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Tyneside IECC

Introduction

Situated on the south banks of the south bank of the River Tyne - and thus appropriately named! - this IECC came online in 1991 and as of 2016 is still in operation, with very few changes since its conception. Two sets of IECC equipment, each with two workstations, control the area from north of Northallerton (York IECC fringe) to south of Morpeth (Morpeth fringe), as well as down the Durham coast to Sunderland with its main line Metro running, similar to trams.

It is often said on SimSig that a simulation will keep you on your toes. Well, our testers have had plenty of time on this before release and the one common issue they kept coming up with was how tricky this simulation is. Often it looks like there is a lot of track but in reality there is actually a lot of single track between pairs of locations. Take the iconic model train set loop from Newcastle, across the High Level Bridge, past the IECC, over the King Edward Bridge, and back into Newcastle again. Virtually all of that is effectively single track because the parallel track goes elsewhere, or the platform you want to get to or from is only accessible from one or two lines over either bridge. You really have to think well in advance for this simulation, lest you end up with trains head-to-head with nowhere to go.

From Darlington to North Road and beyond, passenger trains only go a few miles further to Heighington, Shildon, and Bishop Auckland before returning. Therefore we've included simplified versions of those signal boxes to keep the trains in-sim throughout. Heighington and Shildon were both manual boxes during the bulk of Tyneside IECC's lifetime but both have changed in various ways since. We've established a point in time - well, actually a hybrid era - that allows some fun with the olden days while catering for the modern era. But don't worry: if you're not really interested, the 'boxes can be left to run mostly automatically. More details in the appropriate sections of this manual.

Very roughly, left to right on the screen is geographic south to north.

Geographical map

Tyneside Contents

Last edited by Steamer on 26/05/2019 at 15:55