North East England - V2 Overview

With V2 of the North East England route nearing release, I thought it would be good to explain what exactly is in this new version.

First up is a small part of the Esk Valley Line  comprising of the section between Middlesbrough and Nunthorpe, although it's debatable that this section is actually part of the Esk Valley, it depends who you ask.

I chose to add this section simply because it's a natural end point for services originating in the Hartlepool direction, a typical weekday now sees around 17 services either starting or terminating at the station. 

Nunthorpe

James Cook

Heading from Nunthorpe towards Middlesbrough, you will see stations at Gypsy Lane, Marton and James Cook. In the case of the latter, if you are driving any scenario set before 2014 then you will have to shut your eyes when passing, it didn't exist!

We then also have the Tees Valley Line between Middlesbrough and Bishop Auckland, the centre part of this section was already included in the first release of the route. Naming conventions cause disagreement again here, some people don't regard all of it as the Tees Valley Line and prefer to split it into two different sections. The Bishop Line from Darlington to Bishop Auckland and the Saltburn Line between Darlington and Saltburn.

Middlesbrough

Heading from Middlesbrough to Darlington  you will pass Tees Yard and Thornaby station before joining the section of the route already built. After Darlington you will pass North Road (home to the Head of Steam museum) before climbing up towards the new Hitachi plant at Newton Ayclifffe.

North Road

 

Hitachi, Newton Aycliffe

Before Shildon you will pass the newer 'Locomotion' museum before passing Shildon station itself and entering Shildon tunnel, a 1220yd structure opened in 1842. It's then a steady drop down to Bishop Auckland where passenger services on the line terminate.

Bishop Auckland

Along with these new areas, several improvements and fixes have been made following community feedback. This includes scenery added to the avoiding lines at York and scenery added around Holgate Yard to allow freight services to start from there. York Yard itself hasn't had all track added as yet for reasons previously explained, Tees Yard is the same. Some scenery has been added along with markers at appropriate locations for users to start/end their own scenarios, areas without track have been strategically hidden by temporary static wagons. Although not perfect, there is a perfectly acceptable amount of scenery for you to create scenarios and not see huge bear swathes of land.

Holgate Jcn

 

Holgate Yard

Like the previous version, basic Quick Drive is included for the new locations added to the route and two further scenarios have been added alongside the ones included with V1. Further scenarios will be added to the ECML Collection on the DPSimulation website in due course, I also imagine that other third party creators will start creating and publishing their content soon enough.