InsideTransit

If you are a railfan, you’ve most certainly heard of BVE. BVE is a train simulator that freaking rocks (I wish it worked on Vista!) which allows you to “drive” train routes from around the world that developers have created.

Now I’ve come across a site which is a different kind of simulator – this time it’s a schedule simulator. You pick a city system from the following: LIRR, SEPTA, Chicago Metra, WMATA and MBTA. Then just sit back and watch the full map for the system and you see dots on the map move as the schedule moves. What’s really amazing is to watch the activity at rush hour.

Maybe, just maybe, riders will have a bit more respect for just the sheer number of trains that pass through the system on a given day. It only takes a minute to watch the whole day so give the simulator a try.

I’ve been a BVE train simulator junkie for years. Sadly BVE does not work on the Microsoft Vista OS so my time driving the various routes has been non-existant the past few months. It’s certainly disappointing because there are so many passengers that are stuck on subway and train platforms just waiting for me to come pick them up and get them to their destinations!

Now I”ve learned that there is a new simulator coming soon named “World of Subways 2″ which looks freaking awesome. The trains are very realistic as is the movement and the stations. The example below is from the Berlin subway system and is so close to real, you can’t tell that you aren’t in Berlin! They even have real announcements on the subway along with flashing lights when the doors are closing. The trains look just like I remember them from my trip to Berlin.

Here’s an article discussing the U-Bahn-Simulator (it’s in German).

Here’s a sample of what the simulator will look like: