SIAM Limited
	News from S I A M - Autumn 1997

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Welcome!

Welcome to all the customers who have joined us since our last newsletter in May. We aim to send out a newsletter each Spring and Autumn (usually late April and late October) to all customers who have bought from us within the last 12 months or so. To enable us to do this, we keep some information about you and your orders on a computer system, covered by our registration under the Data Protection Act. If you would like to stop receiving the newsletter, or to receive it even when you have not ordered recently, please let us know.

News

The main news is that we have a new Platinum simulation, Carlisle 1973. This is one of Brian's, and covers the whole Carlise area in considerable detail, at the time just before electrification through to Carlisle and Glasgow.

We also have new time periods for three locations already covered: Newton Abbot 1970 and Oxford 1959, both set on a summer Saturday, and Crewe 1983, just before the remodelling portrayed in out Crewe 1985. Substantial updates are also available for Newton Abbot 1955 (three screens, better control) and Missouri Pacific I : St. Louis to Dexter (layout correction in the Chester area, and better control), at the usual upgrade price of £4 per program; in these two cases this includes revised instruction.

We also have another Driver, the much requested Paddington to Exeter, route of the Cornish Riviera Limited, with a wide choice of schedule and motive power ffrom the early seventies. We plan to release a later version with more recent schedules and power; the signalling and speed restriction changes over the years were too great to incorporate in a single program.

Finally, we have the largest yet in the Freight Manager series, covering the whole of the diesel-powered Freightliner operation, with 35x Class 47 and 10x Class 56 locomotives for you to manage.

Thank you for all your suggestions. We still have enough projects to last for several years, but don't let that stop you sending more, particularly if you have the data to back them up. The ones that come to the top of the pile naturally tend to be the ones for which we have the most data available.

Our full list is available on our World Wide Web site (see below); when asked for a list we now send a full price list without details, plus full details of simulations announced in the last year or two. On request we can supply on disk the complete list as a zipped HTML file, or in Microsoft Word 97 format. For those who don't have a Web browser we are looking into the possibility of providing a disk containing both our current list and a cut-down stand-alone browser; please ask if you are interested.

Tim Bourne.

NEW since our last Newsletter!

Except for Carlisle 1973, the following new simulations will be available from Monday 24th November for both PC and Amiga. They will not be available for the Atari ST.

Carlisle 1973 will NOT be available for the Amiga; because of its size and complexity it uses technology only available on the PC.

It may be possible to ship orders for the PC that do not include Carlisle 1973 earlier than 24th, perhaps from 17th November, but please be patient and don't call us to ask about the progress of your order until after 26th.

NEW Traffic Control programs

NEW! Platinum Series - Carlisle 1973 - A worthy successor to Reading 1954 and Lincoln 1952, with again several yards and private sidings to provide trip freight traffic, as well as the major Kingmoor Yard. It covers the West Coast main line from Upperby Junction in the south to Gretna Junction and Quintinshill in the north. There are ten track screens, each with a details screen where necessary. (Difficulty ######)
For technical reasons this simulation will not be available for the Amiga.

NEW! Gold Series - Oxford 1959 - If you thought Oxford station was busy on a weekday, try it on this summer Saturday, with many through holiday services from the Midlands and North to the South Coast! We were surprised to see how much freight traffic still ran on a Saturday, mostly early and late. The contrast with our weekday 1954 version is interesting. (Difficulty #####)

NEW! Silver Series - Newton Abbot 1970 - Another in our "Summer Saturdays in the West" series, but this time set in the seventies. Note the contrast with steam in our 1955 version. The layout was largely unchanged from steam days, except in the shed area, and at the north end of the station where a Motorail terminal now existed. This was at the height of Motorail services, with no less than five calling at Newton Abbot and needing shunting. Due to the lack of refuelling facilities in the Paignton area, you also have to change engines on some Torbay services. (Difficulty ####)

NEW! Silver Series - Crewe 1983 - An interesting comparison with our Crewe 1985, this is set just before the 1985 remodelling, with the station layout much as in steam days or in our 1971 version, but most main line traffic powered by electrics. Loco changing was of course still required on the North Wales line. (Difficulty ####)

NEW Driver Simulations

NEW! Driver : Paddington to Exeter 1 (70s) - You are in charge of your selected train (from a choice of 9) on this varied line: fast to Reading, then twisting and turning through Westbury to Taunton, then over Wellington bank to Exeter. You have a choice of schedules for loco-hauled services, with a variety of locos available: classes 35, 42 (single or pair), 47/0, 47/4, 50 and 52. (Difficulty ##)

NEW Fleet Manager

NEW! Freightliner Manager 1996 - Manage Freightliner's fleet of 35 class 47 and 10 class 56 locomotives for a week, achieving the greatest possible productive mileage while ensuring that priority trains are covered and that scheduled maintenance is performed correctly. Biggest yet in this series, with 45 locos and nine main locations, as well as trip and out-and-back workings to other places (Difficulty ##)

Order delays

Though our target of despatch within 24 hours of receipt, we cannot guarantee this. Please do not phone or fax to ask about the progress of an order until at least a week has elapsed from the time we should have received it.

Due to absence abroad on business there may be longer delays at the end of March 1998.

World Wide Web

Our World Wide Web page always contains our latest complete list of simulations and price list, any recent news, and a pointer to a site from which our sample simulations can be downloaded. The URL is:

This will be the first place to find any new announcements. It also contains screen shots, and pointers to other sites of railway interest.

Atari ST support

A fair number of our existing programs are still available for the ST. Due to very low orders over the last year, no future simulations will be available for the ST, and we will discountinue support of the ST from the end of December 1997

Amiga support

Amiga orders are declining slowly, but at present there are still sufficient to justify keeping the complete range available where technically possible; in this issue only Carlisle 1973 is NOT available for the Amiga. If the Amiga market continues to shrink as the Atari market has done, this situation may change, of course.

PC operating system support

All our programs run satisfactorily as DOS applications under Windows 3.1 and Windows 95, and also as DOS applications directly under OS/2 Warp, as well as on DOS-based machines without any form of Windows support. We expect to produce Windows-based programs in the future.

Simulation speed on PC

All our programs should run on any PC processor. If you have problems with simulations running too fast, please check the program date (file date on the original disk) - if it is older than 1994 and you are using a 486 or faster processor, you need an update, provided free on return of your original disks, or with a new order.

All our programs on the PC appear to be subject to occasional wild variations in speed. We are investigating the cause of this, which does not appear to happen on all machines, and does not appear to be within the program itself. For all our programs, if the program starts up too fast, we recommend that you save, quit and start again.

PC Disk Size

Due to price changes and the growing size of our programs, we are now using high density 3½" PC disks (holding 1.44Mb each). If you have an older machine that can not accept these disks, please ask for the 720k variety.

As from the end of December 1997, we shall NOT be able to supply 5¼" disks.

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