Tim Gray of Hitachi Control Systems began by giving a brief overview of the formation of the UK division of the company and the long-standing involvement in traffic management systems by the parent company for the Japanese railways, experience that could make a major contribution to achieving a 'digital railway' in the UK.
He explained that in the UK there was a pressing need to increase capacity, passenger traffic having doubled in the last twenty years. However in such a densely populated country, with a railway network dating back nearly two centuries, there is limited scope to add to the network or extend the length of trains so other techniques must be tried. These include new signalling methods, layout changes and better control of train movements following any service disruption.
There were many factors that made it hard to make changes, the railways being slow to adapt as a result of them being risk adverse, having an infrastructure possessing great longevity and the substantial capital costs involved with any change. It did not help that several earlier modernisation schemes had failed to deliver and had had to be abandoned.
However experience from Japan and other countries and the development of new systems, such as the European Train Control System (ETCS), Connected Driver Advisory System (C-DAS) and Traffic Management System (TMS) provide a portfolio of tools which have the potential to improve the operation of the railways.
Trials of ETCS began on the Cambrian line in 2007 and it was deployed on Thameslink in 2015. ETCS does away with fixed signals and is 30% cheaper than a conventional installation. This is important when it is realised that half of the UK network will be considered to be life-expired during the next 15 years.
On 10th May 2018 the government announced the Network Rail's Digital Railway Strategy (NRDRS), a 15-year plan to introduce these systems to Britain's railways. One of the first lines to benefit will be Thameslink which is expected to have a throughput of 24 trains per hour in central London. Part of this strategy involves Early Contractor Involvement (ECI) and it is here that Hitachi Control Systems expects to play a big part, particularly with the use of simulations. For instance the Trans-Pennine route upgrade is a lead project for the NRDRS so it has been modelled and ETCS simulated allowing the potential traffic capacity to be determined. Similar simulations have been run for locations such as Mirfield where various changes to track layouts have been examined.
New operating methods meant that staff had to be re-trained and here, again, simulation was being used. In the period 2000-2017 Hitachi provided over 180 signalling simulators, allowing several thousand signallers to be trained, including coping with unusual scenarios.
The NRDRS will be data rich, feeding into the Traffic Management System, permitting trains to operate at optimum speeds, which both will increase capacity and reduce energy consumption. The passenger should receive a better quality of service but should also be better informed. An example of what was possible was given from Japan where a single 'app' allowed a passenger to purchase tickets, see timetables, monitor train locations and observe 'anonymised' video from station concourses.
The digital railway will give the potential to obtain live data from both the train and the track it is travelling on, allowing condition based maintenance to be carried out.
This talk concentrated on what might be regarded as the 'back office' of railway operations. It was interesting to see how much modelling and simulation was in use. Clearly that is very important when it comes to updating railways as busy as those in the UK where there is little enough capacity for today's traffic and modernisation work can be very disruptive so it is important to 'get it right first time'.
One general observation; the ever-expanding use of the 'general purpose' computer means that reality is getting ever-closer to simulation! It is possible to buy personal computer programs that simulate lever-frame interlockings, you have to imagine grabbing a rag, slipping the latch and throwing your weight against the lever. Simulation and reality are quite different. However a modern signaller's console is not so different to the personal computer screen. Similarly Microsoft's flight simulator has only a passing resemblance to an old aircraft's manual controls but those of 'fly-by-wire aircraft get ever closer and those of an unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV), are very close relatives.
The topic 'The Digital Railway' covers a wide field, worthy of at least a multi-paper seminar covering the many technologies involved. This talk gave us some idea of the work that is being done to link the more well-known parts together and the extent of the modelling and simulation behind it all. Hopefully this should lead to 'getting it right' this time.
Slow to adapt – but far-sighted?
“.. if the conditions in a given case be met most satisfactorily by a signalling system in which there are no semaphore or other visible signals, and no block system, there should be no hesitation in adopting it, and the fact that the ancient features had been scrapped, and the ancient methods discarded, would in no way remove such a scheme from within the definition of a signalling scheme.”
A.T. Blackhall, President of the Institution of Signal Engineers, 8 November 1910
Links:
European Train Control System (ETCS) [Wikipedia]
Connected Driver Advisory System (C-DAS) [Rail Delivery Group Specification]
European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS)
Network Rail's Digital Railway Strategy [UK Gov. DfT]