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This is a 3rd person railroading game which consists of train layouts, some of which the player can edit. Some of the locomotives include: Union Pacific EMD SW1500 switcher, an Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway F3A diesel locomotive (usually used to pull passenger trains), a generic 2-8-0 steam locomotive, and a 1950s passenger railcar. There are six difficulties, known as job rosters. Each difficulty has 11 jobs. A 12th job is unlocked after completing the previous 11. Most jobs involve the basic concept of picking up and delivering loads via different freight and passenger cars. Other jobs involve moving numbered freight cars to make valid addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division equations at kindergarten through 5th grade difficulty levels. There are memory-matching, pick-up sticks, hangman, Tower of Hanoi, and anagram scramble jobs with set time limits. The game has seven different play environments including a desert, the arctic, a living room, and the moon. A Deluxe version was released in 2000 which enhances the previous game by adding 50 new missions and a new track creation system. Design your own ultimate railroad system, then jump into your world and interact with every aspect of your creation. Take on the role of conductor and deliver passengers, food, animals and other goods to their destination. Or, hop aboard and ride the rails as a passenger. Play with over 30 authentic models from Lionel's own line of miniature locomotives that span the ages of steam through diesel. Design your track layouts using a multitude of interlocking straights, curves, crisscrosses and intersecting slant pieces. Get help coupling track pieces by using the "Smart Track" option. Make your creation real by adding buildings, trees, bridges, tunnels and other automated objects (like a working crane or a rotating dumper). Using the Layout Editor, choose your locale - from the backyard, kitchen, basement, miniature animated town, a dinosaur farm or even the North Pole or the Moon! Finished projects can be played as well as posted on the Internet for others to download. The beginning tutorials outline the basic play functions (driving trains, moving from track to track, and managing loads). Then you are presented with a series of puzzle scenarios in five "job bins" with varied difficulty that can be played in any order, or skipped altogether if found to be too challenging. Finishing all of the jobs in a bin unlocks bonus tasks with a special animation reward. |
