Today marks the 22nd anniversary of the opening of TrainSim.Com, and with the site undergoing some changes it seemed worth looking back and commemorating the event.
Way back in 2001 I had already been running FlightSim.Com for five years and when Microsoft announced that there would soon be a Microsoft Train Simulator to go along with Microsoft Flight Simulator I just felt like I had to open a new site to support it. Some of the other flightsim sites just opened new sections in their forums but I felt that Train Simulator deserved a complete site of its own.
I've been interested in trains since I was a kid, I suspect like many of the rest of you. I had Lionel trains and a big HO layout back in those days. I had already tried some of the early rail simulators but when Microsoft announced theirs, that was an exciting time.
So here we are 22 years later. I'm now "retired" and fortunately for us all Eric Olesen has taken the reins of running TrainSim.Com. The hobby has evolved and sadly Microsoft never followed up with a second version but plenty of others have produced worthy train simulators to keep us interested.
Out of necessity, I ran FlightSim.Com and TrainSim.Com as a business, my full-time job. Quite frankly, FlightSim.Com subsidized TrainSim.Com all those years, as the relative number of people into train simulators is apparently much lower.
With the new arrangement, TrainSim.Com is now completely on its own and is more of a club than a business. As such, it's up to you, the members, to support it if you want your "clubhouse" to continue to be available.
I'm hoping for many more good years of train simming and TrainSim.Com activity.
--Nels Anderson
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