Why I buy this one ?
- Drive 8 great trains of today and yesteryear in this customizable railway simulation
- Travel over 1900 km of track on faithfully reproduced UK and continental routes
- Create and share new content with powerful, user-friendly editors
- Expand your rail world with a range of professional add-ons
- Simple, family-friendly interface delivers an authentic railway experience

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What our customer's say!

"Memory hog, no fun", After taking forever to load, Rail Simulator never worked properly on our PC. My sons proclaimed it a dud. It's already become Tag Sale fodder in our house.

"rail simulatro", Unless you have a game system that is in excess of all the recommended requirements don't bother with this software. It eats up the memory and needs the fastest system you can afford. It could be good if you want to take the time, but its requires a true gaming computer to run right.

"Oh so realistic", I have a passion for trains. I love playing this game because it is so realistic. I can run so many different trains and chose engines and cars and layout and scenery. It has great graphics.

"Scenario's Lacking", After reading some of the positive reviews, I just had to write. While I think the overall mechanics of the game are sound, I got board with this game. There are only 2 or 3 scenarios where you're doing any switching. Otherwise, you're taking a load from point A to point B. The big excitement? Watching your speed.

This would have been a great game had it included more scenarios with switching operations. I don't have the time nor do I want to learn how to be a developer and write my own scenarios.

This reminds me of a carnival game where you pay XX amount for the first prize, which isn't much. You keep paying and paying to get a bigger prize. In this case, your paying money to other developers to provide more game enrichment.

Too bad... it had possibilities...

Bob O. in WI



"For my Son", I have a younger son who wanted to play with trains but we did not have any room for a setup. At the simple level, he only needs three keys to to play and the number pad to change the views. So for us, this is great. Good family fun. Worth the special price Amazon had it up for (9.99).

Read this reviews before You buy...

"Nay-sayers not always right!", Rail Simulator (RS) is an extremely good simulation that is extremely well supported by a website that includes additional downloads, a forum, news, etc. Add-on content is appearing on a regular basis and a major, free upgrade has already appeared, along with editing tools for the more adventurous. RS beats the pants off MSTS and Trainz, which isn't even in the running anymore because it is not compatible with Vista.
If you want to try driving trains, this is the simulator to get!

"Train Sim", Rail Simulator is a fun game for train lovers. I will spend many an hour with this program. I have purchased past games of this type and have enjoyed them greatly and am enjoying this one also. So if you love to drive trains, create routes, or stations, etc. then this is for you.

"Flawed Train Simulation", Two and a half years in development this game was eagerly awaited by the train sim community as the title which would re-define the genre after a long gap between genuine new releases.

Unfortunately I can only concur with previous reviews regarding the buggy and flawed game we have been given. It appears as if all the money and effort has been expended on the graphics engine, which does not look a whole lot better than improved MSTS/Trainz anyway, rather than the core features such as signalling to make a train sim work properly. The cabs are quite detailed and 3D but not many of the switches or levers work correctly. In external view the train often looks like a sprite floating over the ground and in both cab and exterior view there's a disturbing and nausea inducing side to side "hunting" of the track which, if it's supposed to represent the cab swaying, is totally wrong.

Sound is not much better. The HST is quite good but the Turbo DMU sound like it was sampled from a bin lorry. The Deltic is rather weak and the Class 47 just doesn't sound right. there's no distiction between the level or type of sound heard in exterior or interior view either. Track sound is awful a sort of disembodied tinkle every now and again or when you cross over points. A Gameboy would put it to shame.
The North American version is missing the York to Newcastle route of the European release with a version of Cajon Pass in California instead. Although the publisher (now working under the Rail Simulator Developments - RSDL - banner rather than Kuju) has stated they will release the respective routes at some stage (free or paid unclear) this creates an immediate incompatibility between the two versions for third party routes etc. which use objects not found in its transatlantic counterpart.

One reasonable point (which is why it gets two stars rather than one) is the train physics. The HST actually takes a realistic time and distance to accelerate and brake though the top end of the power curve is questionable on all the traction. They should just about hold top speed one notch below full power but they want to keep on going. steam physics is about on a par with MSTS, that is to say a reasonable stab but wide of the mark. It does not seem possible to induce wheelslip on any of the locomotives.

