After skirting the issue for months I finally bit the bullet and bought a train simulator. Because Microsoft's product was about $50 I held off. I had also looked over the system requirements and felt that upgrading to a better computer would just raise the cost of admission too high.

So instead I bought Auran's TRAINZ program. I had seen it advertised as a virtual model railroad software. It was cheaper and seemed to fit my needs better. Unfortunately for me, the system requirements were printed so small that these old eyes couldn't read them...

Surprise, surprise...Rather the the 32 mb of RAM required by Train Simulator, I was now the proud owner of software that wouldn't run with less than 128 Meg! Actually, our "tests" here seem to indicate that if you are goinfg to run this software, you had better go full hog. It would appear that only the latest generation (1.x Mhz or better, 512MB of RAM, infinte terrabytes of disc space) of computers have the horsepower to run this puppy the way it wants to run...

It's absolutly beautiful to behold, even on the handicapped machine we have, but the "feel" isn't quite right. You really need the extra boost to enjoy it fully.

No sooner had I purchased TRAINZ than Microsoft dropped the price on Train Simulator, beating the Auran price by ten bucks. Of course, how else would it work...I sold my copy of TRAINZ and went for Microsoft Train Simulator instead. It has less bells and whistles, and is a bit harder to customize, but it will run on the hardware I presently own...the Train Artisan streamlined Hudson ain't too bad either.

Highballing it to Washington she's as pretty as they get...Nothing like it in the world.