Buy it Now! TGV Train Sim Pack £24.77 / €39,95

Review: TGV Train Sim Pack Developer: EuropeanBahn (and others), Publisher: Just Trains Reviewed By Matthew Peddlesden Date: 26 May 2002

I've had a copy of the TGV route now in both its original form ('Northern European TGV') and it's new form (the JustTrains TGV Train Sim Pack). This review is specifically for the JustTrains pack.

This is the first substantial route that's been made available on-the-shelf for MS Train Simulator, so kudos to EuropeanBahn and JustTrains for making it happen, hopefully we'll see more packs where the focus is on the route with a bit of stock for you to run on it supplied as the extra.

One of the more novel additions to this route is the Eurotunnel, EuropeanBahn have extended the original Northern European TGV route to come out of Calais, through the tunnel and all the way to Ashford in Kent via Folkstone, so there's a lot of route for you to explore here.

If you have the original Northern European TGV and you enjoy it, is this one going to be worth considering or not? Well, I would recommend that you read on as personally I do find the newer version of the route much better than the original - so if you enjoyed that, then you're highly likely to enjoy this one.

Packaging
The manual contains a description of how the route progresses from one end to the other (Lille in France to Ashford in the UK). This is a good addition and it means that you immediately understand that there are some lines that are there for completeness (ie. don't go anywhere) and many are there which are quite usable - but we'll get on to the route itself in the next section.

The Route installed on to my machine without any problems, it is crucially important to note that you must have all six Microsoft routes installed on your machine or this one won't install. This could make the overall installation size of this route massive for you if you perhaps only have one or two of the original Microsoft routes on your system. The reason for this is that this route uses a lot of the original textures and shapes that are supplied out-of-the-box with Train Simulator so these must be copied over. They can't be distributed on the CD due to obvious copyright problems, indeed, some people I've spoken with are concerned that even using them on a commercial route might not be within the terms of the EULA. I have attempted (7 times now, via different methods) to contact someone in Microsoft who can clarify this point and have been completely ignored on every attempt so I'll have to go with the conclusion that they obviously don't care that much so why should anyone else.

Once installed the route will consume approximately 470 Megabytes of disk space. A 'reference' file is not provided with the route so you cannot use a tool such as Route-Riter to try and reduce that either, unfortunately. Remember you need all six default routes installed, so keep that in mind when deciding if you have enough space to install TGV on your system.

Once installed you have a new route, plus two TGV trainsets from Clem Tillier and an SNCF BB7200 plus Co-Rail coaches from ChrisTrains. The package also installs ten varied (though all Passenger services) activities for you to use as well, though I was a little disappointed that they didn't optionally include more acitivities for people that had bought both this and Euro Loco - given that most places are providing an opportunity to purchase them both together, it would have made an even better reason to obtain both packages if one or both of them had included activities for the pair of them together (for example, taking the Eurostar from Calais to Ashford and seeing TGV and BB loco's on the french side, and HST's on the English side would have been marvelous!).

There are some spelling mistakes that weren't picked up such as 'Thalys' showing up in some consist names as 'Thylas'. It's not exactly going to destroy your opinion of the package but it is a shame that when so much effort has gone in to something like this that it falls over at the last hurdle and silly mistakes get through.

There is also a problem with two of the activities as supplied. It looks as though directory names have been changed just prior to packaging up for CD duplication and the consists and activities have not been updated to reflect these changes which renders those two activities unusable.

The activies with a problem are 'JT_Commuter Express Thylas Daytime' and 'JT_Lille to Tournenhem Stopper'.

They are looking for stock with these folder names: JTSNCFBB7200, TGV_4534_V1, TGV_531_V1 and CORAIL_CARRIAGES. They are presented on the CD as 'JT_' at the front (the first one is just missing an underscore). Using Activity Analysis this problem is very quickly fixed but if you don't have such a tool and you're not comfortable editing the .ACT file yourself, then just delete activities 2 and 5 from the 'ACTIVITIES' folder and you won't accidentally choose them and cause yourself problems.

My final comment about the general packaging of the product is that it does not state anywhere on the advertising, box or manual that you're getting a fictional rendition of the route. It does not accurately represent the real route - the Eurotunnel depicted here has many turns in it and Sellindge is represented as a TGV station on the line when in fact it looks to me more like a small village from a quick look at Autoroute.

I should clarify that I am not marking the product down because it is a fictional route, but the fact that I have heard from a couple of people now who are disappointed because they bought the product in the belief it was a replica of the real world route.

The Lille-Ashford Route and Activities
After a mostly smooth install we can then start looking at the main focus of this product. The route.

As I said earlier, I had the initial version of this product quite some time ago and was looking forward to seeing what EuropeanBahn had done to advance it - users of the original will be able to recognise places from it in this new version but they will also quite clearly be able to see it is far more than just a bit more track. Large amounts of the route seem to have been reworked and tidied up quite nicely.

For those that haven't seen the route at all, let's talk about what we can see. The screenshots I've taken show the entire route from Lille through to Ashford. I've used a variety of Loco's and i've also changed the season and time of day as I've gone along just to provide some variety.

From Lille to Arques the route is a two-track mainline with another two-track line that wanders around a bit to the left and a local line in the distance wandering from left to right. When you get to Arques it goes to a four track line with the local line wandering from left to right. Things drop back to two-line again after Calais and in to the tunnel before you come out in to the UK.

There's a lot of track to drive on in this route. There's also a good amount of variety. If you want to do High Speed running, taking a TGV up to the speed limit and screaming through some stations then go for it. If you're in to the more pedestrian (like myself!) then take the BB7200 on a meandering country run along the local line. If you're more interested in looking out the window that staring at the speedometer to see if you can make it go faster, the local line offers tons to look at. You're constantly crossing the main line, wandering out to some distance, going in to a small station and then back over the main line again - sometimes you go over it, sometimes under it.

