December 16, 1999
REVIEW
The Grand Adventure of Railroading
LIONEL TRAINS PRESENTS TRANS-CON
(Knowledge Adventure; $30 for
standard edition, $40 for centennial
edition; Windows 95 and 98.)
By LES LINE
ny train enthusiast will tell you
that there is very little romance in modern railroading.
Steam locomotives, those living,
breathing behemoths, disappeared
from the mainlines in the 1950's, replaced by efficient diesels with colorful corporate paint schemes but no
soul.
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Players of Trans-Con must overcome obstacles in building
either the westward Union Pacific or the eastward Central Pacific.
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Then, one by one, the great railroads that laid a spider web of steel
across North America in the 19th
century fell by the trackside, victims
of bankruptcies, mergers and consolidations. Conrail and Amtrak, for
example, picked over the carcasses
of the New York Central, Pennsylvania, Reading and other Eastern companies, salvaging freight and passenger operations that looked profitable
and abandoning the rest.
Only one famous line has managed
to retain its historic identity: the
Union Pacific, perhaps the greatest
railroad of all. It is the Union Pacific
and the long-ago Central Pacific
Railroad that are the stars of Trans-Con, a computer game from the toy-train maker Lionel and Knowledge
Adventure. Trans-Con takes players
back to a time when railroading was
a grand adventure and there was a
thrilling race to lay track across the
wild western half of the United
States, linking the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the young nation.
Trans-Con puts you in charge of
building either the westward Union
Pacific or the eastward Central Pacific segment of the 1,776-mile transcontinental railroad, overcoming assorted obstacles to be the first to
reach an arranged meeting point at
Promontory, Utah, while foiling saboteurs and saving the golden spike
from outlaws.
The game, the centennial version
of which is packaged in a decorative
tin box with an informative foldout
map of the route and a tiny model of
a wood-burning 1860's locomotive, is
fun, educational -- and nonviolent.
The graphics and sound effects are
entertaining, and Lionel hopes the
game will interest computer-wise
children in leaving their keyboards
for a while to play with scaled-down
trains that also come packed with
high-tech electronics like realistic
digital sounds and remote control.
Grown-ups who already have their
toy railroads will also find Trans-Con
a challenge, especially if they click
the Hard button.
Construction of the transcontinental railroad, which began in January
1863 and ended with the driving of
the golden spike at Promontory on
May 10, 1869, was an amazing engineering feat for the time.
The Central Pacific had the shortest route -- 690 miles -- and a three-year head start because its rival was
delayed by financial and engineering
problems. But it needed the extra
time since Central Pacific workers
faced the formidable task of laying
track over the Sierra Nevada. Much
of the Union Pacific's 1,086-mile section crossed gently rolling plains.
In either case, you will have the
help of two young, more or less fictional characters -- a 25-year-old inventor and chief engineer, Jack
Casement (beginning in 1866, the
Union Pacific construction was supervised by a Civil War general
named John S. Casement), and his
16-year-old sister, Sarah. She is
adept at foiling the mischief-makers
and unmasking the mastermind
(perhaps the shipping mogul Cornelius Vanderbilt or the Confederate
president, Jefferson Davis) who is
determined to stop the construction.
Context-sensitive help is available
with a single click at any time, as is a
Train of Thought Journal with page
after page of accurate, easy-to-digest
information on topics like railroad
engineering, geography, wild animals, natural disasters and characters straight out of the history books.
For instance, the Union Pacific's
president, Thomas C. Durant, is described as ""a shady fellow who uses
the money granted by the government to pay for a grand lifestyle.""
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A contest that
involves would-be rail
barons, heroes and
villains.
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A ""money meter"" shows you how
much is available for each stretch of
track. Spend too much by making
bad decisions or experiencing bad
luck and your railroad will go bankrupt. Then you will have to start the
section over. The first obstacle west
of Omaha is the Elkhorn River, and
you can choose one of three kinds of
bridges to cross it: a deck plate
($10,000), a wood trestle ($25,000) or
an iron trestle ($50,000). Go with the
cheapest option and it will be washed
away in a huge storm. It is also a
really good idea to reroute the track
to bypass a Pawnee village's crop
fields and to keep a reserve for
losses from a raging prairie fire or to
find a way through an unexpected
quicksand maze.
I have just passed present-day
Grand Island, Neb., where Union Pacific workers encountered Indians
for the first time.
I figure I will
reach the virtual Promontory by
New Year's Day, if I manage to build
a 126-foot-high, 700-foot-long bridge
near Laramie, Wyo., and find enough
timber for rails on the nearly treeless plains.
As for the Central Pacific, the
""steam-powered map"" in Jack Casement's rolling office shows that it
has been built only part way to the
summit near Truckee, Calif., where
it will take a year to complete a 1,659-foot tunnel. I'm betting we'll win,
even though the real race was essentially a tie.