So, today is my wedding day. At least, it's supposed to have been. The reasons are obvious - due to the COVID-19 outbreak, there are restrictions on large gatherings around the country (and even the world). While some restrictions were lifted, the hard lockdown, which only lifted a few weeks ago, meant that no planning could be done prior. Thankfully, the venue were really awesome in allowing to reschedule to a future date of our choosing, which will most likely take place in early 2021.

This may turn into a fairly long catch-up, so if you're not interested, you're welcome to skip to the end where the train is departing from.

There has, however, been some positives during this time. Both myself and fiancé were able to work from home during the lockdown, while also still receiving our full pay. She's gone back to work as of last month, while I'm most likely to continue working from home for the remainder of the year because of underlying conditions from my youth that may put me at higher risk. Prior to the lockdown we were saving for multiple projects, including the wedding and buying a house, which is also not likely to happen until later in the year.

The biggest upside for us is that we've been able to save over and above our normal amount each month, so we've been trying to do our best to help the community. In the first week of the hard lockdown, my work laptop crashed. Thankfully, I had the Acer Predator Triton 900 with me for review, which I could work from. However, the PR collected the unit in May, so I ended up having to use my PC, which is connected to our living room TV for work - after a few days of this my fiancé got annoyed and so we decided to buy a laptop. Long story short, we ended up buying a decent ASUS G15 Strix gaming laptop - mostly thanks to the extra money saved working from home. What's interesting about this is that I bought a gaming PC in November last year. Before that, I didn't upgrade my previous CPU and GPU for over 9 years.

Initially, I wasn't planning on doing much today, as we were supposed to have our own mini-celebration for the day, but, as it turns out, my fiancé got very sick and has been unable to do much for the past day and remains in bed. This actually gave me a bit of time to myself, so I decided to create a train. I really wanted to create something epic, but I didn't realise the effort it would take to do so. Having spent 3 hours gathering all the games and links, trying to make sure they're all in working condition, it took me another hour to create the train, which is only a quarter of the collection. So, we now have 5 separate trains, but they'll be departing at different schedules. I hope you guys do enjoy it.

I know it's been a difficult time for many, and don't write the above to show-boat. I just wanted to share my change of fortune over a few years ago when I wrote on here, heavy in debt and having to cut quite a bit of activity - also why I wasn't able to upgrade any of my tech for years. We'll continue to give back to the organisations in our local area to assist while we're all still dealing with aspects of the COVID-19 effects.

TL;DR - Today was supposed to be my wedding day, but due to COVID-19 restrictions, it's to be moved to 2021.

Arrival Time - 9pm SAST, 20 June 2020

As always, a few disclaimers:

  1. As stated previously, there will be multiple trains, so keep an eye out for those.
  2. If there are any used keys, keys no longer valid, etc. they, unfortunately, won't be replaced. My apologies for that.
  3. If there are any issues within the train (broken tracks, etc.), please just drop a message in the comments.

I didn't really wanna add this, but ... since the last time I did a train, I was banned for 3 days for "begging" on SG. Honestly, I wasn't really. But, there no indication to the moderators that it was a joke, and rules are rules. Fair enough. It's worth noting, for perspective, that I'm moving towards 2,000 games in my Steam library, so I don't really need to be begging for games. But, like I said rules are rules. What I didn't appreciate, however, was some SG users taking the opportunity to go to my Steam page and leave some obscenities because of it. I was considering just closing my account, not wanting have to deal with any of it again. At the same time, I've been part of this community for 7 years now, I've interacted with various people and continue to do so and don't think their stupidity should impact that.

4 years ago*

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Thank you for the trains and goodluck. I've had my 5th anniversary recently. It's an awesome journey :-)

4 years ago
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Congrats to you then! :)

4 years ago
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Best of luck with your wedding and house hunting, and thanks for the generosity :)

4 years ago
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Appreciated. :)

4 years ago
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Just looked through trains 3-4. Once again amazing quality! Here's another bump.

4 years ago
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Thanks. :)

4 years ago
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Sounds like a super cool outcome concerning the lockdown issues. Good luck with the wedding and search for a house! :)

4 years ago
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Cool. Thanks. :)

4 years ago
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best wishes!
/bump

4 years ago
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Thanks. :)

4 years ago
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Thanks for the railway interchange station! XD There have been some great games in there. I hope your fiance's health has improved. I'm glad you've had the opportunity to upgrade your PC hardware and to spend some time together while you were both working from home. I've heard that SA has had some very tough restrictions to cope with the coronavirus, including alcohol and tobacco restrictions on top of the power and water rationing that were already in place in some areas. Stay away from the homebrew, or at least make sure it is only brewed and not topped up with dubious alcohol into a dangerous cocktail - I read about a couple of devastating cases of accidental poisoning.

