Sorry it's been so long since my last post but there's been a lot happening. Nonetheless I thought you'd like to hear about what I'm up to this week. I'm in Leipzig, Germany at the massive Game Conference--the biggest is Europe--meeting with journalists to discuss Train Simulator 2. Despite the conspiracy theorists that claim we're not really working on it I've been talking to press and showing screens and videos from the game. Each one walked away with a DVD of content so hopefully you'll start seeing examples of TS2 on the web really soon.

In fact I'm in between press meetings now, which run every 30 minutes from 0900 to 2000! It makes for a very long day. Nonetheless the facilities are superb and the German staff has been amazingly accomodating. I'll try to share more when I have time. But for now, I've got more journalists to amaze...

and Major Nelson:

Today at the annual Game Convention in Leipzig, it was announced that Ubisoft has joined the Games for Windows program, with their first title 'Settlers: Rise of an Empire.' Plus, Microsoft Game Studio announced 'Train Simulator 2.' These announcements join the hardware news from yesterday. Speaking of hardware, did you know that the Microsoft Hardware division is 25 years old?

• Best of U.S. Railways Part I - Pennsylvania and plenty of freight yards in Chicago
• Best of U.S. Railways Part II - Detroit, St. Paul/Minneapolis
• Best of U.S. Railways Part III - Omaha, Council Bluffs, Powder River Basin Wyoming
• Best of U.S. Railways Part IV - Donner Pass, Mt. Shasta, Ports of Oakland and Long Beach (containers), Cajon, St. Louis, Long Island NY

Over the past couple of weeks webDotTrainSim has put some time (again) into a couple of activities for you to try.

He's re-timed the traffic and two can be downloaded from downloads.webdottrainsim.com. You can read about them on their respective pages:

• IC (RE1) service (NRW Express: Dortmund - Essen - Koln)
• RE6 service (Westfalen Express: Dusseldorf - Dortmund)

He's got another one ready to upload for you to try:

• Freight service W-Langerfeld to DU-Rheinhausen

and it should be available in a day or two.

Yesterday (January 19, 2007) Microsoft announced it's going to work on a new version of our well-loved (when it does what it's told; frustrating is the nice word used when tools such as the Activity Editor misbehave) Train Simulator.

The announcement is here.

There are a number of blogs by the Train Simuatlor team members:

• Mavyryk's Place: mavyryk.spaces.live.com
• Sim Elations: simelations.spaces.live.com
• The Little Wheel Goes in Back (Mike Gilbert, Program Manager First Class, Aces Studio): blogs.msdn.com/tdragger/
• TSEngineer - Rolling (Jamie Osborne, Dev Lead, programming, for Train Sim): tsengineer.spaces.live.com (no content yet, as of today)
• Yard Limits (Rick Selby, Lead Game Designer on Train Sim): yardlimits.spaces.live.com.

You'll find these in the Favorites list for future reference. It's worth subscribing to feeds from each of the above so it's easy to follow what's happening.

There are links to various threads on the MSTS forums at www.webdottrainsim.com.

 Here's a start to my collectio of trains spotted on lines around London (it'll probably expand to include the UK if webDotTrainSim doesn't see more at the location he's currently up to).

Zoom into 25m for better viewing in Aerial view if the map doesn't come up with that resolution when it loads.

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My Live Local collection

Waterloo Station, London
Waterloo will lose its status for the arrival and departure of Eurostars. Presently it's still called "Waterloo International". St. Pancras is being refurbished and will become the Eurostar terminal.

Eurostars
Eurostarts at Waterloo Station. They won't be departing and arriving at Waterloo for much longer, once Section 2 of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link is completed to St Pancras (just across the river).

Domestic trains at Waterloo
webDotTrainSim is not up to date with all the liveries of U.K. trains.

Eurostar?
From the white/yellow colours on the nose, this is probably a Eurostar. It'd still be running from electricity picked up on the third rail at 750V DC.

Up to here.

More screenshots have been uploaded to expand the number of albums: RE6 Dortmund to Dusseldorf, RE6 Dusseldorf to Dortmund, IC(RE1) Dortmund to Koln, ICE 819 Dortmund to Koln and RE5 Oberhausen to Koln.

Here is the latest version of webDotTrainSim's Live Local Wupper Express Route collection. More stations and locations have been added since yesterday. More locations now have a screenshot and some have links to the page at www.webdottrainsim.com where you can read about a particular activity, see more screenshots and get the link to download the activity. Note that the links are to Wupper Express 10.1 activities. You can click the picture for a larger view (but still only 320x240, the same as at www.webdottrainsim.com) and click the More info link to open a page describing an activity.

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My Windows Live Local collection

Line to Neuss
...and then onto Dusseldorf, and from there either to Duisberg or Wuppertal.

Line to Viersen and Krefeld
...and then onto Rheinhausen (where we cross the Rhine), Duisberg, then either Oberhausen and Dortmund or Essen and Dortmund.

Viersen station
Usually there's some traffic here when we pass through.

Line to Venlo
This line is used in activities to begin some traffic to Monchengladbach and most times you pass through Viersen there'll be a train using this line.

Krefeld station
About here. The line from Monchengladbach and Viersen comes in from the south-west and webDotTrainSim uses the line from the north-west to begin and end traffic. Note: photo and link is to one of the few WE9 activities webDotTrainSim created while waiting for WE10.

KR-Oppum station

Line to Meerbusch-Osterath
This line continues towards Neuss and then joins the main Monchengladbach - Neuss - Dusseldorf line.

Line from Meerbusch-Osterath
This line is used for traffic to/fro Meerbusch and Xanten.

KR-Linn station
Approximately here.

KR-Uerdingen station
A guess as to its location. Siemens have"

Your scratch pad has been truncated.

Here's the link to a start webDotTrainSim has made to locating all the cities, towns and main industries that make up Graphics15's Wupper Express route. Watch for updates as more detail is added.

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My Windows Live Local collection

webDotTrainSim's RE5 Oberhausen to Koln activity can be downloaded from the downloads section of webDotTrainsSim.com. The RE5 Koln to Oberhausen activity is the next one to be created and tested. Hopefully testing will go as smoothly as for Oberhausen to Koln (would you believe only one test run was needed).

Graphics15 have added a download section to their ">site and the first items are revisions of the three electric locos that were part of the route download and another three new locos. webDotTrainSim has had a quick look at one archive and is going to just update the texture files because he's already made revisions to each ENGine file and doesn't want to over-write his changes. File names and sizes are in the Line News for May 9 at www.webdottrainsim.com.