TRACK TECHNOLOGY & RAIL LIVE
changes to Network Rail’s product approvals system as outlined by Simon Scott, and had deep concerns about the practical impact of the changes and what will happen in the current fuzzily-defined transition period from the current system to the new one.
Lorraine Beattie of Metabo, a power tools company, said it was her first time at a Network Rail plant show, but said it was set up for visitors really well, and added: “It’s very apparent that health and safety is at the forefront of everything going on here. It’s really varied, and not restricted in terms of what’s on show.”
pleased overall, but felt there should have been clearer routes through and around the site. “But it’s great to get our name in front of so many people,” they said.
‘We were amazed how large it was’
A representative from Catsurveys wrote on the RTM website: “This event was amazing, we were amazed how large it was. It was great to meet with new people in the industry, along with catching up with our regulars. The Rail Live show proved to be very useful for us and I believe for many others too.”
Alan Wightman, product development
technologist at Don and Low Ltd, said he had been impressed with the diversity of products and people on the site, and added: “There’s clearly an appetite for companies to serve the industry in innovative ways – but they shouldn’t put up barriers to that.” He was referring to the
Mark Shaw, director of VTOL Technologies, was in the FutureRailway tent showing off the precision flight capabilities and railway applications of unmanned aerial vehicles, with the model on show featuring a 360-degree view and numerous advantages over quadcopters, he said. The company got a big boost when Patrick McLoughlin announced at Rail Live that it was one of two winners of the Space for Rail competition, launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Enabling Innovation Team (now FutureRailway), with support from the Satellite Applications Catapult and the UK Technology Strategy Board. The ‘Railway Inspection Supported by Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS)’ project will now get €50,000 to explore the technical feasibility and potential benefits of RPAS for the rail industry. The other winner was the University of Birmingham with Avanti Communications Ltd for ‘Identification of Physical Railway
Line Blockages in Support of Inspection and Recovery Operations’.
Solutions to problems
RTM was an exhibitor at Rail Live 2014, interacting with countless readers, advertisers and friends of the magazine, and letting people know more about the upcoming High Speed 2 The Northern Hub Dinner, the UK Rail Industry Awards 2015, and the UK Rail Industry Training Trust.
Steve Featherstone probably summed the event up best: “It’s huge. Today’s
about
bringing the people with solutions together with the people who have problems – often, in the railway business, you’ve got some great innovative companies coming up with new products, developing solutions, and the guys with problems, unless they read about them in magazines like yours, they don’t see the answer that’s out there. They struggle on with the old way of doing things. But this is a great way of getting everybody together – particularly because it’s live, and engineers like to see things working, and they think – ‘I’ve got a problem, which that will fix.’
“Some will be taking two or three ideas from this event, and knitting them together into a solution. It’s a fantastic event.”
opinion@railtechnologymagazine.com TELL US WHAT YOU THINK
Remote analysis of rail temperature
Rory O’Rourke, chief executive of DATUM, discusses its RailtempMATE product.
R
ailtempMATE, conceived by DATUM Monitoring in the UK, is a state-of-the-art, remote controlled Critical Rail Temperature (CRT) monitoring system. Under the guidance and review of Network Rail, it was granted full approval following extensive field trials and evaluation.
The design of the system is such that it can be deployed rapidly for immediate measurement. It incorporates a composite stainless steel and polyurethane design, and its application is suited to the most aggressive railway environment.
Following installation it provides continuous rail temperature data, without the need to travel to site or access the track.
DATUM’s Control Centre (which monitors many hundreds of critical assets throughout the UK and Europe) receives, validates, presents and alarms on data streamed from remote sites, enabling analysis from within its in-house web portal ‘Platform Interactive’.
The texted, emailed, on line and telephoned alarms provide for full con- trol of CRT, leading to optimisation of re- sources and minimisa- tion of train delays.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
T: +44 (0)161 797 5511 E:
info@railtempmate.com W:
www.railtempmate.com
114 | rail technology magazine Jun/Jul 14
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