The Railway Network recently organised an evening seminar in Derby that covered railway signalling research from the 1970s through to present day.The audience heard from two speakers:
Roger Short covered the various research projects he had worked on when he was employed by the British Railways Board. Some of the projects mentioned were The Wiggly Wire, Advanced Passenger Train and its tilting system for high speed trains, TACT and BRATO Train Control Systems, through to the Radio Token Block and Train Detection.
Andy Heath from Transport for London covered 50 years of signalling and train control development on the London Underground system and some key points from his presentation were:
- The Victoria Line was the world’s first fully automatic passenger railway in the 1960s.
- In 1960 there were 1.8 m passenger journeys, these now often rise to 4.5m in the present day.
- Watford station on the Metropolitan line was the first to use computers to control the signalling.
- Jointless track circuits were first introduced on the Bakerloo line and are since used on 9 of the other lines.
- The Victoria line upgrade now operates the country’s most intensive train service (34 trains per hour each way).
The presentations were followed by an excellent panel debate session.
If you weren’t able to come along to Derby for the event you can catch up with the presentations on iet.tv see below.
Roger Short’s presentation
Andy Heath’s presentation
We also undertook a filmed interview session with the two speakers.
Interview with Roger Short
Interview with Andy Heath