The rules of membership, and what we do with your personal information.
Last updated 12 October 2026 (support tickets added).
Both are written to be read. Each opens with a short version; the detail follows if you want it.
These terms are an agreement between you and Virtual Rail. By registering an account you accept them.
The short version. Virtual Rail is free and always will be. Bring your own Train Sim World, and your own SimSig licence if you want to signal — we supply neither. Driving needs the Virtual Rail add-on for Train Sim World, which is unofficial and not supported by Dovetail; installing it is your choice and your risk, and without it you can signal but not drive (section 2a). Be 16 or over, use your real name, one account each. Treat people decently and work your train properly; we can ban those who don't. It is run by volunteers, so it will sometimes be down. Tell us if something goes wrong and we will look at it.
Virtual Rail is a free, volunteer-run, not-for-profit network for railway simulation. Members drive timetabled services in their own copy of Train Sim World, or signal them in their own copy of SimSig, and a central server keeps everyone on the same timetable and the same railway.
Virtual Rail is operated by Fraser Cooper and will transfer to KRO Digital Ltd (krodigital.com) on that company's incorporation. We will tell members when it does. "Virtual Rail"™ and the Virtual Rail logo are trade marks of its operator, and the site, the Mapper and the network's own data are its property. Virtual Rail stays free and not-for-profit whoever runs it.
Virtual Rail is an independent project, operated separately from the publishers of the software its members use, and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or supported by Dovetail Games or SimSig. Train Sim World is a trade mark of Dovetail Games; SimSig and its simulations are the property of SimSig. Please do not contact either of them about Virtual Rail.
Virtual Rail does not supply, resell or replace anybody else's software, and it does not let you use software you have not paid for. You are responsible for obtaining your own copies and for complying with their own licence terms:
Our software (the "Mapper") is a separate, independently written program that communicates with your copies of those products so they can work together. We provide it free of charge and we make no money from it.
Train Sim World. The Mapper uses Dovetail's official tools wherever they exist. Train Sim World's own External Interface API — Dovetail's way for other programs to work with the game — gives the Mapper your train's position, speed, length and next signal; the Mapper switches it on when it starts the game.
Some things the API does not offer yet: showing you a signaller's aspects, setting the points for their routes, running the timetabled trains around you and placing you at your platform. For those, driving on Virtual Rail needs the Virtual Rail add-on for Train Sim World — the community UE4SS mod loader and our own add-on — which changes how the game behaves while you use Virtual Rail. Signalling does not need it (signallers use SimSig, not Train Sim World).
The add-on is unofficial. It is not made, supported or approved by Dovetail Games, and Dovetail's licence terms for Train Sim World restrict changes to the game. Whether to install it is your choice — the Mapper always asks first — but without it you cannot drive on the network; you can still signal and use the website. If you install it, it is at your own risk: Dovetail could, for example, limit your access to Train Sim World, which would be a matter between you and them. We keep the add-on deliberately narrow: it works only in the single-player game, never touches Dovetail Live, achievements, the store or the game's copy protection, and adds no Dovetail content. You can remove it at any time from the Mapper's setup, or by deleting it from the game folder.
SimSig. The Mapper and our host work through SimSig's own features: its Interface Gateway, its multiplayer, and its Incident Control Panel (to show where drivers' trains are). The Mapper also keeps SimSig's clock in step with network time and reads information from the running simulation to share with drivers and the live map.
We aim to work alongside both publishers' products, not against them: if either asks us to change or stop something, we will.
You must be 16 or over to hold an account. You must give a real name and a working email address, keep your details up to date, keep your password to yourself, and hold only one account. Your account is personal — do not share it or let anyone else use it.
This is a shared railway, and the whole point is that other people are relying on you. So (the Code of Conduct sets this out in detail):
The Virtual Rail Discord server is part of Virtual Rail. These terms and the Code of Conduct apply there as everywhere else; Discord's own terms and privacy policy also apply to your use of Discord. Signaller mentoring is one-to-one, live, on our Discord server, and follows our Safeguarding policy: it takes place only in our channels, it is not recorded, you may be asked to share your SimSig window (never more than that), and you may end a session at any time.
If another member behaves badly towards you, or you see anything unlawful or harmful on Virtual Rail, email contact@virtualrail.net with what happened and their VRN if you know it. We aim to acknowledge within 3 days and act within 7, and we will tell you the outcome where we properly can.
On the network you can also use Request supervisor in the app, and on Discord you can tell any Administrator or Supervisor. A concern about someone's safety or wellbeing is handled under our Safeguarding policy.
If anyone is in immediate danger, or a child is at risk, contact the police first — then tell us. We will act at once and refer it on rather than handling it ourselves.
We may remove content, restrict access, suspend or permanently ban an account where we reasonably believe these terms have been broken, or where it is necessary to protect members or the service. We will normally tell you the reason. We keep an internal record of moderation decisions — see the Privacy Notice.
If you think a decision was wrong, contact us and we will look at it again.
Virtual Rail is run by volunteers on modest hardware, for free, in our spare time. It may be unavailable, interrupted or changed at any time, and sessions, timetables and data may be lost. There is no service level, no uptime promise, and no guarantee that any particular area is staffed at any particular time.
