As we’ve already discussed, I regard the personal automobile as a vector of poisonous ideology. Its beneficent alternative? The train: socialised, communal, predictable, subject to the gentle yet firm hand of rational state planning. If the world had more trains in it, we wouldn’t be where we are now. We’d be somewhere else. On account of catching the train.

I have converted Grand Theft Auto 5’s Franklin Clinton into one of the hero-drivers of these great iron beasts. I have installed Los Santos Metro Driver, which transforms Rockstar’s opus from crime sim to train sim. Or tram sim, I guess. Same thing. The city’s denizens need to move between airport terminals and only man can help them do it (you are that man).

Did you know driving trains, like, sucks? It’s hard. You’d think it’d be easy, what with being essentially glued to your surface of operation, but I have spent most of my career as a trainee train-er overshooting platforms, accidentally applying the emergency brake, and sometimes running over passengers. Which, whatever.

It is an almost alarmingly detailed simulation. You gather driver XP with which you ascend to new heights of train mastery. You are paid a wage. Your pay is docked if you overshoot stations. Crushing customers to paste doesn’t seem to affect much.

Also, did you know train magic disrupts teleportation magic? My teleport-every-50-seconds mod remains in effect, the countdown timer glowing ominously on my screen in the midst of everything I do. And yet, somehow, while driving a train it is thwarted. It is a pleasant and newfound freedom, just one of the many positives of the train life.