Software used

My initial experiments with simulating a railway line were based on computer adventure games. I would set up a series of linked html pages with descriptive passages for parts of the line, and by changing the points, if a set existed at a particular location, it was possible to progress along the line, reading a narrative. It wouldn't even have ranked as a CBM64 game, despite my adding photographs to the pages later on.

The breakthrough for me came in 2004, when I was able to afford a computer with enough power to run the Microsoft Train Simulator (MSTS). I had first discovered this when I visited the Highworth site, and saw what they had been achieving. I would have bought the program anyway, having realised what it could do, but as an added incentive, I found that one of the modellers, Paul Gausden, had created some KESR locomotives, Hecate, and the Ilfracombe Goods, both of which had actually run on the EKLR. I bought my copy of MSTS, and was set firmly on the course which has lead me here.

Software used to model the EKLR

• Train simulation software
  • MSTS (not expensive, and not too hard to learn to use)
  • Demex (not expensive, the freeware version would have done most of what I needed to do)
  • Mosaic (not expensive)
  • TSTools2 (not expensive)
  • 1001 (well, quite a few) utilities downloaded from the UKTrainsim site. Free to join, and a premium subscription is not expensive.
• 3-D modelling and image manipulation software
  • Google Earth (free)
  • Sketchup (free, and the plugin to export models to MSTS is also free, from The Author's site )
  • Irfanview (free) For basic image manipulation
  • Adobe Photodeluxe BE 1.0 (free with my digital camera, and still runs well on XP). It handles layers in images, and also allows distorting photographs to remove perspective effects, although I have since discovered that Sketchup will also do this.
  • 3D Canvas Pro (not expensive, essential for animations of rolling stock models, but tricky to use)
• Data
  • 90-metre resolution SRT (Satellite Radar Topograhy) files. (Free)
    • There is better data to a finer resolution, but it is expensive
  • Old (1938) Ordnance Survey map. £1 from a junk shop

I have recently also bought Rail Simulator, and modeled some pf the EKLR in it, but it is still a developing application, and I have decided to revert to the older MSTS until I see which way Rail Simulator is heading. At the moment, it requires more intensive modeling work to create scenery and rolling stock than I am willing to put into the project,