Severn Valley Railway
Product Review
The following is reprinted from a product review in the January 2004 issue of British Railway Modeling.
David Lloyd-Jones gets interactive with the latest expansion pack for the Microsoft Train Simulator.
Since its release back in June 2001, the Microsoft Train Simulator has given railway enthusiasts a new branch of the hobby to explore. This modern hi-tech railway activity has spawned a whole new generation of railway modelers or 'Simmers' as they are known. These modelers also model in 3D and construct 'layouts' known as routes. These routes can either be a short sleepy branch line or full main line covering many miles.
Unlike most railway modeler's layouts, which represent just a small section of a line, these train simulator routes nearly always cover the entire railway. In fact, a number of American train simulator routes will actually cross a whole state, taking the interactive driver many hours to traverse.
The basic Microsoft Train Simulator pack only has one UK route, the famous Settle & Carlisle line. However, to boost interest, UK modelers have added other British routes, which are available to download via the internet. The only problem with these is the size of the file you have to download, which can take up to several hours on a normal 56K modem and not everybody has the luxury of broadband. Also, some of the these routes can be quite difficult to install on your PC, and it can sometimes be a bit hit or miss whether they will work or not once installed.
Similar to the Microsoft Flight Simulator, professionally-produced expansion packs are now starting to appear on the market for the Train Simulator, and this latest one is the Severn Valley Railway from Just Trains. This type of expansion pack makes adding an extra route and rolling stock to the basic Train Simulator program a lot simpler and takes away all the hassle of installation and set-up associated with routes and stock downloaded from the internet.
Of course, the actual Severn Valley Railway is well know to all railway enthusiasts. This former standard gauge Great Western Railway line, which runs a total distance of 16 miles from Kidderminster in Worcestershire to Bridgenorth in Shropshire is an ideal candidate for a simulator route.
The picturesque journey follows the meandering course of the River Severn for most of the route and one of the highlights of the trip is crossing the massive 200' single span Victoria Bridge. The line runs through largely unspoiled countryside and is punctuated by quaint GWR stations. This is classic GWR branch line country. The presevered SVR has become very popular with both tourists and enthusiasts due partly to extensive TV coverage. The line's steam trains frequently appear on the nation's TV screens.
So what do you get? The virtual SVR expansion pack is contained on two CD-ROM disks and is professionally packaged with a detailed 50-page installation and driver manual. It's important that before you purchase this product you check the system requirements. This expansion pack is no lightweight (see system requirements below) and requires a modern hi-spec PC to run it.
Of course, you will need to have Microsoft Train Simulator installed on your computer system first.
Also important, and highlighted in the comprehensive installation manual, is that you have installed Microsoft Train Simulator update, which is either available on the second of the two SVR CD-ROM disks or as a free download from the Microsoft Train Simulator website http://www.microsoft.com/games/trainsimulator and is easy to install on your PC.
Actually installing the SVR simulation is very easy and both the on-screen instructions and those in the accompanying manual are well thought out and simple to follow. Once installed it is a simple case of firing up the Microsoft Train Simulator and clicking on the Severn Valley Railway section. As with all the routes on the train simulator, you can either take a drive exploring the line with one of your favourite steam or diesel locomotives or load one of the 22 pre-progammed activities.
The SVR route runs at a maximum speed limit of 25mph from end-to-end as is standard for all Light Railways in the UK. Along the way you will find the speed limit changing very frequently, including one 5 mph section that seems to take forever to get through!
As well as the complete route, the SVR train sim includes 13 steam and two diesel locomotives with period-accurate carriages and wagons (see list below). Rolling stock includes BR Mk 1 coaches in 'Blood and Custard', Western Region Chocolate and Cream and BR Maroon, along with a rake of Gresley and LMR coaches, PBG and NNX Postal wagons, plus an extensive selection of freight wagons.
It's possible to expand your rolling stock even further by visiting http://www.uktrainsim.com and downloading extra locomotives, carriages and wagons.
The track layout isn't 100% true to the real SVR as its not possible to include slips, etc, in the standard MSTS track system. However, the signalling on the simulation has been placed accurately. It will take you 1 hour and 16 minutes to drive the full route from one end to the other if you follow all the speed limits and timetables where applicable. With all these limits and various gradients you really have to drive the train and that 1 hour 16 minutes will not be spent tapping on the desktop — this route is a real driver's route.
An Introductory Train Ride is included that runs from Kidderminster to Bridgnorth aboard BR Stanier 2-8-0 8F No.48773. The American lady who normally tells you of all the benefits of MSTS has thankfully been replaced with a description of the Severn Valley Railway to listen to.
As well as the standard glorious summer days there are also autumn and winter textures along with night and winter night textures. But it's those little touches along the line that are worth looking out for such as when you go over the Victoria Bridge, down below you can see a fisherman sitting on the bank actually casting his rod. While up in the sky you will find not only a hot air balloon, but a Spitfire and the whole Battle of Britain memorial flight all buzzing about. There is someone flying a radio-controlled model aircraft and at Kidderminster station there is a JCB loading up a truck, which drives off ready for another one to arrive. The more you traverse the line, the more you notice, and I bet there is lots more stuff I have not noticed yet. It's these little details which really makes the journey along the SVR worthwhile.
I found it hard to find fault with this product. The overall quality of both the route and rolling stock is second to none and shows how far train simulator programmes have come in just a few short years. My only reservation is that it is primarily a short branch line passenger route with a 25 mph speed limit, and you'll spend a lot of the time actually running slower than 25 mph, which might not appeal to those who like to simply hammer up the main line at breakneck speed.
You also won't be able to run this product on a low-end machine but I have tried it on an 800 Ghz machine, which is well below the recommended spec of 1.2Ghz, and the simulation ran fine without having to reduce the level of detail too much. Ideally, you should run it on a 1.7 Ghz-2.4 Ghz machine with at least 256 MB of RAM and a decent video card.
A highly-recommended addition to the Microsoft Train Simulator and possibly the best expansion pack so far. If this is the new standard for MSTS, then I am definitely looking forward to further releases from Just Trains.
Steam Locomotives:
- BR 2-8-0 8F No. 48773
- BR 0-6-OPT No. 1501
- BR 0-6-OPT No. 7714
- BR 4-6-0 'Black Five' No. 45110
- BR Ivatt 2-6-0 No. 46443
- BR 4-6-0 'Manor' No. 7819
- BR 2-6-4T Standard 4MT No. 80079
- BR 'Small Prairie' 2-6-2T No. 4566 in BR Green
- BR 4-6-0 'Manor' No. 7802 in BR Green
- GWR 2-8-0 No. 2857
- GWR 0-6-OPT No. 5764
- GWR 0-6-OST No. 813
- GWR 4-6-0 'Hall' No. 4930
Diesel Locomotives:
- BR D1013 Western Ranger (blue livery, night cab variant)
- BR D3022 Class 08 Shunter
System Requirements:
- Windows: XP / 2000 / ME / 98
- Video Card: 32 MB
- Processor: 1.2 Ghz
- RAM: 128 MB (256 MB for Windows XP)
- Hard Drive: 1.3 GB
- Other: Microsoft Train Simulator and DirectX 8.0 or higher
