What brought you into Trainz?

[Moojgoo]

What made you get into Trainz? Ads, siblings, etc. As for me, the second disk on my MSTS install was scratched beyond repair so I couldn't play with it anymore. So, upon search of a temporary train sim, I came across demos of Trainz, and I started to gain intrest. I decided to get TRS2006, after that, on December 12th, 2006, I joined you guys. That was when I still had the TRS2004 demo. So, a few days after the 12th, I got TRS2006. And I got it too as a Christmas present from my dad.

 

[WileeCoyote]

Somewhat like MoojGoo really, a friend of mine told me about Trainz and I had long been looking at MSTS as a train sim, mostly because I'm a railfan and I liked the idea of being able to drive a train (duh). I did some searching and came upon a TRS2006 demo for Hawes junction, the bug bit me and I was immeadiately infected with the Trainz virus (incurable by the way). So I hinted to certain people round Christmas and lo and behold, Christmas morning I was Trainzing. I've been a Trainz maniac ever since.

WileeCoyote

 

[Moojgoo]

Whoa, a lot like me!

 

[Floridarailmaster]

Scince I was a child I had always been amazed by the moving pieces of steel driven on iron beams tucked above the old weathered tracks of wood. As I child my father had purchased MSTS and I had always loved it scince it was the closest thing at the time to being on the rails. More then often my father (who is ironically in my case a computer technician) would take us to various stores such as circut city and best buy to gaze at the huge televisions that we would some day buy. At the time I wasn't sure what the big excitement about clarity and hi definition was so I would pretend like I understoon and be amazed. We would also go by the applications part of the store which was my favorite because I could explorer the world of posibilitys in one isle, whether it be from piano lessons on a cd to learning c++ in 21 days. One day I was walking with my mother and I say the original trainz which at the time was not known as railroad simulator but just trainz. My first thought was for the box to be 10 times better then the actual game. When I looked at the back of the box I was amazed to see what it was. So after many weeks of convincing my mother, she finaly got it for me and I ran home poped in the disk and fell in love with the flexibility and sweetness trainz had. Scince then I've purchased UTC, TRS04 both service packs, the content creation CD's and TRS06 SP1. And in a couple of weeks I will be taking a side to trainz classics once I get my laptop fixed.

Please excuse any miss spelled words, I'm on my side kick 3 cell phone

 

[American_Connections]

"Starting over at 50"

I started to model "N" Gage when about ten years old, when went throught the teens chasin women, and when I got my fill of that, I started modeling again. Made a small track to run around the walls of a small trailer (Carvan), and throught walls and closets. But I sold the trailer and let he set go with it. Then while in living in Wyoming, I started a 8x8 in a rented mobile home. My father died in 1990, and I had to go back to operate the Ranch. I had to cut the layout on half and take out the window just to remove the sheets, packaged them togeather and set it up again in Oregon at the ranch. Then disaster took it all away! ---

I could not travel to find work and started to work the Internet, found sight of Trainz and bought the Ultimate!

And so now I do Virtual because of lose of my home. I am in Romania to get away from bad memories and start over, as it says in the article from this paper.

 

[magicentro]

I saw it on the news ! - no kidding

Back in October 2001 TV channel Ten Sydney had a piece on this new 'model' train simulator being developed by a company in Queensland called Auran. As soon as I saw the graphics and the way you could speed up the day/night cycle being demo'd I knew I just had to have it.

I 'Googled' Auran and found the website then after reading all about 'Trainz', ordered my advanced copy right then and there !

My first (of many) piece of Trainz software then arrived in the post early December and I've been 'hooked' since. This was known as Trainz V1.0 community edition and was available in limited numbers only via on line purchase.

The wait for that package to arrive was unbearable as back in these early days Auran used to give weekly and sometimes twice weekly news updates on progress/features, etc.

Ah - those were the dayz

Steve.

 

[American_Connections]

Bottom side of the boardwalk

I saw it on the news ! - no kidding

... a company in Queensland ...
Steve.

High five to the ten down-under!

 

[betsy662]

I was first exposed to it in the pages of Model Railroader, they did a piece on railroad simulators, and compared both MSTS and Trainz, they rightly figured MSTS to be geared more toward those who are into prototype trains, and Trainz more as a model railroad simulator.

I got my hands on MSTS right off the presses, and in the old computer I had back then, it didn't work right off the bat, had to update a few things in that old Gateway, it was Windows 98, and machines were already on the market for Windows ME and 2000, so I was already well out of date, did get it working however, but it didn't have the graphics I expected, naturally, when we bought new computers in 2002, the graphics were well improved, since the new pooters were naturally much better.

I still puttered along with MSTS, though still not satisfied with it, it was better than nothing, still was hoping to get my hands on Trainz, but that wasn't to be until 2004, finally got me a copy of UTC off of ebay, from that time on, I was in love, thats where I learned to make sure I get a new sealed copy since the CD key isn't transferable, a few months later I decided to check into TRS04, and found that on ebay as well, got me one of those from the same software guy who sold me UTC, and again fell totally in love with the game all over again, when Auran brought out TRS06 I ordered directly from Auran, while 06 has its little quirks, I still love it.

As a model railroader myself, one of the really great things that Trainz offers is the flexibility, I can have any layout I want, model any era I want, from 4-4-0's and wooden coaches right on upto modern diesels and intermodal, and in TRS06 I can also have maglev, not that I'm into that, but its good to know its there just in case.

Try doing that in the scale model railroading world and you would find yourself broke very quickly, one way to make a small fortune in the model train business is naturally you have to start with a large fortune, Trainz alleviates that thanks to third party content creators, DLS and a support system that is second to none...............