Where the sim really falls down is on the operations and signalling. The signalling is poorly scripted and implemented - it does not give proper warning of upcoming junctions and can easily cause your train to derail or collide with another even when you get the correct aspects. The German signalling seems to be derived from the UK signalling and is totally wrong for DB practice. There's a lack of proper warnings for upcoming speed limits. The "Track Monitor" is useless as it only shows the state of the line about 800 metres ahead.

Very few activities or scenarios are included in the box, some will have beginners scratching their heads with complex shunting while others are "broken" as a result of the pathetic signalling. It's not possible to run to a timetable and the game shipped without the proper tools to create such an activity. The development tools need to be downloaded seperately and only after signing a licence with RSDL - reason for this is not entirely clear, but seems tied up with ensuring any commercial third products sold for this sim pay a royalty fee back to the developer. Route building is not as intuiative or easy as MSTS and light years behind Trainz - everything has to be set up via blueprints and the documentation, which also has to be registered for and downloaded separately is quite muddy in places and seems more aimed at the technical high end (commercial?) orientated user than the little guy. The route editor itself is quite buggy particularly when it comes to joining tracks, creating junctions or laying roads and fences.

In conclusion it's a bit of a mess and a disappointment. There is potential there but it will take a bucket load of patches and/or a major rewrite of some of the code to get there. At the time of writing (Feb 2008) a patch is imminent but if you're really eager for a new train sim you might be better advised to wait and see what Microsoft have to offer in their proposed new train simulation some time in 2009.


"So much promise, so many times being delayed, but it's light on the wow factor and is a disappointment", When I heard about Rail Simulator I was happy to see a railroad simulator back in the market since Train Simulator 2 was cancelled (but restarted for a 2009 release). Train Simulator was a good foundation and the sequel had so much promise. Also, Train Simulators minor expansions were a waist. I found the Trainz franchise too model like and not heavy on the simulation. I love both however. I grew up with Lionel trains and building a decent size layout with my father but our space was limited. Even after 17 years when we first laid out our own track, we miss it but don't have the space to rebuid (obviously I've since moved out). I am a lover of the tycoon and buisness games and while I'm not a huge technofile, I will knitpick at every little detail of a computer game. So I do love both model trains and a deep simulation. What hurt Trainz is it's download content manager. It is a pain in the neck to manage and download content (even to this day). The speed of the downloading depended on the "ticket" you bought. If you didn't by the ticket your downloading time was at a snails pace. If you bought a first-class ticket, the speed was way faster. Another problem was that you had to search the for the content and the parts to go with it. If you didnt find it all, it wouldn't work which would prove ot be very frustrating. It was annoying and involved too much work and sometimes upon loading Trainz to play, it acted screwy more times after you started to download content. The manual wasn't a help either.

Now comes Rail Simulator. The newest simulation game using the trains theme. The graphics are very vice; not stunning, but very nice (about 2 notches from being stunning). Much better than Train Simulator and the Trainz Franchise (created by Auran). The people and cars are more realistic in Rail Simulator. Unfortunatley the game fails some major aspects. Shipped in the North American version, 99% of the routes were European. Only one route is from North America (California) and it wasn't even a passenger route. For people who love to drive passanger trains or complete or build passenger routes this was disheartning and unbelievable. What were they thinking? Even in a PC-DVD you would expect a little more passenger routes. The European routes also were mostly non-passenger. The one I played in Britain was soooo boring, I didn't even get to the first station (it was 34 miles away). I quit the program feeling very depressed because I was looking foward to the game and with all it's hype; it left me with a question: When will anyone create a great buisness/simulator/modeling train simulator. Don't get me started with Sid Meier's Railroads! I read a few articles that although this is a European game, the North American publishers were going to include mostly North American routes and passenger routes as well. This wasn't the case, as I was very disappointed. (How many times have you counted the word disappointed in my review, can you guess if I was disappointed :-) I was also looking at the website where you can register and download content. Not much is available which is ok, since the game was just released. In Trainz: Railroad Simulator 2006, you can go on the download manager and get NYC subway cars and platforms as well as near look-a-like Long Island Railroad cars. None on Rail Simulators. I was shocked to see no Amtrak both as a route included in the game as well as in the download section of the website. When is any train game going to include the NYC subway system, the trollies, the monorail in the Disney area complete with passenger routes, Amtrak's route from NYC to Orlando (AutoTrain), or how about all routes and trains across all of the United States.

