Our Christmas release is now live – the highlight being a beta map of St Pancras to Bedford in preparation for the re-control of West Hampstead PSB’s area of control to new WestCAD workstations. The new map has signal aspects only at the moment – over the coming days, we’ll be adding route indications – but we need to validate the data we’re receiving first.

This re-control brings signal aspects and route indications for the entire area between St Pancras International and Kentish Town to north of Bedford. Previously, the train describer at West Hampstead was only able to output a handful of signal and route indications.

The immense number of changes in the map means that we need to go through a period of testing. Luckily, the new train describer is outputting similar berth-level data to the system that is replaces, and the existing two maps of the Thameslink North route will continue to work, with the exception of St Pancras International.

We’ve also made a number of other minor fixes, including:

• Further route indications south of Peterborough on the East Coast Main Line
• Removing ‘auto’ signal indications around York, which are no longer sent by the train describer and cause the signals to remain at danger on our site
• An update to Holbeck Sidings near Leeds to reflect work carried out there recently
• Tidying up berth alignments on the Coventry – Birmingham map
• A small fix to the chord at Doncaster toward Conisborough

After we’ve finalised the Thameslink North map, we’ll be moving our sights to Ashford International, where the map has been redrawn to correct a number of small errors, enabling us to put in route indications for the entire map, and cover the route through to Maidstone East.