Andreas Czudai

Here´s his letter to the community

Hi Everyone,

As you can imagine its been a busy few days trying to figure out what to do following RSCs announcement on their London to Brighton route.

For those in a rush I’ve have made the decision to shelve South Central for the time been.

For those not so much in a rush…

I’ve taken the difficult decision, with Andreas at Trains and Drivers to shelve South Central. This may or may not be a permanent shelving…to be honest I hope not, it may even re-appear as something else, I don’t know yet. I have put many many hours into this project, and spent towards £1000 on research material (conveniently the last bits arrived yesterday), so it is a very very hard decision to let go.

Why the decision? Ok so I know everyone is going to expect its a commercial decision. Its actually not! Trains and Drivers will back me up in saying this, I only went the payware route as I wanted to cover the cost of research materials. I have a fairly good job (for my age) but the down side is that it is a bit seasonal. Over winter I have a bit (maybe too much?) time on my hands, where as summer is a very busy time for me. The original plan fits into this…I build the track work and hand it on to a team to scenerise. This satisfies my interest which is generally track work, and how things work…not making things look pretty! Now RSC have announced the route, to make the route different to theirs, all options would involve me spending a lot more time this summer on it (time I don’t have) or delaying another year until winter. London – Brighton is my local route, and I do have a passion for it, I believe that RSC are in a better position, with more resources and talent open to them than I have. They also have time…as they have full time employees…I’m only doing this on my off days, as every 3rd party dev is.

We have been aware, as I think everyone in the world has, that London – Brighton has been on the cards for the last few months at least. We did agree that we wanted to avoid releasing a route exactly the same, which would only lead to countless threads posts etc. comparing the two. This would only lead to arguments and bad blood, which is no go for the train sim community. We looked at all the options and requests and did have a plan of action which would make ours significantly different to RSCs. I was very excited with which option we had chosen. However having read a post on the RSC wall at Wed 21/03/12 16:05GMT and comments after that made me think “why bother”. It is very sad to see that people within the train sim community can judge if or not one route is better than another with just a few pictures. Whats even sadder is one of those comments came from someone I spent 20 minutes writing a post just a few weeks ago to help the guy out. To be absolutely honest with everyone I’m massively disheartened by comments like this and have lost all interest in route building or even railsim for the time been. Maybe when RSCs L-B route comes out it will pull me back in as EBs L2B on MSTS was the route that got me into this. From what I’ve seen, and what I hope is that RSC will do the route justice, do it well, with no faults, SBHHs, or delays that have plagued other RSC products.

I would like to clarify a few rumours going about;
- RSC did not contact myself nor Trains and Drivers about the route. We are in the dark as much as everyone else
- RSC are not releasing our/my route in disguise
- My route has been in production for more than a year, just not in public

So what next…

For Trains and Drivers they have a fantastic American route coming out this year, a truly unique route, with the backing of the company that runs the real route so it should be something pretty special. The Electrostar will also be released this year. There will be some exciting new features to this train which not many other produces have made use of as of yet, so will definitely be a must buy.

For me, I’m going to take some time away for train sims now. Maybe when I’m back i’l pick up from where I left off, start something new, or getting involved with another project if I see someone needing help and it tickles my fancy! (PM if you have something!). I will still be lurking around UKTS forums, but I really need to get some enthusiasm back which at the moment I’m lacking.

Last of all i’d like to say a big thank you to everyone on the UKTS forum, for your support, suggestions and help. And especially those that have written tutorials and words of advice on route building, I’ve been taking it all in. Thank you to all those like Mike Simpson for RWtools and Jim Nobkins for RWDecal, and all those other great tools out there.

Thanks Everyone

Ian

As a bundled version with Volume Number One for a special price:

Or the Volume 2 release only:

There will be a special bundle including the NEC Series 1 for a special price! So, all abooard! Next stop Newy York Penn Station!