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Signalling power supplies into Victoria Station

Former Community Member
Former Community Member

I'm not entirely familiar with UK railway power supply engineering, but how is it possible to

a) entirely lose the power to more than one signalling "unit" (e.g. in the Streatham Common area) 

b) and then take a full 24 hours to fix it?

Does anyone know the relevant standards, or any details of the fault?

Ian

 
Parents
  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    Hi Andy,

    This statement released to the BBC gives sufficient detail, I think
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/06_07_18_victoria.pdf 

    It seems that the changeover panel, which selects one of various power supplies, itself became a single point of failure.

    The statement is referenced from this story:
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-44733968 


    There's no further detail, but at least we know that there was provision of redundancy in the power supply design.


    You make some interesting points about the difficulty of entering the railway market. I spent 6 years in the rail industry recently (not in signalling!). 

    My thoughts about the effect of this typically would be that the relative lack of competition, the small size of the market, and the cost of recertification would be disincentives to product development. However, having a single customer has its own issues, such as intermittent order flow, and the limited competition does provide some reassurance to vendors. 

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  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    Hi Andy,

    This statement released to the BBC gives sufficient detail, I think
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/06_07_18_victoria.pdf 

    It seems that the changeover panel, which selects one of various power supplies, itself became a single point of failure.

    The statement is referenced from this story:
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-44733968 


    There's no further detail, but at least we know that there was provision of redundancy in the power supply design.


    You make some interesting points about the difficulty of entering the railway market. I spent 6 years in the rail industry recently (not in signalling!). 

    My thoughts about the effect of this typically would be that the relative lack of competition, the small size of the market, and the cost of recertification would be disincentives to product development. However, having a single customer has its own issues, such as intermittent order flow, and the limited competition does provide some reassurance to vendors. 

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