Track & trackside
The 24/7 railway: creating capacity by minimising the impact of maintenance
Professor Jan-Peter Muller, Nicholas Bantin and Tom Jackson are seeking new ways of maximising capacity to improve the efficiency of possessions while improving worker safety and reducing delays due to engineering works
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t is believed that some £40 million per annum is wasted in over- runs on track possessions in both contractor costs and fines paid by Network Rail to the operators for
lost service. Given the limited capacity of the existing track infrastructure, we are seeking new ways of maximising capacity to try to improve the efficiency of possessions while improving railway worker safety and reducing delays due to engineering works. With funding from RRUKA, the
MEWOPS (maximising effective working-time on possessions) team led by Professor Muller of University College London’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory, performed a study. This included obtaining more detailed information by interviewing key personnel at Network Rail and its contractors; reviewing relevant technologies, looking at the best possible technologies and methods of data fusion and developing a roadmap for the future. Railway tracks will, by their very
nature, require long-term preventative maintenance and represent by their geography an open system which is near impossible to keep fenced off. Methods for track possession have changed very little since the early 1900’s and rely upon a complex network of procedures, protocols and equipment dating back to the 19th century to ensure safety and security of track workers before, during and after possessions. The key to the current system is the PICOP (person in charge of possessions) who must orchestrate the laying down of detonators (to warn of impending trains), manage the contractors performing the possession and ensure that workers are not placed in harm’s way when trains pass through the possession.
Military systems wed to 3D imaging The study found that the key to providing a more sustainable solution in the future is to exploit the advances
February 2014 Page 67
in communications technologies from military systems and wed these to persistent and omnipresent 3D imaging so both the train driver and the PICOP have the best possible information on who is where and what they are doing and what steps can be taken to maximise the safety of everyone involved in the possession. Communications imply use of either
technologies for local point-to-point robust video-rates or an all pervasive internet infrastructure to allow those with the need to know the best possible visual information on the current situation. Experience of members of the team with robotic space exploration, 3D imaging and control and communications technologies greatly assisted the study performance.
The first discovery made in the MEWOPS study is the lack of internet
connectivity across the whole track network, either for WiFi or 4G (needed for imaging) or even 3G GSM telecommunications. This poses significant challenges for communicating to the PICOP where potential threats exist (e.g. where are the trains) and how far are they from the possession as well as enabling easy communication on secure links between the PICOP, train driver and signalling and control personnel. This suggests that point-to-point communications will be required so that the train driver is able to communicate over short distances (a few Kms) to the PICOP and vice versa whilst the much slower development of an internet infrastructure happens for the track network.
Providing ‘virtual eyes’ to the driver
and PICOP are critical to enhance safety and security of any track possession.
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