Version 5.1 -- for the British Railway Enthusiast!

Over the years our UK friends have pointed out that long black steam engines sweeping across vast prairie landscapes do not represent the kind of railroading they're used to.  They prefer small railway cars, compact track plans, quaint trackside structures, and different names for most everything.

Version 5.1 aims to provide a comfortable experience for the British trainplayer.  It comes with a generous collection of UK-style layouts, cars, and scenery, a facility for terminology translation, and new settings to make all this come up in the default operating environment.  5.1 also provides many bug fixes, along with several nice enhancements in downloading, car management, and other areas.

Version 5.1 is a free upgrade for existing users. For new buyers, there is a special limited-time introductory price. For details, see below.

British Features

British Cars.  Version 5.1 brings you over 600 new types of British and European railway cars and locomotives -- old British steam engines, modern diesels and electrics, compact freight cars, Thomas the Tank Engine cars, models from Hornby and Bachman -- all rendered in detail in miniature.  Here for example is a sampling from the new UK Steam collection:

British Car Classes.  A new translation dictionary presents car classes in UK terms -- no boxcars, gondolas or cabooses here, only vans, wagons, and brake vans.  Choose a translation at runtime to affect all car descriptions on tooltips, dialogs, and ops windows.  Above right shows some of the UK car class names; the originals come up if you select US Edition in the drop-down.

British Defaults.  Indicate your continental preference on a new panel in the installer, as shown at right.  This presets some registry values so you get the optimum experience the first time the program starts.

British Layouts.  The British collection comprises six folders with over 120 new UK-flavored layouts -- plans from Railway Modeller magazine and FreeTrackPlans.com, original designs by C. J. Freezer, contributions from British users, satellite-photo layouts of well-known British rail stations and rail-heavy industrial areas all over the U.K. -- all equipped with track and industries, prepared for ops, and ready to run.

Here are some samples.  Click picture for larger image.
Arrival at Midsomer Sojourn	CJ Freezer's Minories - TP adaptation
Compton St. Gilbert	East Linden Station
Train Meet at Baddlesmere Station	Shunting in Stowhurst

Also see the latest featured layout: the Buckingham Great Central, a busy English railway center of early last century, designed and built by the Rev. P. B. Denny.  We thank Railway Modeller for permission to use this and other layouts from their archives.

Automatic Download.  All the new British data is on the web, available to all licensed users.  A small subset of it is delivered with the installer.  If you choose UK settings at install time, then the first time the program starts it makes you a convenient offer: with one click it will download the entire set of British layouts, cars, scenery, and sounds.  One ten-minute download gets you the whole set, installed locally and readily available. 

We thank Richard Fletcher for British advice, ideas, testing, and other contributions to this version.

And More

New Download Tricks.  Right-click a folder in any web chooser tree and you see two new commands: one to retrieve the entire folder and install it into your local data set, the other to retrieve only those items you don't yet have.  The retrieval looks in all files and subfolders, so with one click you can add  a major chunk to your layout, scenery, car, or sound collection.

New Preferences.  Select your favorite set of cars to be the defaults whenever you create a new layout.  Select the terminology to be used for car classes.  Or click a button at install time to set these and other values to a common theme.

Improved Car Descriptions.  In the old days, every car was classified as one of a dozen basic types -- boxcar, flatcar, etc. -- and these appeared as labels throughout the program.  In 5.1, these labels are gone, replaced by specific car type names and locally-applicable class names.  This applies to dialogs as well as tooltips on cars and menu buttons.  Example:

Under the Hood.  A lot of work went into 5.1 which we specifically hope you will not notice.  Much of the code has been restructured in support of Mac development.  This work continues in the next rev.

Bug Fixes.  There are a lot of fixes and small enhancements in 5.1.  For the complete list, see the Version History in the readme.

TrainPlayer now takes PayPal!  During 5.1 development, we moved our website to a new host, rebuilt the e-commerce system, and added some purchasing features, including the ability to buy using your choice of credit card or PayPal.  This answers a long-standing request from customers.

How To Buy

Fine Print

Requirements.  Programs run under Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7 and Windows 8.  An internet connection is useful but not essential -- you need one to browse and download content from the web, but you can run without it when using content from your disk or DVD.  Disk space: you need about 35MB to install the program files, but will want more than that to download content from web or DVD -- around 4 GB for the full content.

Delivery on DVD.  Products are available on DVD for a $10 shipping charge.  This includes all purchased content, so no subsequent download is needed.  To request a DVD, use the Shipping choice on the checkout page ==>

License agreement.  Our license agreement is displayed during install and reproduced in the Readme file.  It says you are allowed to install the program on as many computers as you like, as long as you don't sell or give away the license key.