News

(Last updated 9 December 2023)

NEW!! Stafford 1958 now available!

Back to LMS territory, and our first Windows one on the West Coast Main Line. Stafford was (and is) a busy junction, and here we capture it not long before the rebuilding as part of the WCML electrification. Delays can cause challenging clashes at the junctions, and at busy times you can see why they felt a need for more platforms. £40.

As always, please let us know what you think of this one; do you like it enough for us to do other similar locations, perhaps Preston and Rugby?

See our Windows Products pages for full details.

What's ahead?

We're looking at one or two possibilities of the same sort of size and complexity as Bangor. Colchester and Taunton are two of these. We're also assessing the work needed in producing an East Cornwall 1964.

Ending support for Windows XP?

It was pointed out to us recently that our newer programs would not install on Windows XP. This surprised us, so I've been doing a bit of research. For those of you still running Windows XP, we have some good news and some bad news:

Good: Our Windows programs do run on Windows XP, apparently with no problems other than running rather slowly on the sort of machine sized for XP.

Bad: The installers we use (.msi files) do not run on Windows XP, and it does not look as if switching to a different installer would make a difference. It seems that most commercial software no longer supports XP. Our understanding is that any of our .msi files produced before about the middle of 2019 will install on Windows XP; any produced since then will not.

Price reduction

On reflection, it seems that it was a mistake to raise the price of our Windows Signal Box simulations, so with immediate effect Yarnton Junction 1954 reverts to £20. Further, to encourage trainee signallers, Ravenglass 1958 is priced at only £10.

Windows 10

We now have a page giving information on some possible problems with Windows 10 and/or 64-bit systems. Having said that, we have had no reports of such problems for some months now, and it seems likely that updates to Windows 10 have fixed them.

We're sorry we can not give precise instructions for fixing such problems; all the evidence points to them being problems not with the SIAM programs, but with Windows 10, particularly the 64-bit version. In spite of that, all our development and most of our testing has now switched to Windows 10.

Windows simulations

Details of available Windows simulations are on the Windows page of our Products section.

Windows installation files are big, and can generally NOT be supplied on floppy disk. Please also note that North London Line requires a display with a resolution of at least 800x600, and one larger than that is strongly recommended.

Our current plan is that all future simulations will be for Windows only. As far as we can tell, they should run on Windows Vista/7/8.1/10 and later; for Windows XP see the News item above. They do work on a Windows 10 tablet, though the precision of a touch screen does leave something to be desired. They also run on Linux with Wine!

Previous News

To make it easier to see what news is really new, we now have a Previous News page where you can read any news items you missed. News items will now stay here only while they are new, typically until the next news is posted.