My name is Matthew Dawson, and I live in Shirley, Solihull, in the West Midlands. I had downloaded a demo of Rail Simulator and thought 'it's worthwhile, but not for me at the moment'. Fast forward 4 years or so, to about 6 months ago, and I bought Railworks (DVD boxset) purely out of impulse. I think I need treatment, don't you?
I then played around with it for a bit, then left it alone for a while. The main family computer then got upgraded 4 months ago (Railworks was on the external hard drive to it) and Railworks was grpahically flawless. Such smooth operation at 60fps, I replayed the game. Then, as a christmas treat to myself, I downloaded the 8F pack from STEAM. Then I sought to create a new route - the 'Western Valleys' route itself.
Many of you, no doubt, have seen the 'Western Valleys' route in the newest files section for RailWorks. May I say for a extremely early Beta release (the current download is at 0.03!) to have 222 (no, I'm not making it up!) downloads (though including the earlier releases) is very touching. The route is going to be a fictitious route to re-create the 'golden era' of summer holidays on train such as the Atlantic Coast Express for BR - before airlines and car ownership became common, but far enough after the war for everything to get back to normal.
It is, would you believe, the third route called 'Western Valleys'. The first was going very well, but I wanted to modify the track around the station area and do a few other things. So I created a second version to correct the first's problems. The second route then crashed. The third one (the one you can download) has been worked on very slowly so as not to create problems. The packager tool with RailWorks has been very busy...
As you can no doubt read/work out, it'll be a very long time until the final 'as finished' - 1.00 - version is released. Until it is, happy route testing from the 'Western Valleys' creator!
If you haven't downloaded it yet, click here!