The track work on the main line is nicely laid and I didn't catch any bouncing of the train (when track is not laid carefully you can get areas where the train jolts over a joint, these can cause broken couplers and even derailments) as it went the distance of the route. I was a bit concerned at the radius of some of the curves on the main line - if I'd been in a real train I think i'd have wanted to be going considerably slower than the speed limit (under half!) to get around some of them safely. I must admit I did my testing with Derailments switched off so it's quite possible that the TGV is capable of staying on the track quite happily but even so, you'd want to warn the passengers to put their drinks down :)

During the Newmarket Exhibition, the TGV route got a lot of exercise, most of the people that came and saw it (and many had a go at driving on it) were very impressed by it. Unfortunately, one time took a BB7200 in to the Eurotunnel on an 'Explore the route' and when we came out the other side we only had one coach - so there must be a dodgy bit of track somewhere in there but it's very difficult to know where, certainly the TGV's and Eurostar didn't have any trouble.

The local line has a lot more potential for error, there's a lot more to see and the track winds around all over the place, including going up and down hills. However some of the turns and gradient changes are quite steep - going from an uphill gradient straight in to a downhill one not only doesn't quite look right but in some cases the bottom of your train will 'bottom out', or you'll go from straight and level to a fairly steep up-hill in one shot. Had these been smoothed out it would have made the local line an absolute dream to drive on.

Finally, on the topic of track work, i'll add that there are also a fair number of yards and other sidings present and the odd 'industry' is also available for use so the scope for Activity designers is quite large - especially given the two-country aspect of it.

Moving on to the scenery. There's not much new modeling that I could see beyond the large land marks, it mostly seems to be the default scenery that comes in the other routes (which is why you need them all installed). It does look a bit off-putting when you're supposed to be in a French station and you have lots of japanese writing an 'Shinjuku' written on one of the larger buildings! Indeed, station name signs haven't been changed either and they too don't always reflect where you are, they are just part of the station model that's been used for the route.

I don't personally have a big problem with commercial routes using the default scenery (unless of course the EULA prohibits it, but as I said, I can't get an answer on that from Microsoft) as long as it is all generic scenery that's used. Using tree's, houses and so forth seems like a good way to save a large amount of time and reduce the cost of putting a route together, but I still think that the stations should all be custom modelled and not use any of the stock models (unless they're generic of course), proper name boards and so forth add to the realism even on a fictional route.

The positioning of the scenery items is better than it was in Northern European TGV but it still has a way to go before it's "right". The gantries are often at an angle, some of the buildings I went past looked like they were the victims of land-slips as they precariously leaned backwards and some of the signals weren't straight and on the ground properly - though again, it's a lot better than it was in the original.

Moving on to signaling, for the most part I didn't have a problem with this, it seemed to all work as it should. On the Local Line doing an activity I did notice that I was going through a whole bunch of red lights - that showed up on the Track Monitor as green lights, so i'm not quite sure what was going on there. The other side of the track was showing the same problem but the AI trains seemed to be taking notice of that and I was just going past a load of stationary AI trains. Perhaps that was how it was intended, but it didn't seem right.

There are some framerate issues in the built up areas but they don't last long at all and for the most part you can enjoy some decent framerates and still have plenty to look at on the route.

The final point I'll make about the route is that some of the paths that are provided are non-functional.

For example, Arques IC -> Calais doesn't take a left switch right outside the platform and you go shooting off a non buffered bit of track moments later. Paths are chosen when you choose a 'start' and 'heading towards' pair - they are defined by the person who does the route (and activities) so that you can pick a place to start exploring in a given direction and (hopefully) know that you'll get there without having to know the track work yourself or manually go in and create paths in the Activity Editor.

Unfortunately there are some paths present that will take you in to buffers and off ends of track so you might want to go and check all the paths yourself to make sure that they work and remove or fix those that don't.

I have been fairly negative about the route so far, which isn't fair - but the point of this review is to tell you what to expect and there are fewer things wrong with it than are right, so it's easier to list those!

The Activities provided are quite entertaining, though they're of course all Passenger activities as that is all that has been provided on the disc in the way of stock. It almost negates the Eurotunnels existence in terms of 'feel' when you come out of it in to the UK and you're still seeing French trains, for all intents and purposes you might just have gone through a big tunnel in France. This could have been easily solved by just including some activities that the user could separately install if they had the Euro Loco pack as well, perhaps an update will be made available or people will produce activities on the Internet to boost the realism of this area.

Rolling Stock
The stock provided is excellent. With Cab Views, Passenger Views and full interiors on all the units they are a real treat to drive. The TGV's are newer versions of the ones that we've reviewed elsewhere on the site and the BB7200 looks much like the BB15000 that comes with the Euro Loco pack.

Overall Conclusion
This has been a hard product to review and it's taken a lot of time to run it up and down a few times and get a good feel for it. It is also hard to find quite a few problems with the route when over all it's actually an excellent piece of work. There's always plenty to see, there's a ton of variety, scope for activities and local and express trains, with the three loco's provided adding an extra touch of class.

Do I recommend the route to you then? If you want a realistic route, so that you can relive your journeys in this area - no, it's not a realistic rendition. I've spoken with a couple of people that have bought this package for this purpose and they expressed their disappointment to me about it and described some of the areas where it is quite obviously fictional.

If you're looking for a new route with plenty of variety, an excellent (and long) high speed line coupled with a scenic local line then this is a very good route to look at, provided you can over come some of the visual deficiencies such as wonky gantries then you'll enjoy it a great deal.

Over all, our score for this route is: