It suddenly just hit me, as of December 19th, 2023, I have owned and played Train Simulator Classic for 10 years. This game may be old but it is insanely replayable, more so than anything I have ever played thanks to the huge variety of content available for the game. The game isn't perfect, it has many issues and has changed a lot over 10 years. Even though there are lots of sub-par DLC, I still find myself enjoying my time with the game unless it is painful to play (cough cough, London Transport Heritage Collection, I have had countless issues with this route!) because for me at least, most issues I can overlook. I always prefer realism where I can get it as like anyone here, that's what I always prefer. But at the end of the day I want to have a calm hour or two long drive with a train and it always delivers. Always so much you can do with this game, so many areas of it to explore whether you like playing with a variety of the games features and DLC or sticking to a specific type of gameplay, DLC, location, etc. I always look forward to doing my daily TSC session! Hopefully more to come over the next few years. Just curious to those who read this and wanting to spark up a conversation, how long have you been playing TSC for? Would be interesting to hear from other people's point of views on how long they have been playing and what they enjoy.
I purchased the game on Christmas Eve, 2014. I played a bit (New York to New Haven, mostly) then paused until November next year, when it was dark again, by then I got a better PC, option to get the next yearly edition and a month later, Donner Pass, which was the first route I actually enjoyed as a beginner. Also, my hook was a cab ride video on the Kootenay Sub, and those who follow know my scenery preferences. Started exploring in 2016, and here we are.
I bought it back in the Railworks 3 days. I was on a Six month work assignment in Switzerland (which so far has lasted 15 years) and was staying in a hotel. I needed something to entertain myself in the evenings. I got hooked back then, although I rarely bought extra DLC. I really seriously started playing about 5 years ago when I got a better PC and then started investigating mods and 3rd party add ons about 18 months ago. Now I focus TSC on just UK routes and have a lot of enhancement packs and additional reskins and scenarios. It’s still my favourite train simulator. I also like TSW, but I do like the longer drives you can do in TSC along with the variety of rolling stock. So I tend to keep TSW for German Routes where I enjoy playing it with safety systems enabled.
I've started my TS journey in late 2015, coming from Loksim3D, and not knowing this would become my all time favourite sim, with 7,500 hours on record now. Most of the time I'm fixing issues as I'm playing, with gained knowledge by trial and error I'm constantly revisiting stuff. Just corrected the Audio on the Woodhead 76 for example or Lightflares on Kansas Topeka. The more I know about the game engine, the more I admire how well it was laid out by Kuju back then and how much is actually customizable.
I progressed from playing MSTS to Rail Simulator in early 2008, and have played ever since. Over the years I have bought nearly 250 DLC and dozens of 3rd party addons. I now only play on UK routes set in the mid 50s to 80s. Tried TSW but its very limiting and to be honest I just don't like the "feel" of it. I have cut down my play time to about 10 hours a week, but still accumulated 1,421 play hours. I do play other things like ETS2 and openworld games like Cyberpunk 2077, and Metro Exodus, not to forget Flight Simulator.
Purchased 1st Jun 2010 and I have clocked up 16501 hours and I am too scared to calculate how much I have spent on DLC, Like the OP I too like realism but can overlook most flaws. In that time I have gone from hobby train driver to real train driver and I still play daily so I dont think I am about to stop anytime soon. I try to get into TSW but always find myself coming back to TSC, it just seems to have a charm that is lacking in other sims.
Awesome!! Going into a bit more timeline detail about my experience like you did, for a good few years there it was about messing around, breaking speed limits and crashing haha. But then I started playing seriously in and off playing sessions. By 2022 and 2023 that’s when I joined the forums and started posting. Then as I began trainspotting in my local area in 2022, screenshotting became my main hobby / gameplay style in TSC. Funnily enough taking and practicing TSC screenshots helped me improve my real life train photos, I have self-taught myself to take some somewhat good photos of real trains through TSC screenshotting.
Very interesting stories so far everyone!! My previous post above was on and off written while I was busy doing things, so as I posted it only @triznya.andras’s post was up at the time. It was great to post above and then have the page refreshed to see already some interesting stories and experiences with TSC posted to the thread.
I purchased Train Simulator back in 2016, after playing Trainz for a few years. I last left off with Trainz A New Era. After creating several routes in Trainz, I wanted to see what it was like driving a train from point A to point B in Train Simulator. I can't believe I have been playing Train Simulator 20xx/TSC for 8 years now. I mainly enjoy operating the US passenger routes in the northeast and sometimes venture off into the UK passenger content. I like Train Simulator because you can operate trains from many different countries and learn about different operations. I first played the vanilla game and then started learning about the different physics, engine, and graphics mods. I go back and forth between TSC and TSW but enjoy TSC more and look forward to many more years of enjoying Train Simulator Classic It is great to see it has a great catalog of routes and DLC and can be modified to anyone's liking.
