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
Any 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.



Players of Trans-Con must overcome obstacles in building either the westward Union Pacific or the eastward Central Pacific.
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.""

A contest that involves would-be rail barons, heroes and villains.


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.




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