January 2026
The Workbench
With Toby & Pablo putting their finishing touches to the Bedford - Corby route extension, January has been the month of the 'Meridian'. The staple traction for the Midland Mainline over the past 20 years, it made sense to give the Class 222 some much-needed love to complement our forthcoming route.
As always, much attention has been given to the audio, using a combination of recordings made at Central Rivers depot in 2016 from their counterpart 'Voyager' and a cab recording from St Pancras to Nottingham in 2023. Class 222s are interesting and fairly unique for a DMU in that they are propelled by electric motors rather than being directly driven by a diesel engine. This means the engine revs up in a different manner which required quite a bit of research and observation to simulate. To summarise, the diesel engine on a Class 222 simply acts as an electricity generator to power the traction motors and as a result, the engine revs up depending on the load being demanded by the motors. When departing from a standing start for example, even if you select full power, the engine at 0mph will not rev up as it is already revving high enough to provide the motors with enough power. This is why the engine revs up a little when the driver selects forward or reverse, to ensure it is ready to provide the necessary power. As speed increases, the engine then gradually revs up to match the load being demanded by the motors. At around 13mph, the engine will rev at its highest rpm, assuming full power is selected, with the turbocharger then spooling up as more load is placed on the engine until 20mph. At 20mph, peak load is reached and the turbocharger has reached its highest speed. In contrast, if running at 20mph or above, selecting full power from idle will have the engine rev up quickly in around 4 seconds. Other unique sounds are also represented such as the vibration you hear in both the cab and from outside when first pulling away, which varies in severity depending on much power you have applied.
In terms of features, most are what you will have come to expect in our enhancement packs. NRN & GSMR (auto-register only), dynamic exhaust, cold start & realistic acceleration/braking physics to name a few. One feature of particular interest however is the door control, which again, is quite unique to a 222. Upon stopping at a station, the Selective Door Operation (SDO) panel illuminates in the cab and you must select how many cars of your train you wish to open the doors on. Once you have done this, you may open the doors as normal but only the number of cars you have selected will open their doors. In reality, there is a little more complexity as you need to also choose which side to open the doors, but we are limited somewhat by the cab model provided in the original pack by Just Trains. This limitation also means that a keyboard command needs to be used to select the number of cars rather than being able to click a button.
Whilst the original pack from Just Trains comes with a fairly comprehensive selection of liveries, we have re-made them from scratch using higher resolution visuals as well as improved proportions/colours. A few missing nameplates/decals have also been added.
To save this newsletter becoming more like a manual, we shall leave it there! We look forward to hopefully getting this pack out soon. We look forward even more to giving it a proper run from St Pancras to Corby but that will need to wait for now.
