Machine Rail Anniversary Month

Between September and October, we celebrate our anniversary, and as usual, we offer a nice discount on all our DLCs available here on our website!

Check out 35%OFF on any item now!

The offer will be available until October 12.

...And let's continue with some updates regarding our current projects in progress:

Illinois Central 2600 Class - Updates

We have been working on this commission since January of this year, and since the last update, we have made significant progress with regard to the locomotive. The 3D modeling has been completely finalized for both the tender and the engine, and all of its parts have received our full attention for hours and hours of work, resulting in significant optimization.

Visual appearance of the 3D mesh in its three main stages of UVW channel mapping and texturing.

Current progress is at the endless stage of external and internal animations of the locomotive, where many hours of work are spent on every detail, whether functional or simply for visual pleasure. Within the next 10 days, we should have all these animations completed, as we have been working on them since the beginning of August.

After all the pieces have received their respective textures, they are exported to the TSC, one by one.

We thought that the first half of 2025 would be calm and more promising so that we could focus most of our time on projects for Machine Rail, but unfortunately, that was not the case. Many things happened outside of the PC and continue to happen due to our professional and personal obligations outside of the computer, which is not a bad thing; but it ended up directly impacting the progress of the projects, and they are slower this year. Now, for the second half of the year, I am particularly feeling some relief from my day-to-day life outside the PC, being able to invest more time in projects that are unfortunately complex and time-consuming, and often things do not turn out as we expected, such as spending the last two weeks trying to solve a compatibility issue with one of the animations we were working on in the ICRR 2600 Class. Now everything is resolved and things are moving forward...

First experimental tests of the locomotive, all parts are already positioned with their respective textures and animations.

To have the locomotive 100% complete in its original form, the following is still needed:

• All animations inside the cab

• Dynamic 2D and 3D numbers

• Internal and external lighting

• Internal and external dynamic sounds

• Engine and tender blueprint specs

• Scripting

• Performance optimization

• Review all and more

There will certainly be more to come, and when we say “original form” of the locomotive, we mean that we will have a variation of the model that will feature some significant and very interesting visual modifications. We still have a lot of work to do in this comission project, as it does not end with the locomotive. As the project progresses significantly, we will bring more updates to everyone.

Rebuilding Sierra Railroad No.3 Bundle

Due to time constraints and our obligation to work on the Illinois Central 2600 Class commission, the Sierra No. 3 Bundle remains on hold.

Sincerely, the Machine Rail team.

Machine Rail's Special Easter Sale

🐰 Enjoy 35% off all our DLC for your Train Simulator Classic! 🐰

The offer is valid from April 13 to 21

Machine Rail Store

"The Creator will bless all families”

First Machine Rail Updates for 2025

Since our last official update it's been just over 3 months and a lot of progress has been made on our projects during this time. We already had a commission scheduled for the last quarter of 2024 so that when January came, we could start working on it:

Illinois Central Class 2600 "Paducah's"

Photographed by Mac Owen

This new class of locomotives was a continuation of the railroad's existing 4-8-2 Mountains and comprised 20 units for the Illinois Central Railroad, numbered 2600-2619, build in 1942 by the ICRR itself in its Paducah Shops.

In recent years we've had the pleasure of being able to deliver a number of commissions for our clients, one of which comprised a very special request for the creation of a new route for their steam-era Train Simulator Classic in the run-up to its transition to diesel:

Illinois Central: Iroquois Prairielands

Cover screenshot by Dragnus

A request for a commission for the Mikados 1500 class for this route came to us from the creator of this Dragnus project, and the Machine Rail team was able to work on creating the new locomotive as well as new rolling stock to make up a beautiful set. This time his new request was for us to develop the beautiful 2600 class mentioned earlier, and the current progress of the locomotive's development can be seen below:

Current top left side view of the machine

Current view of the back and right side of the machine

Current view of the front and right side of the machine

At the moment, the external modeling of the locomotive is at 75%, which is good progress, but there is still a lot of 3D modeling work to be done on the external parts and the entire interior of the cab. The tender should start in the next few weeks with the completion of the machine.

Also negotiated for this commission are the ICRR 2200 Heavyweight Coach and ICRR 700 Heavyweight Baggage Car which are currently in the initial design phase, and for the time being there is no visually significant progress to show here.

Western Maryland I-2 Class Arriving on Steam

The largest 2-10-0 Decapods built by Baldwin are arriving in the Steam Store for the majority of TSC users who love to enjoy a good workday in real time, this time in the power of one of the Western Maryland Railway's largest steam locomotives!

Screenshot by High Iron Simulations

You'll have a great experience of almost 3 hours of career scenarios exclusively created for the B&O Mountain Subdivision: Cumberland - Grafton Route Add-On.

Coming soon to the Steam Store!

Rebuilding The Machine Rail's Sierra No.3

In December 2024, some products that had been out of date for some time were removed from our online store, including the Sierra Railroad No.3 bundle.

Current state of rebuild of the Sierra No.3 project

This was a project that began in 2020 and since then Machine Rail has been proud of the amount of work put into each new project with a view to significant and progressive improvement. The Sierra No.3 Movie Liveries and Sierra Railroad No.3 packages were offered separately due to the huge amount of texturing the models required; this will not be the case with the new Sierra No.3 package.

If there is one steam locomotive that has had several paintings throughout its life, it is the No.3 and due to the great interest of many locomotive enthusiasts, the Machine Rail team has decided to create almost all of the most famous movie paintings in which the No.3 has participated for its first release in 2021/2022.

With the project to completely rebuild the locomotive for the TSC, Machine Rail is currently considering keeping its final versions, which will be offered in our online store as a new product; if you have the previous packages, don't worry about files being changed or replaced, as this will be a new product that won't affect the old one.

So what versions of the new Sierra No.3 will be available? We don't have an answer to that yet, but it may be plausible to consider its working era of the second half of the 1940s and 1950s at Sierra Railroad, which may also comprise some new rolling stock models for the locomotive in addition to the coaches already seen before.

Old Products Back to the MR's Online Store?

Unfortunately all products that have been or may be removed from our online store in the future are unlikely to return in their original state. Just as Sierra No.3 is undergoing a complete rebuild for Train Simulator Classic due to people's great interest in it in our community, other obsolete projects or even new ideas may surface for the TSC community and that's just fantastic!

But we also get asked about our old Brazilian products from South America and the most recent job Machine Rail worked on was the Dom Pedro II Railway where we put our efforts into recreating a small section of the original Dom Pedro II Railway route and also a beautiful set of rolling stock. All this proved obsolete with the passage of time and we decided it was time to start reorganizing our thoughts again about Machine Rail's possible future dedication to more South American projects with the main focus on Brazilian railroads.

It's still a bit premature thinking, but I can tell you that our team is working on a new Brazilian narrow gauge route for TSC, with no official commitment to have it launched any time. But if screenshots of this project emerge via our official media, everyone can look forward to a possible launch, but until then, this is just speculation.

Sincerely, the Machine Rail team.