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Visit the National Model Railroad Association's web site and you'll unearth an enthusiast paradise. The "beginner" pages alone are thick with treatises on budget carpentry, scenery essentials, and homebrew wiring. Auran's Trainz takes aim at this crowd and manages to hit near the mark. Thanks to its powerful design tools and slick user interface, anyone interested in model trains will want to take a close look at this virtual toy.
Trainz contains the first three core modules in what will eventually be a series of add-ons ranging from dispatcher and commuter simulations to online communities of competing business moguls. The "collector" module lets you ogle your cars in glorious 3D and add to the assemblage as you go by importing models you've built or downloaded off the Internet. Layouts are constructed in the "surveyor" module, which (thankfully) has the learning curve of a stick. Drop track, whip up a consist, and you'll be zipping along in minutes thanks to a devilishly smart interface. You can slap just about anything you want onto your layout: terrain deformation, weather effects, industrial buildings, crossings and vehicles, you name it, and there are hundreds of objects to choose from. When you're finished tweaking, hop into the hot seat with the "driver" module and you'll be clicking the DCC (digital command control) gauge like a switch-happy Casey Jones.
Though the modules are solid, Trainz still feels a little light in the caboose—it ships with only three smallish pre-designed tracks. The assumption is that you'll want to get building right away, or download freebies from Auran's website. If you can't find what you want, just build it yourself, or visit Auran's "download station" to see if someone else has beat you to it.
If painting lumberyards and frosting miniature evergreens on elaborate plywood foundations gets you hot and bothered, Trainz is for you. Nothing else on the market offers the chance to recapture the glory of model railroading on the cheap and, more importantly, without the basement-sized mess.
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