The next 30 kilometers were hauntingly beautiful. The sun began to rise over the Kisalföld plain. The static crops in the MSTS fields were perfect green squares. A digital gólya (stork) stood frozen above a fake farmhouse. The sound of the V43’s traction motors faded into a meditative hum.
The simulation loaded.
My cab flickered to life. The voltmeter needles twitched. The brake pipe pressure climbed to 5 bar. Outside, the yard was a ghost town of static switchstands and unlit semaphores. I released the independent brake, notched the throttle to 1 (the MSTS default “lowest crawl”), and eased out of the siding.
I saved the replay. Outside my window, the real world was just waking up. But in the silent, frozen world of MSTS Hungary, the V43 1133 sat in the siding, engine still humming its low-res hum, waiting for its next engineer. msts hungary
I opened the Activity Editor (Alt+Tab). The track monitor showed a "phantom consist"—a single MAV V43 cab car, ID 0000, stuck at the Bicske station stop marker. It had been there since the scenario loaded. No driver. No schedule. Just a memory leak in the simulation.
So I did what any desperate MSTS engineer would do:
There was no AI dispatcher. There was no "request permission" button. There was only me, the bauxite, and the cold, indifferent rails. The next 30 kilometers were hauntingly beautiful
I’d chosen a night freight: , from Székesfehérvár to Komárom. Locomotive: V43 1133, the Szögletes Kigyó ("Angular Snake"), in its faded blue-and-cream livery. Cargo: twenty-one hoppers of bauxite. A simple run. Sixty-seven kilometers. Two hours at most.
And somewhere near Bicske, the ghost train still waited, its cab empty, its signal eternally red.
I reversed 50 meters. The signal stayed red. I crept forward again. Red. This was the old MSTS bug: invisible train ahead . A ghost occupying the block section. A digital gólya (stork) stood frozen above a fake farmhouse
As I approached the first distant signal (a Hungarian Előjelző ), it showed green. Good. I passed it. Then, 300 meters later, the main signal— Főjelző —snapped to red.
Székesfehérvár yard, 3:47 AM. The MSTS world was quiet—too quiet. The skybox was a flat, pixelated purple, and the only sound was the low drone of a diesel shunter frozen mid-task on a siding. I’d downloaded the "Hungary Map Pack" three days ago. The readme promised "realistic MAV (Hungarian State Railways) operations, complex signaling, and authentic V43 locomotive physics."
Then, Komárom approach. Final signal: green.