Atomic Systems

Hi all
My MSTS was a Birthday present, 4 years back. It's lasted more then any other game Iv'e had. I kept going back to it for a while. Then when I discovered UKTS a whole new ball game took off.
Now It's taken over my computer and Iv'e had to upgrade to a bigger harddrive. No other game has given me better value then my MSTS.
CU Eric

I agree. I think I've upgraded my computer three times due to MSTS. It's the longest lived game ever on my machine.

I'm a very recent convert, only back in December.

My nephew had got it and was driving me mad. Then I saw it on sale in Game and thought "what the hell" and bought it.

Very rapidly I've built up a collection of routes and stock, mainly through play.com.

To be honest my interest in 'real' trains finished around the NSE era when sports took up more of my time and watching trains got in the way.

My late father was a huge train buff and for a while part-owned a steam loco. We travelled all over the place and have many good memories.

I guess that's the reason I got it. Good memories of times with my father. That's why most stock I've downloaded is from the era I was interested.

I bought mine around Sept'04. I thought it was rubbish at the time because lack of real uk engines, cabviews, sounds etc.

I knew there must of been a website that supported it and after a search on Google, I came accross UK TrainSim, and then...I was in my element - driving all my faves locos, with real sounds and cabviews on my fave routes.

If it wasn't for UK TrainSim and everyone who contributes with their routes, cabviews, sounds, loco skins etc. MSTS would of died a death on my PC.

I myself needed to upgrade my PC in October last year to compliment all the routes etc.

We first got MSTS in December 2001 as a Christmas present. I loved it but unfortunately our computer was too slow to run it properly. At that time I played lots of computer games, such as SimCity and Traffic Giant.
Lack of memory coupled with the performance problems saw MSTS banished to my Grandparents PC , which was a much higher spec and could run it very well, but meant I could not play it very often.
I had found one commercial add-on pack, the Abacus Roundhouse CD, which was a bit dissapointing from my point of view as it only had one steamer on it, and a foreign one at that! I was getting bored with the default content and wanted more. I was vaugely aware that it was possible to create your own rolling stock for MSTS, but as not even the official Microsoft/Sybex guide to the game (which was given to us with the game and proved an invaluable reference before I discovered these forums) told on how to do this I thought it would remain nothing more than a dream for me.
At about this time, I discovered that the Tal-y-lyn and Ffestiniog sites has MSTS add-ons, which I downloaded eagerly! It was probably through these that I first found my way to UKTS. Here was what I had always dreamed of-UK trainsim stock, availible for free. Needless to say, I signed up quickly! However, as I was only able to run MSTS at my grandparents house I did not download much to start with.
In about 2003/4 my parents finally upgraded our PC, which enabled me to bring MSTS home and start using it regularly. In 2004 I finally ventured onto these forums-and the rest is history!
MSTS is now the only computer game I play, and I'm taking my first tentative steps into content creation. However, the game's unreliability is starting to annoy me, so whilst MSTS has given me immeasureable pleasure over the last few years, I'm eagerly awaiting the new sims!

I think i got mine about 3-4 years ago, i played it for a bit but it got boring as there wasnt really any add ons for train sim that interested me, so the Cd disappeared somewhere and it was uninstalled from my pc until i got some add ons, SVR and LBE (i think) from then on ive been playing it at least once every other day

Just seen this.

We got ours soon after it came out - Summer 2001. Loved it - particularly the USA goods lines...until, in Autumn 2003, I ordered SVR

Before MSTS and HVR (Hornby Virtual Railway), we only had something called Lego Loco. I now look back on that, compare it with HVR for building railways and think: "Why was I ever interested in something as RUBBISH as that?!" I'm sure you know what I mean.

I bought mine on pre-order for about £70 and got it on day 1 (date now forgotten), loaded it with great anticipation and was seriously underwhelmed. Drove the supplied routes a few times, uninstalled it and put it away in the bottom drawer.

It wasn't until i saw EB's L2B on the shelves in our local PC shop that I was tempted to dig it out. Thought the route which i had travelled many times as a boy, was terrific, got the free months membership to UKTS which i'd never heard of before, and never looked back since.

Started writing activities to fill in gaps in the L2B ones, with a lot of help from Alan Salmon and others here and thats how i got here today. I currently have such a backlog of routes to load and activities to write that I have enough MSTS work to keep me going two years at least. Long enough for the new sims to become established and see which is the best.

For those just coming to the genre I will be producing activities for the routes available at the moment, for a long time to come

As I suspected, each MSTS owner has a tale to tell. Very interesting,
great stuff, keep em coming.
The common theme seems to be that "brand new out of the box" MSTS was ahead of it's time. It needed the computers to catch up.
Now were steaming along.
Thanks to our wonderful UKTS contributors, this must be the most enjoyable/least expensive hobby ever.
CU Eric

I orriginally saw it in America (2001 I think.) Nearly bought it at the time but thought they would produce a UK version. I eventually bought it when I arrived back in England

I understand that the only difference between the two versions was the picture on the front cover! I wish I now bought it in America!

I did get bored with it after a while and did not re-install it when I replaced my computer in 2003.

When L2B came out, this renewed my interest. I had to hunt round to find the orriginal disks. I eventaually I found them and installed L2B.

Through this I discovered UKtrainSim and downloaded some of the routes.

I have never looked back since and am looking forward very much to the new Sims.

I got mine in2002 as a Xmas Gift but Only have had time to use it since I came out of Work with my health And Last Oct I came across It & installed it & Wow I realised I never lost my love of Railways ,

I came across UKTS & train-sim.com plus Big Vern's site ,though sadly I never really got to look at his site I ordered his 5 route CD on the 18 Oct & I think It went down on 20 or 21st I wish there were some of the pages archived somewhere on web so I could now read them with understanding

But I am totally addicted to MSTS & have purchased over 20 Commercial & Community Routes & have also downloaded as many again , I will admit that the bloody thing drove me mad at first & in turn I used to publish some seemingly daft question on her & drove everyone else nuts


But I'm really glad I persevered & I have a most enjoyable pass time


--
Regards

Pete

I was so eager to get my hands on MSTS that I ordered the USA version from America, and paid £45 for it . That was back in July 2001, and MSTS has been installed on my computer ever since. I have reinstalled it a few times

I haven't used MSTS in recent months. I simply haven't had the time

I know what you mean about the time factor 4-5 hours pass in a blink

I got mine on my birthday (12th August) in 2001. It cost £50 and after 2 weeks I was starting to get a bit fed up with it and put it away for a while. I then found UKTS. I never thought I would be able to drive and reskin a class 37!

Hi Lads,

My background is in preserved railways. I saw the adverts for MSTS on the back of Steam Railway etc when it came out, but didnt have a computer that could run it, so just forgot about it. I first spotted UKTS years ago, but when I got a new computer maybe 8 months ago I got back into computer gaming. I rediscovered UKTS last November, then ordered my copy of MSTS secondhand from Amazon at the same time as Skipton-Carlisle 1920. They arrived together, so I installed both and played with Scotsman for about half an hour then got stuck into Skipton, and havent looked back! To this day I have never done ANY of the activities that came in the box! I can honestly say that without UKTS and its downloadable extra content I would not have brought this game at all, the original content was of very limited appeal.

The best thing about MSTS is that one can use trains and routes that one cant in real life, thus I have downloaded loads of Narrow Gauge routes. I like MSTS as I cant spend as much time as I would like on the real footplate at the moment, but I do get frustrated with it sometimes!!

Andy