Having recently visited Signalling Solutions at Beeston, Roger Ford said, “Completing the system is DeltaRail’s Scalable IECC®. DeltaRail is, of course, the descendant of British Rail research at Derby which, having created the world beating SSI, paired it with the Integrated Electronic Control Centre ­ the pioneering glass signalbox.

In this context Scalable means that the IECC will deliver the full IECC functionality but is capable of operating down to a single workstation. SSL instances the ability to run two or three workstations during the day and scale down to a single workstation at night.

To minimise cost, Scalable IECC uses commercial-off-the- shelf PC hardware with a duplicated configuration for reliability. The standard IECC workstation is used with twin displays and a tracker ball for route setting and other on-screen functions.

Data preparation and testing processes have been optimised to exploit the standard signalling modules. But there is also scope for enhancement. For example BR Research also pioneered automatic route Setting (ARS), and this is an option for busier layouts.

Migration is an in-word in signalling today (over-lay is another). Scalable IECC has a migration path for integration into larger control centres. These are emerging again in Network Rail’s signalling policy. And naturally the system is compatible with the European standard systems, ERTMS/ETCS.”