You keep ownership of anything you submit. By submitting it you give us permission to store, display and transmit it as part of running the service — for example showing your name and train on the live board to other members.
You can close your account at any time by asking us. We may close inactive or unverified accounts. On closure we delete or anonymise your personal data as described in the Privacy Notice.
Virtual Rail is provided "as is", without warranties of any kind, to the fullest extent the law allows. We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, lost data, or loss arising from your use of third-party software, including anything a software publisher does under its own licence (see section 2a). Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited. Nothing here affects your statutory rights as a consumer.
We may update these terms; if a change is significant we will tell members by email or on the site, and continuing to use Virtual Rail means you accept the new version. These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction, though if you live elsewhere in the UK you may bring proceedings in your own courts.
What personal data we hold, why we hold it, and your rights over it. This notice is given under the UK GDPR.
The short version. We hold the details you give us when you register, plus a record of your activity on the network and the IP addresses you connect from. We use it to run your account and keep the railway safe and fair. We do not sell it, we do not advertise, and we never see your SimSig or Steam passwords.
The data controller is Fraser Cooper, trading as Virtual Rail, contactable at contact@virtualrail.net. If you would like a postal address for a formal request, ask and we will give you one. When KRO Digital Ltd is incorporated it will become the data controller in his place, and we will tell members and update this notice then.
| Data | Why we hold it | Lawful basis |
|---|---|---|
| First and last name | To identify you to staff and to other members on the board and roster | Contract |
| Email address | To confirm your account, let you sign in and recover it, and send service messages | Contract |
| Password | To let you sign in securely. It is stored only as a salted scrypt hash — we cannot read it | Contract |
| Date of birth and country | To check you are 16 or over, to apply our safeguarding protections to members under 18, and to understand where members are. Your date of birth is never shown to other members | Legal obligation; legitimate interests |
| Your VRN, rating and rating history | To run membership, ratings and access to areas | Contract |
| Activity record — sessions, areas signalled, services driven, admin actions on your account | To run the network, resolve disputes and keep an audit trail | Contract; legitimate interests |
| IP addresses you connect from, with the dates seen | Security, preventing duplicate accounts and enforcing bans | Legitimate interests |
| Moderation records — bans, reasons and internal staff notes | To apply and review moderation decisions consistently | Legitimate interests |
| Signaller pathway — when you are available for mentoring, your mentoring sessions and the instructor's report | To arrange and record your mentoring and decide your rating | Contract; legitimate interests |
| Safeguarding records — a concern raised, by whom, and what we did | To protect members, especially those under 18, and to refer concerns to the authorities | Legitimate interests; vital interests; where it involves a child, the safeguarding of children and individuals at risk |
| Discord link — your Discord user ID and username, if you link them from My account | To give you your name, rating and roles on the Virtual Rail Discord server, so staff know who they are talking to | Consent (you choose to link; unlink any time) |
| Support tickets — what you write to us and any photos or screenshots you attach | To answer your request, fix problems and act on reports | Legitimate interests |
| Training records — the course pages you have read, your exam answers and results, and any change staff make to a result | To run courses and exams, show you your progress, and support ratings and training | Contract; legitimate interests |
| Help requests and your messages with supervisors | To help you while you are on the network, and to deal with problems and complaints | Legitimate interests |
| A session cookie | To keep you signed in. Strictly necessary — we set no advertising or analytics cookies | Contract |
Where we rely on legitimate interests, our interest is in running a safe, fair and functioning shared railway, and we consider this does not override your rights. You can object — see below.
We do not ask for special category data, we do not use your data for advertising, we do not sell or share it with anyone for their own marketing, and we do not make automated decisions that have a legal or similarly significant effect on you.
Only the suppliers that run the service for us, as our processors, under contract:
Discord. What you say and share on the Virtual Rail Discord server is processed by Discord under its own privacy policy, not ours. Our staff can see your Discord name and the messages in our server's channels; we do not receive your Discord account details otherwise.
Where a safeguarding concern suggests a crime or a risk to someone's safety, we share it with the police or the relevant authority.
Some of these may process data outside the UK. Where they do, the transfer is covered by the appropriate safeguards (such as the UK International Data Transfer Addendum or an adequacy decision). We may also disclose data where we are legally required to, or to protect members from harm.
Other members can see your name, VRN, rating and what you are operating while you are connected — that is the point of a shared network. Your email address, IP addresses and moderation notes are never shown to other members.
Passwords are salted and hashed with scrypt. Access to member data is limited to the volunteer staff who need it, the site is served over HTTPS, and admin actions on an account are logged.
You have the right to access a copy of your data, to have inaccurate data corrected, to ask for deletion, to ask us to restrict or to object to our processing, and to receive your data in a portable form. To exercise any of these, email contact@virtualrail.net. We will respond within one month.
Some data we must keep even if you ask us to delete it — in particular records attached to a ban, so that it can be enforced. We will tell you if that applies to you and why.
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, please tell us first so we can put it right. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk, helpline 0303 123 1113), which is the UK's data protection regulator.
Questions about these terms, your data, or a moderation decision.
Email contact@virtualrail.net and tell us your VRN if you have one.