Also 10 years and counting. And like Bekns to scared to lookup what I have been spending in Steam and on Third party stuff. I tell myself that the price per mile isn't too bad, as long as I keep driving.
I started with the very first kuju railsimulator back in 2008 i remember buying my first dlc which was the class 08 and had to have it on disk as i didnt trust doing it online!!. Still play it most days and im building a couple of small routes which i needed custom assets for so i learned how to use blender and briage to export my assets into the game. I hope it continues to be supported as there is so much dlc out there now and changing to another platform would get rid of it all.
Don’t think i have ten years behind me. 5 or 6 perhaps. Many hours, and i think i managed to bring something unique to the community, my Real Drives which have randomised signalling. It’s the only game i have. (I did have ZuSi for a while, but never made it to my new pc.) I actually bought it because i liked watching train cab videos, and needed a distraction in a dark spot in my life. And it really did help me through the darkest hours. I am fine now, and still a TSC enthusiast.
Late to the party. I came in three years ago via the gateway drug of TSW on Playstation. I bought a PC soon afterwards and downloaded TSC via Steam. Since then, I've "invested" in a TON of add-ons and there isn't much I haven't got now from the AP and AT catalogues. When I go for it, I REALLY go all in . I'm really lucky as I've lived in loads of areas where we have route coverage. Currently on the North Wales Coast and in the past I've lived in Stockport and Reading. We also have relatives in Exmouth on the Riveria coast - all routes that have come along to TSC - happy days! When I was a kid in the 70's, I used to travel a lot to my Gran's via rail from Stockport to Leeds so the Trans Pennine route really brought back memories - just need someone to do Stockport to Stalybridge via Denton please! Looking forward to the Midland extension from JT as I lived in Disley then, on the Buxton line. These developers must stop spoiling me!
I had brought msts back in the day for the Severn valley extension as it is local to me. I brought railworks played it a bit but never really go proper into it as my laptop did not run it well. Then fast forward about 4 years ago I got a better laptop and could finally play it properly
I started in 2007 but was so unimpressed that I didn't touch it again until 2017 after I saw a stream showcasing an Armstrong Powerhouse pack. By that point the selection of rolling stock and routes was excellent and I spent most of my spare money building up my UK and German collection over the next couple of years.
I started in 2014 with Hamburg-Hannover. Main focus is German content, but I also own most british stuff and that causes me having a huge install just shy of one TB. Suprisingly I only clock in at 2900 hours. Maybe this is duo to me quitting the game around 2016 for two whole years and I also had offline mode switched on sometimes. Most of my game hours have been spent on ruitebuilding, allthough I also like to have a drive sometimes. The amount of content for this game (mods, freeware and all that good stuff) will basicly never make it boring for me. At this point I never really see myself abandoning TS Classic entirely. I own TSW, but it never ever came close to replacing TS Classic for me. To be honest, I even spend a lot more time in Nimby Rails or Transport Fever, than I do in TSW. I hope this game keeps going strong and we will see what DTG has to say about TSC in the upcoming festival of rail streams.
I started in December 2013 and have played it since. Despite all this time I've only played it for 1,700 hours because I also play lots of other games too (last time I checked I'm at about 2100 hours in GTA Online, starting in 2015 on the PS3). It's a game I love and even though I am going to be a lot busier in the coming months I have no plans to stop with TS until I or computers cannot play it anymore. Just today I bought the Bossman Games Black Five, and it is brilliant - I took it for a drive on the route I've been building and had a very pleasant experience.
I started playing TSC in 2021 after buying a decent enough gaming PC thanks to advice from other forum members (my laptop presented issues running TSC). I had been playing TSW2020 for a few months beforehand on PS4. I have loved playing most of the time except when I get random OOM errors or AI collisions miles away from where I am. Like a few others have said in this thread, it's mostly the older diesels I'm interested in (I'm not good with steam locos) and am very familiar with the class 37 and 142/143 units in reality now having been around them so much in my voluntary job. I mostly play UK routes as I am familiar with them and have most routes now along with loco packs from JT, AP and ATS which are miles above the DTG locos. I've got just under 1000 hours played on TSC now and would estimate well over £1000 spent on DLCs alone. I mostly play simulator games now (TSC, TSW, ATS, ETS and so on) but have 5000 hours in GTA online now on PS systems.