4 years ago
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Thanks. Glad you enjoyed the train. Things got a little complicated, so wasn't able to complete the final train.
The laws were strict here for the first two months, yes. And I agree with most of it.
Alcohol went on sale again 1 June, and already there are more people in the hospitals due to injury, accidents, fighting, etc.
I believe they should not have lifted this ban on alcohol, and instead lifted the ban on cigarette sales.
I don't ever drink any homebrews, not even beer. I mostly drink spirits and my fiance drinks wine. So we had enough supply for those months. That said, I haven't had a drink in 3-4 weeks, so it doesn't really phase me.

4 years ago
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Yes, alcohol certainly causes a lot of problems, although I do enjoy it. I don't like being around cigarettes, though. They banned them for indoor entertainment venues like pubs and nightclubs here years ago when I still regularly going out, and I was amazed at the difference it made. I realised that the dreadful feeling that I regularly woke up with the next day and had thought was a hangover was actually just a reaction to the smoke. Far less people smoke here now - they simply can't afford to. The government has taxed them to the point that a 20 packet of cigarettes now costs $31. It's a pretty expensive habit at $1.50 a pop.

4 years ago
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Holy damn. That's one way to get people to quit smoking. That's more than a day's pay for some people here.

4 years ago
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Yeah, my stubborn old Italian great uncle, who had ignored years of pleas from his wife and doctor to stop smoking for health reasons "spat the dummy" and never smoked again when the cost of a single packet went over $10. Current pricing is certainly a deterrent to taking it up but there are still quite a few people that haven't given the habit up.

4 years ago
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Yeah, it's a difficult one. People smoke for different reasons, not just being addicted to it (although that's the most common).
But yeah, I'm sure a lot of people will stop if it was a simple choice of just stopping or finding a replacement.

4 years ago
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Best of luck with the wedding, and thanks for all the trains

4 years ago
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Thanks. :)

4 years ago
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I wish you all the best for your (future) wedding !

4 years ago
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Appreciated. :)

4 years ago
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Best wishes for your future! I hope to congratulate next year for the wedding too
Have a great and bright future :-D
Oh, and obviously thank you for the trains!

4 years ago
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Haha. Thanks. :)

4 years ago
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Bump for 4th train

4 years ago
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Hehe. Thanks.

4 years ago
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Never appologize for being late in your own thread. Be a real train; they're driving as intended. Delays are there to be ignored ;)

4 years ago
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Hehe. My bad. I'll let you be the conductor then. :)

4 years ago
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Aww I'm sure you'll enjoy your wedding even more having waited for it so long! Best wishes and thank you for the trains :)

4 years ago
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Thanks. Appreciated.

4 years ago
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Another bump for four really killer trains!

Congrats again!

4 years ago
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Thanks. :)

4 years ago
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Cheers for the trains! Seriously so many giveaways, incredibly generous.

Congratulations, hope you'll have a wonderful wedding when the time comes! Wishing you both a happy life together. :) And hope your fiancé has a speedy recovery.

4 years ago
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Thanks so much. Appreciated.

4 years ago
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Best of wishes for your wedding! And thanks for the amazing trains :D

4 years ago
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Much appreciated. :)

4 years ago
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stay safe and have an awesome wedding when it's due! also thx for the games

4 years ago
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Thanks. :)

4 years ago
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Good luck with the wedding and thank you for the amazing trains :D.

4 years ago
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Thanks. :)

4 years ago
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Thanks 'n' BUMP!

4 years ago
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:)

4 years ago
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4 years ago
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Cool. :)

4 years ago
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Amazing trains! Thanks!
Bump!

4 years ago
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Cool. :)

4 years ago
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bumpo!

4 years ago
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:)

4 years ago
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Best wishes and thank you for trains :D

4 years ago
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Thanks. :)

4 years ago
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That moment when you think about including a person on the white list and you know that they will never participate because they already gave away half a steam store...

4 years ago
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Haha. I'm always down to enter. I'm close on 2,000 Steam games, so still collecting. :)

4 years ago
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Epic, thanks

PS. Congratulations!

4 years ago
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Thanks. :)

4 years ago
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4 years ago
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Coolio. :)

4 years ago
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Closed 4 years ago by Ph03n1xSA.