjoyable. As experience is gained a definite improvement is seen and completing a route for the first time with no penalties and knowing you actually had control of the train gives a real feeling of accomplishment.

Altoona, at the start of the Horseshoe Curve route.
Frame rates were more than adequate on my test system (800 MHz Pentium III) though I've read reports of users with slower systems being surprised at how slow the sim runs. I typically get 25 to 35 fps running at 1024x768 resolution with the sliders set to maximum. Anyone with a similar system will certainly be satisfied but if your computer is older and slower you may find the frame rates unacceptable.

TM4 is not as graphically pretty as other game and sim software currently available, but it does offer a chance to realistically operate a variety of trains and railroad routes.

Nels Anderson
Visit TrainMaster's web site for more information.