SimSig Rugby SCC

Introduction

This page serves as the introduction to a trio of simulations, Rugby SCC South, Rugby SCC Centre, and Rugby SCC North. Each simulation covers two workstations of the real life Rugby SCC spanning from Hemel Hempstead in the south to Lichfield Trent Valley in the north, a distance of nearly 100 miles via the main line plus an additional 27 miles via Northampton. Each of the three simulations chains to the adjacent simulation, as well as Rugby SCC South to Watford PSB (now part of Wembley SCC), Rugby SCC Centre to Coventry PSB, and Rugby SCC North to Coventry PSB.

In Real Life

Rugby SCC is located to the north-west of Rugby station in a modern two-storey building, on the Up side of the tracks. It houses the SSI and Smartlock interlockings on the lower floor and the operating room on the upper floor, as is typical with such buildings. Six MCS workstations extend across the width of the operating floor with supervisors and MCS overviews behind. The signallers face the railway but cannot actually see it due to the large video wall in between. Originally a number of rear-projection Barco displays were used to display a whole-line overview from London Euston to Colwich Junction but these had a high failure rate and were eventually replaced with regular wide-screen monitors placed on stands in front of the Barco displays. Rugby SCC is one of the very signalboxes fitted with such a wide-area overview, allowing signallers to get a much better picture of what's approaching.

GE's MCS workstations do not feature Automatic Route Setting as standard but Rugby SCC is being fitted with The Railway Engineering Company 's (now Hitachi) Signaller's Assistant which is a more advanced version of the traditional IECC ARS. The simulations include SimSig ARS by default but can be switched off on start-up. In real life each workstation can be operated by a single signaller fully manually.

Signal Identification

Much of the southern part of the West Coast Main Line has been signalled with prefix identification plates indicating the line of route segment. This helps narrow down the search for a signal. The prefixes are as follows, along with adjacent signal box codes:

Code	Box/Area
CH	Colwich (part of Stoke SCC)
CN	Coventry to Nuneaton
HN	Hanslope Junction to Northampton
KR	Milton Keynes to Rugby
LS	Lichfield to Stafford
MV	Marston Vale SCC
NL	Nuneaton to Lichfield
RC	Rugby to Coventry
RN	Rugby to Nuneaton
RY	former Rugby PSB signalling area (Northampton area)
TV	Lichfield TV Junction signalbox
WN	Wigston to Nuneaton

Individual Simulation Manuals

The manuals for the three simulations can be found below:

Credits & Acknowledgements

Thanks go to Darren Towler, Paul Biddle, Noel Young, and numerous others for their help in developing these simulations.

External Resources

The links provided here may be of interest but cannot be guaranteed as to their suitability or continued existence as they link to external sites.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CN8ntbsdNI	Class 350 cab ride Euston to Milton Keynes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kwO4URJWjE	Northampton to London cab ride
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fpISBsOBvE	Bletchley PSB (old signalbox that was closed at the time of this video)

Last edited by GeoffM on 29/10/2022 at 21:56