Train Sim TV - Next North East England Stream

It's stream time again this Friday night (2nd August) on Train Sim TV at 1930BST. The stream will cover a scenario featuring the 'Cleveland Executive', a service that ran from Newcastle to London Kings Cross (and return) via Middlesbrough that ceased before privatisation.

The scenario itself will cover some old ground that has already been seen, but it will also feature the first run in and out of Middlesbrough. Hopefully you can join us there, it's always a good laugh having a chat and watching Tom frantically trying not to get his P45 from British Rail.

Things are just about ready to send over to Tom for him to take a look, just a couple of locomotives need swapping out for me beforehand. Click the Train Sim TV banner below to visit their Twitch streaming page, we look forward to seeing you there!

Station Insight - Teesside Airport

If you have ever travelled on the Tees Valley line either in real life or in Train Simulator, there is a fairly good chance you have never stopped at Teesside Airport. In fact, if you did get off there on a scheduled service, you would be in for a shock because the next train to stop there would be a week later in the same direction! Quite the reduction when you consider that the Summer 1986 timetable I have in front of me suggests the majority of all services on the line called there!

142016 slows for a station call at Teesside Airport in the days when there were several services scheduled to stop.

The station at Teesside Airport is a bit of a celebrity in the media, for such a small backwater it receives a great deal of coverage. One reason for this is the lack of services to call there, it recently went from one service in either direction per week to one solitary service on a Sunday. Another reason is the lack of patronage, the station has consistently featured in the bottom 5 stations for usage in the whole country. The location is often also spoken about, the station is located a kilometre from the airport terminal it was designed to serve so anyone alighting there with luggage to catch a flight would find themselves in for quite the shock!

The Tees Valley line was historically well used for diversions, here a Cross Country service passes.

It's another quirk that the airport itself was renamed to Durham Tees Valley Airport in 2004 but the station retained it's old name. At this time the airport was experiencing an upsurge in passenger usage - nearly 1 million passengers in 2006 - but the station didn't receive any service increase to reflect this, it was actually deemed more suitable to run a shuttle bus from Darlington station. Incidentally, the airport itself has recently reverted to it's original name so once again the airport and station identify with each other.

After carrying Prince Charles to a series of engagements around Teesside, 67006 leads the Royal Train.

The future of the station has always been a point of debate but the small token service has remained due to the lengthy and costly process required to formally close the station. The writing seems to now be on the wall with the reduction in service to one train per week and the announcement that both the footbridge and platform 2 are to be removed due to them being deemed unsafe. 

156448 races through the station. Note the scaffolding now in place to help support the decaying footbridge.

 

The beauty of Train Simulator is that we can still drive the line in a range of time periods, whether that is through the late 1980's when the station had a frequent service or in the present day when you are unlikely to drive a service that calls there. If the station does vanish completely, we can then also drive past what would be a piece of history.

To represent different time periods at Teesside Airport, era-specific signage is distributed with the North East England route and is available for you to use and distribute in your own scenarios, full instructions are provided as part of the current version of the route which can be downloaded by clicking here. Further revisions and expansions of this system will also be introduced in the next version of the route to make stations look even more different, as an example Teesside Airport will feature scaffolding on the bridge but only in more recent times.

Green Man Gaming Sale

Still looking to pick up the requirements for North East England? GreenManGaming currently have a sale going on for Train Simulator DLC including Liverpool to Manchester with 50% off. You can also use the code WKND10 for a further 10% off!

To visit Green Man Gaming, click here.

North East England - More Middlesbrough

Had a couple of people contact me in the past week asking to see more of Middlesbrough on the North East England route, so here are a few shots of the area.

Next stop is Nunthorpe, another logical start/end point for scenarios.

 

DPSimulation Twitter

It's been a while since we used any form of social media but we've decided to re-enter the world of Twitter where we wil post information and screenshots about future releases.

If you use Twitter then give us a follow, you can find our page by clicking here.

 

Train Sim TV - North East England V2 Preview

Following on from the stream last night, Train Sim TV have also uploaded a video to Youtube showing one of the scenarios featured. Ideal if you missed out.

North East England - Middlesbrough

Firstly can I just thank all those who visited the stream at Train Sim TV last night, two scenarios were shown to provide a look at some of the new areas that are part of the next version of the route. Thanks to Tom for hosting the stream and providing detailed analysis of the locations.

Multiple scenario opportunities on the North East England route are a big part of it's appeal, with so many different areas now being added the opportunities are really extensive. The addition of Middlesbrough now takes this even further and with the era-specific sign kit also featuring, scenarios from different eras can also be created and feel a bit more believable.

 

Train Sim TV - North East England Stream

Train Sim TV will be hosting a stream tomorrow night (19th July) to show some new areas of the North East England route. Two simple short scenarios will be shown, one using a Class 37 on a Skinningrove (starting at Newport East Jcn) empty steel working to Hartlepool BSC Pipe Mill and a Class 67 on a light engine movement from Tees Yard to Merchant Park sidings near Newton Aycliffe. Both scenarios will represent completely different eras and make use of our era-specific sign system.

It must be clarified that this isn't a stream related to an imminent release of the next version of the route, it's more an interim stream just to show an update of progress.

I'll now get a couple of things tidied up in anticipation of the stream and get the player locomotives swapped out because I own neither of the enhancement packs that will feature. I'll then get the files over to Tom so he can have a couple of practice runs, he's prone to the odd SPAD otherwise! I hope to see some of you tomorrow night on the stream.

 

North East England - Location Location Location

Following on from the last 'Guess the Location' blog post, here is another. Both screenshots feature landmarks seen in the next update to the North East England route, but where are they?