Train Simulators of the 2000s: Where Are They Now?

Train-Sim.Com covered every rail simulator its community cared about, and its forums had a board for most of them. Here is where those titles ended up.

Microsoft Train Simulator (MSTS)

Developed by Kuju Entertainment and published by Microsoft in 2001, MSTS was the centre of this site: the FAQ, the How To guides and most of the file library. It is long out of print, but its file formats survive through Open Rails, which runs MSTS content directly. See also our guide to running MSTS on Windows 10 and 11.

Microsoft Train Simulator 2

A sequel was in development and had its own board on Train-Sim.Com, but Microsoft cancelled it in 2003. The forum threads speculating about it remain a time capsule of what the community hoped for.

Rail Simulator → RailWorks → Train Simulator Classic

After MSTS, Kuju built Rail Simulator (2007). Its successor RailWorks became Dovetail Games' long-running Train Simulator series, now sold as Train Simulator Classic. Dovetail also publishes Train Sim World, its Unreal Engine-based line.

Trainz

Auran's Trainz, which had its own Train-Sim.Com forum, is the one franchise from that era still in continuous development. It is now developed by N3V Games, and its community still shares content through its own download station.

BVE Trainsim and openBVE

BVE, the cab-view simulator with a devoted following for its track-building flexibility, also had a dedicated forum here. Its spirit continues in openBVE, an open-source simulator that can run many classic BVE routes.

Railroad Tycoon, TrainMaster and Train Dispatcher

The site also hosted forums for Railroad Tycoon, the TrainMaster Train Simulator project and Train Dispatcher. Their threads, where archived, are preserved in the forum archive.

Why the archive still matters

Much of the know-how on modelling, physics, route building and prototype operations was written once, on sites like this, and never republished. Open Rails still reads MSTS content, so much of that advice is directly usable today. Browse the full archive or search it.