Part of me is wondering, for $39.99, seems like they spent most of the money on the graphics because there is hardly any content. Since it is a PC-DVD, I was expecting a lot. Sadly, I was wrong. You click on 3-4 main scenarious and it gives you at most about 4-5 "jobs". The original Train Simulator had many more routes.

From startup the installer was perfect and it didn't take long to install. After the initial install, the game worked perfectly, no crashes and no error messages. I hope people will realize that you can't get away with running a computer with 64-512mb of RAM and a video card with 64-128mb of RAM. Onboard graphics is a no-no. If you have any questions about this or need help, don't hesitate to email me.

I hope more routes will be added as I enjoy passenger routes the most. It would be nice for Railroad Simulator to appeal to everyone; ones who like passenger scenarios and industrial scenarios as well. Sadly on this PC-DVD, the passenger scenarios are lacking; as in there are none in North America! The passenger scenarios in Germany can all be done in one day (not totally but you can get drift) and the same goes for Britain as well. I gave the game 2 stars because of the lack of content but with nice graphics/scenery and the fact that people don't look like blocks (they did in Trainz if you were able to see any). One thing that was puzzling was when I was approaching road crossings, the cars never stopped. Some disappeared when they reached the gates. In MSTS, you heard the bells go off and the whistle along with the gate going down. The cars also stopped and formed a line in real life. If it weren't for the graphics, then it would of gotten 1 star. I'm still disappointed and hope more passenger scenarios are added (in North America). It would be nice to drive the Maglev and high speed bullet trains in Japan and in Germany. What about the monorail in Florida (from the transportation and ticket center to all the parks and hotels that it stops at which would make a great passenger scenario). I wish I can drive the NYC subway lines dropping off passengers and picking them up. What about Amtrak/Acela (auto train also), the Long Island Railroad, and New Jersey Transit? Train Simulator had Amtrak's Acela high speed train.

It would of also been nice to see some speaking on the station platforms to announce the inbound and outbound trains and the fact that you see people entering and exiting your train yet you see no movement when you are in passenger mode inside one of the passenger cars. Also it would be nice to see some announcements in the trains to let passengers know what the next stop is as well as the trains route. Wouldn't it be funny if you announce the trains stops and see some passengers quickly get off with a sad look on their face. How about adding licensing, to become an engineer you have to learns about speed limits, traveling at high speeds, braking correctly at station platforms, honking the horn at road crossings, and emergencies and if you fail one of these while on the job, you can get fired. In other words, follow the rules or else you would have to find work at another railroad company. If you did such a poor job or killed someone you wouldn't be able to find another job and the game ends. Incorportating a business sim would be interesting. I know this isn't a tycoon game but it certainly would keep you entertained. You could buy locomotives and additional passenger cars and get and increase ridership. You can raise fairs (multiple types), have to pay your workers (ticket agents, cleaning crew and mechanics), and maintain stations and their platforms as well as maintaining your railyard to make it efficient. You can build/create routes in all cities in the United States and Canada (subway or above gound).

Did the developers do their homework? Did they purposely leave out most of North America? The California scenarios are non-passenger ones and this is it in the United States. Did they purposley concentrate on mostly non-passenger scenarious for a future expansion? Will there be future expansions for North America?

Concerning the manual. These days most games don't come with manuals or they have it as a pdf file on the disc. For people who jump right into the game and learn as they go (like me), it doesn't bother me that there was no manual in the box. For people who do read the manuals, the pdf file is easy to access. The minor issue you might have is printing it out and using up your paper supply. Maybe the company was thinking that most people don't pay attention to the manual and jump right in....perhaps to cut costs. Who knows. There's a small pamphlet explaining the controls which is pretty straight foward in understanding. There is a very small "guide" in the box but you would think since there is no manual inside this "guide" would be a lot thicker. As for me, I'm waiting for Train Simulator 2 but I haven't given up hope for this one. This game needs and I hope it gets more content! Disappointed; Yes. Given up on it; No! Hopeful; Yes.

"Compatibility problems prevent game from working", I would highly advise against the purchase of this game. After installing 3X times on my system it still doesn't work.

I realize that there may be an issue with my graphics card (ATI X1650), but after searching far and wide for ways to resolve the issue it still doesn't function. Bascially, the game crashes as soon as I try to play.

EA support site provides no help at all to resolve the issue. So, I have un-installed this game after paying good money for it.

Considering that this is the first game in the almost two years that has failed to run on a computer that has given me little or no problems with any other game over the last two years, I have to assume that something within the game is causing it not to function properly.