Motive Power

Run British Railways through four decades of the diesel and electric age

It is 1955, and the Modernisation Plan has handed you the money to replace steam. You hold the Chief Executive's chair from 1955 to 1994: every locomotive class BR ordered — or cancelled — is yours to commission, allocate, overhaul, refurbish, convert, store and finally withdraw.

What you do each month

Build the fleet — follow the real order book class by class, or divert the money: back designs BR cancelled, order deeper batches of the ones that worked, and live with the consequences for the following decades.

Keep it running — all 51 classes are researched individually, and every locomotive is an individual machine with its own works history, overhaul clock, equipment and depot. Works capacity is shared and finite; a neglected fleet fails in traffic.

Spend two budgets — a capital pot for orders, refurbishments and conversions, and a maintenance allowance drained by the fleet's running costs. Spending capital well is what relieves the maintenance account.

Direct the programmes — electric train heating, dual brakes, refurbishment life-extensions, sub-class conversions and renumberings, on historical schedules or your own.

Manage the map — allocate classes across the real depot network as it opens, closes and specialises across the era.

Face the era — the Beeching reports, the 1968 Transport Act, oil shocks, strikes and sectorisation arrive on their real dates, with real mandates attached.

Answer for it every December

Each year closes with a graded report card marking your railway against the real one — budget, availability, fleet costs, objectives. At the end of 1994, four decades of your decisions stand against BR's actual record.

Two ways to play

Historical the calibrated museum: the fleet lives and dies as the record says it did, and your deviations are measured against it.

Living economy — demand drives the railway: surpluses go to store, deficits bite, the Treasury escalates, and your alternative history earns its own consequences. Never a game-over — the score simply records the wreckage.

Features

51 real locomotive classes, 1955–1994, researched from published records

Deterministic worlds — every game replays exactly from its seed

Era starts from 1955 to 1993, from the Pilot Scheme to the sector railway

An interface that lives in its era — BR green boardroom to sector-era skins

Period railway photography throughout

A full in-game player's guide covering every mechanic

Fleet strategy, not train driving — no timetables, no signalling, no micromanagement

Huge thanks to Platform 5 Publishing for their kind permission to use real data from their Motive Power Pocket Books and Combined Volumes