Network Rail Usage of SimSig

A few years ago, an enhanced version of Swindon B (a.k.a. Didcot) was trialled by Railtrack Great Western Zone for signaller training and assessing. This is the only “home grown” simulation ever approved for Railtrack.

The enhanced version contains things like detail views (showing all the signal, track, and point identities), an assessor screen to control failures, and reporting facilities.

As part of the agreement between SimSig and Railtrack, we were allowed to produce a public version of the software, minus the additional features mentioned above, which is already available from this site. As a result, the simulation is very realistic, for which my thanks must go to Railtrack for permission to release the public version.

Further simulations were provided to Railtrack (now Network Rail), under the new name for the enhanced version, TRESIM. This enhanced version now belongs to the Railway Engineering Company Ltd located in Westbury, Wiltshire. TRE currently have an order to roll out TRESIMs for every workstation in every IECC in Britain! TRE also produce panel simulations and have them in locations such as Wimbledon, Motherwell, and London Bridge signal boxes. All of the GE Transporation Rail MCSs on the West Coast Main Line from north of Watford to south of Crewe, and those of the South West Scotland Signalling Scheme are, or will be, simulated as well.

The public version of SimSig is unaffected by this change - except that the simulations can only get better and more realistic! However, due to conflicts of interest, there will be no more IECC SimSigs and certain panel boxes cannot be simulated either, nor MCSs. There are plenty of great locations left though.