Product Description

Developed by Auran, Trainz 2009 comes with a huge range of enhancements and new features and virtual rail fans are set to feel the power of five generations of rail simulation!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #974 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Just Trains
• Released on: 2009-05-29
• ESRB Rating: Everyone
• Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows XP
• Format: DVD-ROM
• Dimensions: .23 pounds

Manufacturer's Description
Developed by Auran, Trainz 2009 comes with a huge range of enhancements and new features and virtual rail fans are set to feel the power of five generations of rail simulation! Designed to appeal to newcomers and diehards alike, Trainz 2009 includes all the great features that have become the trademarks of the Trainz series. Virtual train enthusiasts can choose to Design and customise their own railway, Direct operations on a working railway with interactive industries or Drive a fantastic selection of Steam, Diesel or Electric trains in full 3D.

Variety is the name of the game – players can use the Surveyor mode to edit the routes and a huge array of user-generated content can be imported and managed within the sim.

Drive using full in-cab realistic controls or simple ‘speed’ controller.

Issue “Driver Commands” to operate multiple locomotives simultaneous.

Keep to a passenger schedule, deliver freight, decouple wagons and much more.

Add additional “Session Rules” to customize your living railroad.

Download thousands of routes, locos and more from the Trainz Download Station.

Send goods and trains to your friends and chat online.

Even create your own 3D models or powerful TrainzScripts for unlimited flexibility.

Customer Reviews

A Trainz Too Far?
Another attempt by Auran to extend the life of their Trainz franchise. While TS2009 does offer some new features, it still largely consists of content dating back to the earlier releases from the early-mid 2000's. There's a few new features including the ability to specify a finer mesh for terrain during route building, but at the same time also broken some of the many thousands of legacy items created for previous versions and hosted on their own Download Station.

TS2009 doesn't really look or play better than its predecessors. You can specify an increased draw distance but this was already available for earlier versions by a third party utility. There's still no proper support for disciplined timetable operation or any sort of autonomous AI signalling or despatcher. Scorching down a main line at 80 MPH, it's still up to you to set the route ahead for your train and regulate any other trains accordingly.

Surveyor remains a powerful route building tool but still lacks native support for DEM importation or alignment with real world geography (e.g. Lat/Lon markers from Google Earth). You still can't create decent pointwork with frogs and checkrails using the built in spline track and you can't specify precise radii for curves either. Placing default tunnels remains difficult as these can only be aligned at certain angles making it hard to match prototype placement.

Trainz' biggest asset is the huge amount of - largely free - third party content available but most of this works quite happily in previous versions.

Before changing back to a mainstream product with TS2009, Auran had been going down the road of releasing "Classics" themed packs which were supposed to be culmative (but excluded the content from all the previous legacy versions). In bringing out TS2009 the first two "Classics" releases were incorporated but perhaps the biggest sin is that Trainz Classic 3 - which featured the UK Settle & Carlisle route and an excellent collection of rolling stock was left out.

IMHO Auran really need to start thinking where they are going with their train sim product. There's already a TS-x in pre-production but I remain sceptical this will be anything other than yet another attempt to milk the same old 9 year old software, with a few minor tweaks and changes.

In conclusion, I must state I am not in any way anti-Trainz. I have purchased most previous versions of the software and TRS2006 (for which I created a number of routes) with Trainz Classics 3 represented the pinnacle of what the game could achieve, without a major re-write. My overall score reflects the fact that if you already own a previous version of Trainz, certainly TRS2004/TRS2006 then unless you are a diehard Auran supporter think twice as to whether TS2009 is a Trainz too far.

"New" game, same old pitfalls
To cut it short: there are new interesting European routes (I'm not interested in US or Oz railways), really nice. The content organization in Surveyor is still crap - how u gonna find what you want without categories (they removed them from TRS2009) is a mystery to me. There's lots of rolling stock, lots of new locos and cars but most of them have been added hastily and carelessly, I mean, the same sounds for most of the locos, sometimes no sound at all, same interior/no interior, some boogeys don't move at all - wheels don't turn etc. People from Auran should've really tweaked this by now, it's a shame they ain't.

my review 1
my over all review of trainz 2009 it is good, but some of the session in it can`t play, don`t know why.
that is why i only gave it a 4 star rating or it would have been 5+ but the session`s i can play i have no problem with they are good.the graphics are fantastic in them etc.most enjoyable except for the above mentioned.