In many ways this project is more difficult than building a professional train simulator (I've worked on one). 1. Professional customers are willing to pay for

In many ways this project is more difficult than building a professional train simulator (I've worked on one). 1. Professional customers are willing to pay for (and usually have an in) on getting genuine parts. You usually don't have to worry about scouring ebay for a authentic throttle control lever and hoping one turns up. There is some challenge in interfacing the controls to your system, but you probably don't have to start from scratch. Even if you do, you might be able to access drawings. You might get protocols documented and not have to reverse engineer anything. In our case, we didn't have to make those custom panels, we could just get real ones. Sometimes, you do get nothing though, so you have to have those skills. 2. You aren't building a sim necessarily for how accurate it is to the real vehicle, they are ordering it because they have operators they want to train. So if a LCD screen behind a bezel provides the same training value as interfacing a real gauge, you might well go for a screen. This one varies by customer, but generally they care more about having the correct buttons, switches, anything you touch more than something you look at.