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Evening Star is Hewson's second steam train program, following in the tracks of the highly successful Southern Belle, released back in 1985.

Like the earlier program, it's a locomotive simulation with all the stops pulled out. It tells you all you might possibly want to know about steam trains, and quite a lot that you probably don't. Comprehensive just isn't the word.

This time you're in the cab of a class BR9F locomotive, the apparently legendary 92220 Evening Star which hauled the Pines Express along the old Somerset & Dorset line before it was closed in 1986. Its stations were demolished and its track beds turned over to supermarket car-parks. Nicknamed the Slow and Dirty, it carried holidaymakers from Bath to the dubious delights of Bournemouth, passing through the Mendip Hills and the North Somerset Coalfield often along single track railway.

The terrain, track and timetables are very different, then, from the London to Brighton run of Southern Belle, and that is probably sufficient reason for owners of that simulation to splash out on what is superficially, at least, a very similar program.

But Evening Star is different in other ways, too. Programmers Mike Male and Bob Hillyer have taken on board suggestions and criticisms and have improved the screen display as well as adding options which allow you to travel only part of the line, or to resume a run if you unfortunately commit some fatal error.

The main part of the screen is taken up with a view of the engine cab and its controls, and the track and scenery ahead. As the train gathers speed (with appropriate chuff-chuff noises) platforms, sidings, signal boxes and gasometers fly past, and once you're in open country, the landmarks include the various tunnels, bridges and viaducts. Like workings, which cary from run to run, are also shown. All this is picked out in moving line graphics against a white background - understandably limited but nevertheless effective, with each landmark authentic and recognisable.

Around this are set the various data displays, such as speed, coal and water reserves, time and distance, gradient, and the status of the next signal. Above apepar signs naming the next landmark or station, and below is a scrolling message window for crucial information along the lines of 'fusible plugs gone'.

As well as keeping an eye on all these, there are also the gauges in the cab to watch. It's here that your meddling with the keyboard controls will be registered - on the steam regulator, injector, blower, cut-off, firedoor and damper dials and levers. Even the smoke from the funnel can't be ignored, as its density depends on how much air you're supplying. And don't forget to toot that whistle!

Confused, already? If so, the accompanying program notes, which run to several pages, will be enough to kill those dreams of becoming a train driver for good.

But one of the immediate attractions of Evening Star is that it's possible to get thoroughly absorbed at even a beginner's level. The multitude of option menus allow you to cut your teeth gradually, starting with a training rub from Bath to nearby Evercreech Junction, and you can choose how many or how few of the controls you want to mess around with, letting the computer deal with the rest. From there, you can progress to coping with speed limits and signals, record-breaking, non-stp runs and even problem trips with late departures and ice on the line.

Your performance is rated according to safety, timekeeping, and economy of fuel and water, with detailed notes on where exactly you fouled up, such as making as rough stop at Templecombe or failing to sound the whistle at the Devonshire Tunnel.

It's worth pointing out that the journeys are played out in real time - that is, it will take you the same amount of time to complete a run to Bournemouth as it would do in real life (several hours). And though you can accelerate the time by four or five times, you're going to need all the time you've got if you're doing to control even half the gauges, valves and other knobbly bits.

There's much, much more to Evening Star than the sketchy outline suggests, and it's undoubtedly one of the most realistic simulations around. It's also something which is ideally suited to a computer. There's no other way that you could relive the Age of Steam so completely without actually riding on the footplate.

For railway buffs it has to be an essential buy, and for the rest of us, who don't know one end of a fusible plug from the other, it's still an absorbing and fatally addictive slice of nostalgia.