Here are a couple of screenshots from a couple of games I used to play alot. These are taken from a ZX Spectrum emulator. 1: WCML London Euston - Preston - Glasgow ©Ashley Greenup 1987 On the tape Side A was from London to Preston and Side B was the bit to Glasgow. You could choose the class and loco number. There are other routes done by the same author too. Ashley also made the Cab View Driver, which was a real video of the route and the information like the image below. Had many a fun hour driving Manchester to Carlisle and Crewe to Carlisle. The 2nd Game is Southern Belle. ©Hewson 1985. One of 2 games made by Hewson. Running from London Victoria to Brighton. It was one of the very first train simulators I played. It took me ages to actually make it as I would run out of coal halfway through. The other game was Evening Star. I am sure there are plenty of other simulators out there, but I think it is always worth giving a nod to some of the ones which got you interested.
The main oldie was Simudrive but it was entirely text based and no sound. As an offshoot to his traffic simulations, the SIAM guy also produced some texty style based driver sims. Then there was Train Driver 3 which had to run on an Amiga Emulator, one of the very early cab view and sound equipped sims. Then you had the oddities like Mechanik and of course BVE and Densha De Go from Japan. I ripped the front off my missus’ PS1 so I could get the bar in to overcome the regional lock - for some reason Sony didn’t want people in the west playing their Japanese market titles.
I still have my copy of Evening Star, its my favourite most prized train sim i have, it was my first train sim and it was my most favourite steam loco in the world, the absolute perfect combo, so many happy hours, days, probably even months or years spent playing that as a kid.
My first train sim to play was polish Mechanik where you was driving EN57 unit. I was even trying to make my own routes, everything in text mode, making curves and switches was really challenging. Edit: The YT-video is from 2012, but the game itself was made 1998.