- Primary Subject: Train Sim World 7
- Key Update: Route builders use major train simulators to faithfully reconstruct long-abandoned railways, creating detailed digital preservation records of closed historical lines.
- Status: Confirmed
- Last Verified: October 9, 2026
- Quick Answer: Train simulators allow players to drive realistic digital reconstructions of historically closed or dismantled railway lines across various countries and software platforms.
A railway closes in a day and disappears over decades. The track comes up first, and years later a cycle path sign goes up where the signal box stood. Nobody runs a train over the whole route again, except in a sim.
Route builders have put serious time into recreating lines that closed long ago, and for some of them the sim is the most complete working record left. These six span four countries and four simulators.
Woodhead Still Runs Under Wires in Train Simulator Classic
Manchester to Sheffield over the Pennines was electrified at 1,500V DC in the early 1950s. Passenger trains ended in January 1970, and the last revenue freight ran in 1981.
The Glossop and Hadfield end still carries commuters, and Sheffield to Deepcar survives for freight. Everything between closed, the Woodhead Tunnels included, and the trackbed is now part of the Trans Pennine Trail.
Dovetail has built it twice. The original Woodhead Route covers the steam era, while Woodhead Electric Railway in Blue jumps to the late 1970s with 43 miles from Manchester Piccadilly to Sheffield Victoria.
Seven Hills Simulation's scenario pack, built from working timetables, gets you close to a real shift on the line.
Train Sim World's Peak Forest Railway Follows Today's Monsal Trail
The Midland's main line through the Peak District lost its middle in 1968, when Chinley to Rowsley closed. Ambergate to Matlock still runs as a branch, with Peak Rail operating the heritage stretch on to Rowsley.
Freight trains still use Buxton to Chinley. An 8.5-mile stretch became the Monsal Trail, where Bakewell's station building stands beside the path.
Train Sim World rebuilt all 38 miles as they stood in 1963, with 14 stations plus four already disused, and the route remains playable in TSW6.
Running a Stanier 8F along what is now a trail is about as literal as railway preservation gets.
The Milwaukee Road Lives On in Train Simulator Classic and Trainz
The Milwaukee Road switched on 438 miles of 3,000V DC electrification between Harlowton, Montana, and Avery, Idaho in 1917.
The Pacific Extension was abandoned in 1980, with the last train leaving Tacoma on March 15 of that year. Two sims cover different stretches of it.
Milepost Simulations' Pipestone Pass, released for Train Simulator Classic in January 2025, runs 70 miles from Three Forks to Butte over the Continental Divide, with GE boxcab motors working under variable-voltage catenary.
Farther west, TUME's Avery-Drexel covers 44 miles over St. Paul Pass in the mid-1970s, the last years of the electrification. It first shipped with Trainz Simulator 2010, and I've carried my copy from Trainz: A New Era all the way to TRS22.
The route also takes in Northern Pacific's Lookout Pass line from Haugan to Mullan, a second dead railway in the same package. The Route of the Hiawatha cycling trail now follows part of the St. Paul Pass grade.
Tennessee Pass Is Dormant Everywhere but Train Simulator Classic
The last through freight over Tennessee Pass was a Southern Pacific taconite train that crossed at 6:20 p.m. on August 23, 1997.
The 1996 merger with Union Pacific made the old Rio Grande route redundant, retiring what Dovetail calls the highest standard gauge main line in the United States.
The line has sat dormant under Union Pacific ownership ever since.
A 2020 short line lease drew local opposition, and this year trail advocates have used the Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern merger review to push for a rails-to-trails conversion.
Chaffee County's commissioners voted unanimously in August to back a study.
Milepost's route covers 62 miles from Buena Vista to Minturn plus the Leadville branch, set in the 1940s and 1950s as diesels pushed steam aside.
It's the only closed line on this list that still has its track, and if the trail plan wins, this is where its trains will keep running.
Bairnsdale to Orbost in Trainz Is a Father and Son Project
The Orbost line in East Gippsland opened in 1916 and carried mostly timber and farm produce until it closed in 1987. The track came up in 1994, and the trackbed is now the East Gippsland Rail Trail.
Tom Anderson built the Trainz route "based upon when my father Gavin Anderson was a fireman working from Bairnsdale," which places it in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Garry "Jerker" Jenkinson supplied the DEM terrain and custom assets, including the Stony Creek Trestle. The project went through at least five versions of Trainz and more than ten years of work, and it now comes bundled with TRS22 and Trainz Plus.
BVE Trainsim 5 Brings Back Meitetsu's Tanigumi Line
Meitetsu's Ibi and Tanigumi lines in Gifu Prefecture closed in two stages. Kurono to Tanigumi went on September 30, 2001, and Chusetsu to Kurono followed on March 31, 2005.
A builder who goes by Tarumoto recreated Kurono to Tanigumi for BVE5 as it looked just before closure, with the period timetable included.
The local NPO Niwatetsu planned and supervised the project, which debuted at an event at Tanigumi Station in October 2020, and it remains downloadable from the creator's site.
The work continues, too. Ishida Arata's BVE recreation of Hokkaido's Shibetsu Line, closed in 1989, arrived this March and grew to 46.9 kilometers over the summer.
Sim Routes Need Upkeep Like Any Heritage Line
Heritage railways last because people keep paying for coal and turning up on weekends. Sim routes need the same care at a smaller scale, since one unpaid hosting bill can erase a decade of somebody's work.
Buy the ones still on sale and keep backups of the ones you download. The Stony Creek Trestle will probably outlast most of this list anyway.
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