SIGNALLING & TELECOMS
location cases – it’s all in one re-locatable equipment building with enhancements like a reductions in power take, due to not having air conditioning. It has forced-air fan cooling.”
The power take comes in at 5w, instead of 24w, with 0.75mm tail cables, down from 2.5mm. These drive signals up to 3km from the REB.
Hinchliffe said: “That’s a vast improvement on today, where we generally just drive 200 yards from the trackside location cases.”
The modular approach also means specific workstations can be closed down at night with control transferred to other signallers, allowing manning levels to match traffic density on the route.
Hinchcliffe continued: “In project delivery terms, we hand over and walk away. In this case there’s a maintainer there that’s going to look after the system, so we take account of their needs in terms of accessibility, cost, power take, and those sorts of things.
“The other issue is making it future-ready. Modular signalling had to be future-ready for an ERTMS solution as and when it’s available to us.”
An integral part of the modular concept as developed by SSL is Smartlock 400T inter- locking, developed by Alstom, which runs
SSL with Balfour Beatty Rail Projects.
He said: “It’s a far more powerful system – we’re able to divide it up into virtual inter- lockings, up to 64, to allow us to control the trackside in discrete parts of its infrastruc- ture. FTN is the backbone for our system.
“Another new innovation is the full auto- matic barrier crossing, termed as NCBOD. They operate without signal worker inter- vention and auto-raise after the passage of the train.
“As part of the solution, and for quick engi- neering possessions, each island will have an up- and a down-road lock-out device system associated with it.
“There is quite a lot going on in each island. There is no distributed system, so we just take power from a local DNO, supplied 230v, and that comes into the REB.”
A key incentive for Network Rail is, unsur- prisingly, the potential for cost reduction.
Hinchliffe said: “How do we achieve this cost reduction? Through various means, such as minimising on-site time – keeping the man off the railway as much as we pos- sibly can.
“Importantly, as a self-contained system, it can be tested in a factory environment and sent to site as a fully-tested system.
“It is called ‘hangering’ – that’s a Network Rail term for testing equipment off-site, in what was initially thought of as a hanger, in which you can test an entire railway sys- tem. In the Ely-Norwich case, that will be 40 miles of railway within one hanger.
“Suppliers said it was slightly impractical to put all the equipment in one big hanger, so we compromised and did a part-hang- ering. We tested the key components, such as the control systems and the inter-lock- ing and REB with a selection of trackside objects. That allows us to have maximum testing away from trackside, and there are many efficiencies associated with that.
“It’s about minimising project duration. With modular, we’re trying to standardise the process – to remove conceptual de- sign. As part of this, the intention on Ely- Norwich is to create a standard ‘library’ set of designs that can be re-used on the next schemes. It all sounds very simple, but it’s something that as an industry we’ve not done in the past.
“It’s also about minimising commissioning periods. This basically is something the use
of axle-counting allows us to do. We can run a signalling system in shadow mode, allowing maximum testing to iron out any issues with the system.
“We’re also looking at non-intrusive ena- bling work, and minimising the amount of stage-work we need to do between commis- sioning periods.
“There’s always issues to overcome, howev- er. At the moment Integr8 has raised some challenges. We’re very heavily regulated in terms of the thousands of standards out there that we all have to comply with eve- ry day. There are a multitude of technical compliances and product approvals we had to go through. For the next project, what we’re looking to do, in conjunction with Network Rail, is to have a ‘Modular Signal- ling Handbook’ – our own set of technical standards that allow us to go out there and deliver a modular signalling scheme with- out having to go through the tortuous route of getting derogations and acceptances and all the rest.
“We’ve demonstrated the system at our Beeston depot in Nottingham, in front of 350-plus Network Rail people. We’ve proved the system – that was part of our GRIP 4 commitment.
“At the GRIP 5 stage, the detailed design elements, where we are with Ely-Norwich is the first step – as a company, we see that there are many more opportunities for fur- ther savings to be made. Again, with the lessons learned in delivering Ely-Norwich and from the demonstrations, I’m sure we’ll learn even more.
“The technology that’s coming along will help us – it won’t deliver the whole solu- tion, but it will help. There is an opportuni- ty with SMART I/O, for example, to deliver a fully integrated system.
“Once we’ve gone through the pain of creat- ing the designs, let’s re-use them and adapt them for the next scheme, and reduce the amount of design time and implementation time. The Modular Signalling Handbook will help us realise that solution.”
The project has also highlighted the useful- ness of the ‘hangering’ system when testing new products and systems, Hinchliffe con- cluded, saying: “It’s common sense to be able to test your system functionally away from the trackside. It also means you don’t have to pay for hotels, travelling time, and so on. It’s a big cost saving.”
FOR MORE INFORMATION Visit
www.signallingsolutions.com rail technology magazine Aug/Sep 11 | 81
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