![]() Jacob Spence’s father was a master craftsman and housebuilder, and as a boy Jacob loved to visit his father on site, watching the heavy-equipment operators at work. I particularly enjoy driving routes and trains that I drive in real life, and comparing and contrasting the differences between the simulator and reality.”Ĭonstruction Simulator. It is very satisfying that as an English train driver I can jump into a German train and have a German train driver virtually instruct me through the game. “Through my live streams I have been able to connect with other railway staff from the UK and abroad, and we are able to share ideas and learn about each other’s railways and trains. I have developed a particular fondness for German Railway through playing train sim and learning about the various safety systems and how things are done differently.” “ I really enjoy driving routes and trains from around the world and learning about the operational differences. There is a social and investigative appeal for Evans too. While you can’t learn the route fully on a simulator, what I had learned came in very useful when I went out in the cab of a real train: I had a rough idea of the route and the names of locations and speed limits.” This is a route that I have driven on Train Sim World a number of times. “Earlier this year I was tasked with learning the route from Brighton to Eastbourne. Sit there in cab view and complete the route, then do it over and over again. Don’t minimise the game to check social media, don’t get up to use the loo, don’t even change the view on the game to outside the cab. Load up a two-hour run and don’t move from the computer for the entire time. “The big thing that it taught me was the level of concentration required. “Simulators are great for learning about the signalling and safety systems as well as general railway operations,” he says. He started playing train sims when he was 12 and believes they gave him a pretty good grounding in what the career would entail. Currently, it’s the excellent Train Sim World 3, which offers a variety of routes and a dynamic weather system. Richard Evans is a train driver who has a hugely successful YouTube channel under the name Dad Rail – and he plays, yes, train simulators. I got on the intercom and the pilot shouted: ‘Empty the aircraft!’ We were having to throw cargo out of the door – these great big boxes. On one occasion, we took off from Kuching and an engine caught fire. “It definitely reminds me of the pleasure of flying,” he says, as he swoops over Christchurch harbour. He wants to show me a nice route along the coast towards Cornwall, and all the while he talks about his experiences in the military the game, with its astounding AI-driven recreation of the Earth’s surface and its simulation of the very feel of flight, seems to feed his memories. ![]() He tells these tales as his Cessna 172 taxies on to the runway at Bournemouth airport. We dropped cats to a Royal Marine DZ that was overrun with rats. ![]() We dropped live chicken and goats for the Gurkhas, because they had to kill their own food. We dropped 24-hour rations every day, ammunition and water if required. It could hold two 3 ton trucks, freight and 38 fully equipped troops. “The Hastings and the Beverley, which was a huge aircraft. “I mainly flew in old piston engines,” he says as he plays. Now, every afternoon he uses Microsoft Flight Simulator and explores the skies in a turboprop aeroplane. Stationed in Borneo during the Indonesian confrontation of the 1960s, he spent his military career in aircraft, dropping supplies for British troops stationed in the jungle along the Indonesia-Malaysia border. In the bedroom of retired army air dispatcher Frank Durrans, there is a powerful PC with an ultra-wide monitor and an array of complicated flight controllers. ![]() Simulators are great for learning about the signalling and safety systems as well as general railway operations Some of the most ardent fans of job sims are people who do the jobs themselves: the literal busman’s holiday. And if you think that everyone playing these sims is still engaging in a form of escapism, tapping into jobs they never attempted in real life, you’d be wrong. ![]()
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