After a huge amount of thinking, hinting and planning we're finally pulling the covers off of our great rolling stock project for Railworks.

The Newcastle to York route provided with Railworks is the perfect canvas to portray the railways of Britain in the Diesel and Electric era as they strived to change from the traditional methods of the days of steam into a modern (and profitable) enterprise. Our plan is quite simple, to provide as much of the rolling stock possible to bring to life this thriving corridor in a period loosely based from 1974 to the mid 1980s and the coming of the overhead wires.

By default the route already comes with the mighty Deltics and the InterCity 125s that were to sweep them away, along with classes 37 and 47 and a selection of rolling stock. In reality this is only the tip of the iceberg, it is the time when the railways were still home to fitted and unfitted goods trains, newspaper and parcels trains. The period saw the introduction of the Air Braked Network that would become Speedlink, along with the Railways Act of 1974 which introduced the Section 8 Grant to help fund rail freight facilities for industry which would spawn a large number of modern wagons and new traffic flows. Alongside this, most long distance passenger trains were still locomotive hauled, along with a number of local services supported by the ever present DMU. Don't forget that at this time passenger services on the ECML were a 24 hour service with Motorail and sleeper services running through the night too.

The exact list or order of what is being created and released is still under discussion and with so many items to create there will always have to be compromises. Check back soon for details of the first three rolling stock packs.

To give you a feel of what the era had to offer take a look at the new item we've posted in the Mess Room.