Kenny Ericson at the Swedish Trainz Launch
Now, we all know that the Trainz Online Community is one of the friendliest and most supportive on the Internet and I can assure you that everybody here at Auran is very grateful. We never cease to be amazed at the support we have received for our product and our commitment to our customers.

Recently two of our Swedish forum friends got together with their local Trainz distributors and some mates to spread the word of Trainz to a brand new audience prior to the European release.

Everybody at Auran would like to say a special thanks to Kenny Ericson "X995", Fredrik Skog "Skogen" and all their friends (including Kenny's son Patrik) for their outstanding efforts.

Here's what Kenny had to say about this special event.

"As soon as Auran announced a European release fro Trainz, I contacted PANVision to see what we could do to be involved. I found Per Strömbäck from PANVision to be a really nice guy and he bought my ideas lock, stock and barrel. He even offered to help us. :)

My good friend Jan Wallin who owns MJ Hobbyexperten, one of the larger train only hobby shops in Europe, was also interested, so when Fredrik Skog agreed to make a 900 km roundtrip for the event and I persuaded my son to take part we really had the train rolling along.

Our plan was to launch Trainz on the Swedish market by spending one Saturday promoting the product in Jan's hobby shop with demonstrations and prizes.

We met on Friday afternoon at the PANVision office to install Trainz on four top-of-the-line PCs rented for the event. Three held the retail version and one had Trainz Paint Shed and the e-buzz Swedish add-ons as well. During Saturday the famous Rocket Cow also mysteriously appeared on most PCs.

The shop is nornally open 10:00 to 14:00 on Saturdays but this day it was open until 16:00. A full page ad in the Swedish Major railfan magasine TÅG came a week before the event. It was also mentioned on many of the swedish railfan and model railway forums.

PANVision had provided T-shirts with Trainz logo not only for themselves but also for all the shop staff and as gifts to the first customers. Fredrik and I wore our authentic Auran ones and the idea was that my son should have one too but unfortunately we could not get one small enough so he wore a specially created "pirate copy" for the event.

Auran had asked us to get the name and adress of the first customer, Daniel Odlander, from Sandviken (200km north of Stockholm... No I don't know if he made a 400km trip just to buy Trainz) and he had also his picture taken together with Per from PANVision and Anders from the hobbyshop. Perhaps he can expect a special surprise in the mail from Auran soon.

From left to right: Kristian Nilsen - PANVision, Kenny Ericson - "X995", Anders Mellerborg - MJ Hobby, Patrik Thomaeus - "X995", Lars Ekwall - MJ Hobby, Fredrik Skog - "Skogen", Wai Kei Fung - PANVision, Pontus Walter - PANVision, Per Strömbäck - PANVision (in front).
Photo: Jan Kärrbäck - "Janne"