Jason Silver

Sunday, November 12th, 2006

Train Set Dream

I've been a fan of model railroading since I was a small child. As long as I can remember-- probably since I was 9 or 10, I have thought about building vast railroad empires to run trains around upon.

My grandfather, Earl Abrams, introduced me to locomotives, to working steam engines, and to Lionel train sets at a young age. That likely had a big part in my interest. Plus, I like the notion of playing God to a whole world: designing mountains and streams for tiny, adoring, plastic people. Twisted.

But real model railroading is time consuming. And real model railroading is expensive! And all the gear takes up so much room! Joanne complains every time we pull up house and move: "Tell me again why we lug these boxes of track, trains, and trestles from house to house, city to city, and country to country?"

I smile and mention how the kids will love it someday. Someday is taking too long to get to station.

So I can be spotted at times, trolleying the Internet in search of an alternate option to the basement empire; an option in the form of software. I haven't had a lot of luck, because there are a lot of variables at play in creating a viable alternative.

• The program has to be cheap.
• It has to allow customization and creativity - I want to model my own world.
• It shouldn't be too time consuming to get a train running around the virtual track
• Kids should be able to enjoy it with me
• It should allow multiplayer interaction

That last point is the real zinger. There are lots of programs out there that let you run trains on a track. Many are overly customizable. I've got a couple of versions of Railroad Tycoon, and it's great for simulated train economics. Microsoft has an expensive program called "Train Simulator" (creative title, eh?) There's another cool game called Trainz. These cost money. I found a free one today called BVE. It's very cool with amazing graphics. There's another program called TrainPlayer which lets you run toy trains around on your own track plans, or the track plans made famous by model railroader gurus. Fun for a while. Again, way too expensive.

Bewilderingly, none of these make use of a multiplayer environment. Why would anyone even want multiplayer? Lots of reasons.

Model train layouts are way more compelling when there are people doing it together. Every person comes with a different skill: wiring, modelling, painting, kit-bashing, computer programming, painting or air-brushing; decals, historical accuracy, mechanics, design, sculpting, making tiny trees, tiny rocks, or tiny people. Painting backdrops. You name it, whatever your skill, there's likely a place for it in model railroading.

And running the trains around the layout can take more than one person to keep them from colliding. You've got the dispatcher, the engineers, the guy working the yard, the gal reading the schedule, the guy bringing the cookies and coffee. It's a team sport.

And some people are into modules. With modules, each person designs their own little diorama, then brings it to the clubhouse. Each module connects to the one next to it. You can bring as many modules as you want, making a huge empire for which each person is king of a four foot long section. Everyone runs their favourite locomotive and train through the whole thing... across the prairie diorama, under the mountains diorama, right out to the coastal diorama. It's kind of like sharing!

Wouldn't that be a great concept for a virtual train program? What if I could design my own module; say a city set in 1950's East Hamilton, and connect it over the Internet to my friends module set in 1950's Rochester or another friend in 1950's Toronto? We could send traffic back and forth between our modules, and the modules of others in our 'virtual club.' Picking up passengers, grabbing mail, delivering grain, whatever.

I did finally find a program that flirts with this idea. It's called Freight Yard Manager, and it allows you to take a satelite photograph of a freight yard, run trains on it, and send them off with loads for adjacent cities. I haven't downloaded it yet, but it sounds like it has potential. It also sounds complicated.

I hope some game developer out there will catch the vision for multiplayer train simulators. Until then, I'll keep dreaming of a model layout in the basement.

~Jason