News in brief...
working in engineering, planning, project management and operational roles, on high- profile projects including the Bond Street station upgrade. The move builds on TfL’s long- standing relationship with the Forces dating back to the First World War.
HS2 at UK’s largest skills exhibition For the first time, HS2 Ltd will be attending The Skills Show in Birmingham held on 14-16 November, to show youngsters about the wide variety of jobs that HS2 will generate and the different career paths available to them, including apprenticeships and graduate training schemes. Engineering, environmental science,
archaeology, land and property management, stakeholder engagement and finance might not be the first career choice for many of today’s young people says HS2, but graduates, school leavers and schoolchildren throughout Britain should prepare to have their minds changed at the show, which is free to attend.
Chinese take away lessons from London Midland A 25-strong delegation from the Chinese Academy of Rail Sciences in Beijing visited London Midland’s Birmingham New Street offices to learn about the company’s approach to health and safety. China is in the middle of a massive expansion of the national railway with plans to spend more than £80 billion in the next three years. New long-distance high speed lines are being set up including a 2,230 km line from Beijing to Hong Kong. The delegation looked specifically at the development of safety and quality standards in rail operation to ensure standards keep pace with the huge infrastructure growth.
A Chile time for germs Antimicrobial copper surfaces are increasingly common in hospitals, but a train on the Valparaiso Metro in Chile is the first of its kind to be equipped with AC hand rails and poles. The move is intended to reduce the risk of infections spreading between the Metro’s 18 million annual users and improve the public transport experience. The new, two-car train is the result of a partnership between Chilean state-owned company Codelco and Alstom, and follows the outfitting of stations on the Santiago Metro with AC hand rails. ‘We’re taking the first step, presenting the world’s first copper train, and hope that other networks will be interested in the health benefits it can offer,’ said July Friedmann, vice president of Alstom South Cone.
condition of the rail infrastructure? Innovators and developers in sectors as diverse as military and security technology, satellite communication and materials science as well as the railway are being invited to address this question. The 30-year vision for the GB railway,
H
as set out in the Rail Technical Strategy, envisages intelligent ‘self-monitoring’ systems, which will enable targeted, risk- based, maintenance and repair of rail infrastructure assets delivering improved reliability, fewer delays, increased capacity, resilience, safety and all-round improvements in the performance of the rail business. (See Rail Professional interview page 40) Remote condition monitoring (RCM) is already widely used on both trains and rail infrastructure, for example through Network Rail’s Intelligent Infrastructure Programme. The future railway will be under more pressure to carry more passengers and freight, making RCM a necessity. However there are still significant railway performance challenges which do not yet have RCM solutions. The £3 million Future Railway
competition is targeted at 10 of these unsolved challenges and aims to offer innovators the opportunity to prove their solutions on the operational railway.
1) how to further reduce operational incidents by (near real time) analysis of existing data sets leading to predictive trend analysis
2) how to yield RCM alerts and alarms which are relevant, and help ensure the right operational response happens in real time, and to use the data for predictive purposes to optimise safety and performance
ow can the rail industry exploit technology to remotely monitor the
3) how to detect and prevent potential safety risks using 24/7 high definition visibility of the network
4) how to detect early the likelihood of flooding in risk areas with information provided in a timely fashion
5) how to secure the railway boundaries and monitor access gates
6) how to detect voids in the track at an early stage to prevent asset failures and to be able to identify the speed at which the asset is deteriorating from the impact loading of trains, particularly at critical, high risk junctions
7) how to achieve a validated system that monitors crack propagation in rail crossings
8) how to prevent trains running across track which is rendered unusable by movement of earthworks such as cuttings and embankments
9) how to achieve improvements in track circuit reliability
10) how to achieve improvements in signalling power supply reliability.
Working with the Network Rail and
South West Trains Wessex Alliance, the competition forms part of the Future Railway portfolio of activities to accelerate innovation led by the Enabling Innovation Team (EIT) on behalf of the Technical Strategy Leadership Group. David Clarke, EIT director, said: ‘This
competition has the opportunity to create a win-win-win situation for the rail industry, for innovative suppliers and for passengers while moving us towards the industry vision of a self-monitoring predictive maintenance railway.’ Visit
www.futurerailway.org or contact EIT at
RCM@futurerailway.org
Brown said: ‘We have put an end to inflation-busting fares rises for ScotRail and Caledonian sleeper services. From 2014, all fares will be capped at 3.1 per cent and off- peak fares will be frozen, compared to the maximum cap of 6.1 per cent in England. We’ve ensured that when the ScotRail franchise is renewed in 2015 peak fares will not rise above inflation and off peak tickets will be capped to even less. ‘We want to enable passengers to find the cheapest fares possible and we have worked closely with ScotRail to address fare anomalies and provide more affordable fares within the current fares structure.’ So far this year, ScotRail has identified and removed 1,500 fares inconsistencies.
T November 2013 Page 9
ransport minister Keith Brown has reassured passengers following the DfT’s announcement on changes to rail fares and tickets saying that the Scottish government is committed to making rail fares affordable for all.
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