I came off about twenty years of Formula 1 sims and had little interest in railways. I started RW/TS in 2009 having briefly tried to use MSTS to build a little route for my daughter and failed.The editor in RW/TS was more usable so I started modelling my daily commute (Cambridge to Meldreth - about ten miles). That route is now a bit larger! I've officially clocked 12,000 hours of play (mostly editing) with another x,000 hours of research and y,000 hours of asset creation. I may have become a bit obsessed at times...
In terms of train simulators in general I started back in 2001 with MSTS - paid full price (back then it was AUD$100) and used to play it on my laptop at school lunches, constantly crashing, and breaking speed limits. I ended up playing it for an extremely long time - even did on my Mac, (at that time, Mac computers were running intel chips, and because of this were able to run a copy of windows natively as if it were a PC, minus the fact you had to reboot if you wanted to switch from OS to the other). I then got into RailSimulator but my Mac at the time din't like it, and since I was still on 56K dialup the thought of trying to download a game via steam would've been impossible. Fast forward to around 5 years ago, and I restarted my Train simulator journey with TS2017 and 2018, which I was running via bootcamp on my 2015 iMac. In 2020, with the advent of COVID, lockdowns and restrictions, people were allowed to dip into their superannuation fund (For those outside of Australia, basically a defined benefits scheme/State pension etc). Seeing I had money in it, I used what I had to buy a custom gaming computer and then spent a heap on DLC - the PC is now itself nearly 4 years old, and in desperate need of an upgrade due to the now lack of space (I run TS on my OS's SSD, which is only 500GB, and coupled with all system drivers etc, I have anywhere from 0-250MB left, so you do the math) - I could run it of my 7200rpm HD, but not sure how it would go in terms of stuttering/load times. I did get into streaming it a little during COVID but lost interest in it. As for DLCs, I'm mainly into UK content, but I do enjoy the odd run on german routes. It's also more awesome that there are a few other countries in the game such as South Africa and Japan. However the UK is probably closest to anything Australian, especially seeing the Brisbane suburban network directly copied the UK signal and safety systems. The trains even have yellow fronts! (A shot I took at Roma Street a few years back) So basically sums up my TS journey in a nutshell.
I did not like MSTS and came in to the game via Trainz which was easy to use which I had for a number of years It's editor was fairly easy to use and the amount of European Freeware stock was quite good. I remember a nice German Freeware route that I ran. Then in 2012/2013 I got a gift of Railworks3/Train Simulator 2012 and never looked back. It has taken me some time to work out what does what - with the help of people on UKTS. I'm not up to building a route or trains. Tried some basic repainting or renumbering of locos. I got in to TSW then TSW2 but the way it is set up with the driver pushing a button to close the doors on slam door 101s, the signalling being wrong in places, unable to change locos for something else until the Czech guys brought out some amended files. Then DTG changed the program to stop that. - Cannot have people enjoying the game So I'm sticking with TSC.
I started with TSC also around 2013, earlier playing Trainz (multiple versions, starting from 2004), and earlier MaSzyna EU07 & Mechanik EN57 (Polish simulators). I had MSTS borrowed from a friend for some week in the early 2000's, but I didn't get much into it. I wasn't interested in getting it for myself. Well, South Africa and Japan have a familiar track gauge for Qlders, and UK the signals. You'd just need to replace the bogies of trains with the yellow fronts to narrower and it would be even more similar.
I know exactly what you are talking about. I became a little too obsessed with my last route project and had to take a step back. So did you build the Kings Lynn payware route?
Railworks was released on July 12th 2009. I have had it since 2010 so 13 years I have owned it. What I do notice is people don't seem to have as many problems with it now as back then. Maybe it's because not so many people play it these days or DTG has fixed many of them.
Yes, but quite a big one. Internally, much was improved. (all Route and Scenario properties were in one big file each, now separate per route and scenario, modularization through Steam depots for separate DLC, introduction of real emissive lights and raindrops on glass, new HUDs, added SilverLining, and many other improvements later.)
I got Railworks on CD in 2009, but didn't do much with it. It wasn't until it popped up on Steam in a sale in 2011 that I rebought it (by accident) and have been playing enthusiastically ever since. I tried TSW when it was first released, but was bitterly disappointed with its performance on my weakish PC, refunded it, and have ignored it since. I think that was fortunate, given the howls of pain that still come from the TSW community seven years after release. Like many people, I've got too much DLC and I only install a small part of it at anyone time, but that keeps it fresh. I have greatly enjoyed the DTG screenshot competition, and had a degree of success at it, though I must be honest and say that it's losing a bit of interest for me now. I'm also finding that I'm much choosier about what I buy and find it quite easy to say no when the sales come round. DLC has to be good and deeply discounted before I feel I can justify it, given the huge choice I've already got. But there's still plenty to suggest at Christmas for presents! My remaining challenges in TSC are learning how to use German safety systems and learning how to create scenarios.
