Just Flight & Just Trains blogs

“It always rains in Birmingham..”

Runs the title and theme of previous blogs from your truly and of course when I and the Just Trains crew (Scott, Richard and Simon) were in the Black Counties capital this last weekend my pronouncement was once again proved to be quite true.

The JT crew were exhibiting at the Warley Model Railway Club exhibition at the NEC and not just in any old hall at the NEC but the biggest on site – Last year there were 22,000 visitors over the two days of the show, many, many thousands more than have ever attended a Flight sim show. I drove up the M42 on the Friday afternoon and it was tipping it down but very surprisingly the drive was very smooth – I was utterly surprised as the words ‘M42’, ‘Friday afternoon’ and ‘rain’ are normally not good bed fellows, but this time they had obviously had an argument and were not talking to each other I am pleased to say, still Saturday was sunny but cold, but the rain came back with a vengeance on the Sunday morning, although by the time the show closed late on Sunday afternoon it was dry once more, so I suppose it could have been worse.

I approached the exhibition with some trepidation as we were using those ‘new fangled computer things’ and were one of only two other stands that were in the computer age with all the rest of the stands being pretty much in the land of wire, electricity and analogue, but of course what the computer is doing now is only the latest version of what has been happening for countless year – simulating railways – they have done it on base boards with physical items where as we are doing it on computers with digital images. I suppose both have their pros and cons, but one massive advantage that the digital version has is that you can be in the cab, you can be the driver or fireman, and you can drive in all kinds of weather – that just is not possible on conventional baseboard railway layouts. One other big advantage of ‘digital railways’ is the sounds – the sound of the whistle and chuff and clank of the steam locos was a massive draw for the visitors to the video screen, but when we were showing other ‘silent’ stuff like editing, the crowds were just not there.

I was very surprised by the reception that we/the software received with many, many visitors stopping to see our demos of Trainz Railways and Rail Simulator, with many stuck to the spot just watching us drive (and crash, not one but three/four times in Richard “Casey Jones” Slater’s case), the routes and range of locos down the realistic routes. In fact so many were impressed that they came round from looking at the big screen to our sales area and brought the product that was showing on the screen.

The guys from RSDL Tim, Adam and Derek, the people behind Rail Simulator, kindly graced our stand and were able to answer the various questions about the new sim from the public and us. We are currently working on add-ons for Rail Sim and I am sure they will find many happy homes in the future. One of the packs will be the Bristol to Exeter route being developed for us by the great team at Railwaves from whom Alan and Tom were also kindly on our stand demonstrating both Rail Simulator and the route they are developing for us, in fact Tom and our Simon were seen huddled around a hot monitor discussing the finer points of scenario editing, although they are still trying to get to grips with getting AI locos to couple up… 

It was very enthusing to see the very positive response to rail simulations on computer and everybody was very friendly and positive with several offers of assistance for up-coming projects by those who drive or work with the real items. 

Now that our first Rail Simulator project has been seen in public we are planning to have details of it on our website this week, but as a little teaser here are a couple of screenshots:

So apart from a few strange looks from the stand beside us at the ‘noise’ we were making (the vast majority of baseboard railway layouts do not have any railway sounds) we were very well received and I am sure that we will return in 2008.

‘till the next time.

Keep safe.

Scotty.