 

[shikadi]

After I bought MSTS I found TRS2004 in PC world,tried it out and within a year bought UTC and TRS2006.
That was in 2005.

 

[f7power]

first i had msts, but that decided to break, so i looked about the market for a replacement, but the closest this to getting msts was trainz, and thats how it all stsrted really

 

[axe1970]

Way back in the year 2001 I got MSTS, as it was the only Train sim that I had heard of. I loved it, but it really wasn't user friendly. IMHO.
I was over at Train-sim.com and somebody posted info about Trainz. Well I saw the Video that Auran had made and I started to drool :mop: . The Video was called "control 1" I think and I would play it over and over again. What really got me excited was the Santa Fa F7 in that Video and the sound the Train was making. Hmmmm Flange sounds.

I wanted to make my own routes and it looked like Trainz would suit me fine. Shortly after I joined the Trainz Forums and the rest is history.

 

[chrisracer8903]

I have always been fascenated with CSX trains seince I was 2 and a half years old. I would go see trains in Plymouth with my grandma every friday and saturday evenings and usually see CP Rail and CSX locals, then I would go home and try to recreate Plymouth Diamond with my wooden Brio trains. Then way down the road I got MSTS the day it came out and I loved it. Later on after I saw all the content created for MSTS (Mainly routes), I tried doing the CSX Saginaw Sub for MSTS, but it was too hard. Then I came across Trainz UTC. I got it and I was hooked to it. I recreated the CSX Saginaw Sub twice after a hard drive crash, then I did it for the third time when I got TRS2004 and that's the one currently at the DLS. The current one at USTrainz was a remodel (due to my PC was OLD) and now my new version is coming soon for mid to high-end PCs. Come to think of it, I've been doing prototypical routes ever seince I was 4, but with my wooden trains :hehe: . -Chris

 

[jjslll54]

Back in '01 I was getting frustrated with M$T$ version of surveyor. I could not figure it out even after buying a how to book. I was browsing the internet and found Auran's web site. I liked what I saw and bought the fisrt retail version of Trainz. 1.1, I think, as soon as it was availble in the US. I've never been one for operations. I like building better. So I got hooked on Gmax and have been there ever since. I have every version of Trainz except the community version that came out berfore 1.1. I expect I will get a copy of TC as soon as I have the extra money to spare. That's my history so far.

Jack

 

[skiingiggy]

i just got it as a christmas gift. since then i've been hooked, and now i am a regular to the forums.

 

[Elukka]

I downloaded the UTC demo, but i don't remember why. Probably just stumbled across it.

I then bought Trainz. The first edition. To be honest, i was kind of disappointed and never played it much. It had very little content built in. I had to download a huge service pack just to get scenarios and it was a pain to download anything. i never got a working new layout downloaded. Back then, you had to download everything manually. I think i pretty much abandoned the game after trying to download a session, for which i needed a route, for which i needed to manually download hundreds of dependencies only to find out that one single car only worked with UTC.

But i bought TRS06 when it was fairly new, i think. It's a great game and actually had content built in and it's much easier to download stuff.

 

[arco]

Trainz

My son-in-law gave me my first sim, (Loco-commotion,) as an aid to my newly planned n-gauge layout. I gave it back to him a few weeks later so he could use the games that were built in. He then came up with Trainz CE, again as a planning aid. The planned layout was from then on a dead duck. I have been a trainz addict ever since.

Tony

 

[Gandalf0444]

I happened to find Trainz at a book fair at school(why it was at a book fair I will never know) And I liked it but I still had MSTS, then when MSTS broke,I moved fully onto Trainz,and then I convinced my parents to buy me 06 about 1-2 years ago. And now I am trying to convince them to let me get TC. Which suprisingly the went for even though they say to spend less time ont he computer.(yeah figure that one out:hehe: ) But they said yes they would order it for me and then all of a sudden I have to wait until sometime next week:'( . Oh well as long as I get it.

 

[seeseeme]

I saw it on the news ! - no kidding

Back in October 2001 TV channel Ten Sydney had a piece on this new 'model' train simulator being developed by a company in Queensland called Auran. As soon as I saw the graphics and the way you could speed up the day/night cycle being demo'd I knew I just had to have it.

{snip}

Ah - those were the dayz

Steve.

I may have seen the same news story or one very similar. I saw it on TV and was hooked by the ability to create my own Train Layout.

However , I thought I would wait for a while in case there where problems with the first version. 6 months or so later I was looking for it again but I could not remember the name of the company nor anything else from the news story. Over another 6 month period I continued to look and tried a lot of things to search on the net, but at that time I was not as "Internet literate" as I am today. Finally I stumbled on Auran and that was it, a model train simulator for a computer, this had to be what I saw on the TV. I ordered it and have been here ever since.

EDIT: Must also add that while "thinking" about Trainz and then looking for it on the net, I purchased MSTS. I installed it, looked at it for about an hour and worked out it did not meet my needs. The disk lasted a while as very good drink coasters.

Craig

 

[rjhowie1]

Like some I had MTS then by chance doing a net search came across Trainz by pure chance. When i discoered I could build a route without being a physics prof I could not believe my good fortune! Now I am building something I have wanted to do - my Glasgow city tramway system. Could never have done this with MTS and even though I am suffering Trainzitis It is the best illness I have ever had.

 

[7121239]

Hi,
A member since December 2002, long before 'the crash'. A model railroader and model maker. Came across Trainz in a software publication and liked the concept. Hooked ever since.

Ian
7121239