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This is a steam train simulation, written with loving care to recreate the journey from Victoria to Brighton as made by the famous Southern Belle in the 1930s. You spend your time on the footplate of a King Arthur class 4-6-0 locomotive, fiddling with your regulator, blower, dampers, injectors and firehole doors, shoving on coal, topping up the boiler, and all the time keeping one eye on the line ahead and the other on the timetable.

Whenever you do the trip you're given a different random selection of stations to stop at. Then there are speed limits to observe here and there. Then you have to make the most economical use of your coal and water. Then you have to remember to sound your whistle and open your blower when you approach a tunnel... The chores are endless.

You can play at seven levels, from a straightforward training session to a problem run, where you'll have to contend with things like dodgy brakes and ice on the line as well as everything else. At each level, you can choose how much control you have over the engine, leaving the micro to look after some of the controls if you wish.

Every journey is strictly marked for safety, timekeeping and economy - and you don't get away with much. The full trip from Victoria to Brighton takes about an hour if you do it in real time (and stick to the timetable). You can speed it up at will, to rush you through the boring bits - but then everything happes so fast you'll never keep control of your locomotive. Me, I've never got any further than Gatwick (where I was flunked for rolling backwards in the station). But I'm going to try agan. It's a very compulsive program.

Sam Greenhill