Try the Railroad Tycoon series. Lots of fun.
Jaime

www.thepiesinc.com

When I'm just not up to modeling, I play Sid Meier's Railroad by Fairfax Games. You will need to set the screen resolution to 800x600 to play the game, but with multiple different maps and game levels, it will keep you going for some time. Plus, it's set up for up to 4 players.

Hi Doug,

I used to play around a lot with TRAINZ a few years back. The last version I have is TRAINZ 2006. It allows you to run a virtual railroad, with emphasis on running or modelling, depending on what you like. You can build your own terrain and add thousands of detail items, locos and rolling stock, simply by pointing and clicking. It's easy to get sucked in and spend a LOT of time here! A really cool feature in this version for us Canadians is that one of the included layouts is Toronto - in 1955, complete with a CN Northern and CP RDCs. This part of the sim was done by a group from Toronto, and they have included every inch of actual track that was there at that time...both big roundhouses are there, as is Maple Leaf Gardens, The Royal York, Union Station, Gooderham & Worts Distillery, Cabin D etc, etc, etc. There are also many other ready made layouts from every era and from around the world, including narrow guage. And, of course, you can customise any of them, or build your own, from virtual scratch!

I had Railroad Tycoon earlier, but it focuses more on the BUSINESS of railroading, rather than on running trains.

To me, TRAINZ was a lot more fun.

I confess though....since I started working on my current layout, and started installing sound and DCC, I have hardly touched the old program. I'm old fashioned, I guess - I'd still rather work with my hands on actual "things" rather than virtual ones.

Lance

If you are going to waste time, do it with an air brush.

P

I already do enough of that! Art is my day job...I escape to modelling.