A vision for the railway of tomorrow
Siemens Operations Director for Digital Railway MARK FERRER tells STEFANIE FOSTER why digital technology will transform the network in the UK and beyond
The technologies and principles that we apply to today’s railway are fundamentally the same as those we applied back in the 1960s. Advancements have been made, but the rules remain the same. When you consider the transformations in other parts of our everyday lives, the railway seems like a dinosaur. Look at the telephone. Back in the 1960s, owning one was a luxury and you dialled numbers by spinning a wheel with your finger. Fifty years later and much of the population is walking around with a smartphone in their pocket, connected to the rest of the world all the time.
“The railway needs to move into that modern age,” says Mark Ferrer, Siemens Rail Automation’s operations director for Digital Railway. “We can improve capacity on the railway by the application of appropriate technologies. I say appropriate because it’s not a one-size-fits-all answer. We don’t necessarily need to go and put hightechnology, high-complexity systems in everywhere.”
Digital railway technology and principles are not new. They have existed in the world of metro railways for years, but Ferrer says they now need porting across to the main line, which is something Siemens is doing as part of the circa-£ 7 billion Governmentsponsored Thameslink programme.
“Thameslink is a digital railway. It encompasses every part of the digital railway concept that we would need but, importantly, we have lots and lots of data flowing around that can be used to bring new benefits.”
In future, data capture and subsequent analytics could help transform the customer experience - the ability to inform passengers better as to what is going to happen on the railway during their journey or just before their journey, as opposed to them turning up and finding out that trains aren’t running, or that there has been a failure.
Ferrer explains: “We will be able to start predicting what is going to happen on a digital railway through all the data we will gather from trains and trackside infrastructure, provided that we capture that data and run analytics on it. So, we will start to spot trends in what led up to an incident, such as a delay or cancellation. By using those trends in the future, we can predict that something is going to happen and take pre-emptive action. On Thameslink, we have equipped all of the trackside infrastructure with remote diagnostics, enabling Network Rail to monitor the performance of the assets and start to identify trends.”
That use of Remote Condition Monitoring (RCM) on Thameslink will allow for predictive maintenance of the infrastructure. Rather than a ‘fail and fix’ methodology, the systems can predict that something is going to fail, so that it can be maintained or replaced before it does.
With increasing levels of traffic, the potential for disruption and the impact caused by the failure of an asset becomes greater than ever. Therefore, the remote condition monitoring of assets, for example trains, signalling equipment, civil structures, communication systems and the track becomes an essential tool, with the added benefit that information gained from one system can be useful in finding out about the status of other systems - for example, on-board systems can give an indication of the track condition.
The fundamental principle behind the Digital Railway and its deployment on Thameslink is an increase in capacity through the deployment of Automatic Train Operation (ATO) over ETCS (European Train Control System), which exists at different levels - in the case of Thameslink it’s Level 2, overlaid on the existing system.
Says Ferrer: “Effectively, it provides more sections (or blocks) of track that we can run trains in. The general rule of signalling is that only one train is allowed in any one block at any one time. That way, the trains will always avoid each other. On traditional signalling systems, the blocks can be quite big and although we know a train is in one, we don’t know its exact location. If we did, it might be possible to allow another train to start entering the block. If we make the blocks smaller and we know exactly where the front and back of each train is, we can get the trains much closer together and so start to create more capacity.
“Of course, adding more trains is great, but you have to be able to manage those trains and control them around the infrastructure so they are at the right place at the right time and don’t have to slow down, or stop and wait. That is all about timetable management, and that’s where traffic management comes in.”
On Thameslink, NR is deploying traffic management using Hitachi’s Tranista product, with Siemens providing the enabling technology to control the trains in the central core. There are, though, a number of other technologies that can be deployed on a digitised railway to further increase capacity, of which ATO is an obvious candidate.
“ATO is really about getting systems to control trains, so we start to remove variations in the way trains are driven,” says
Other countries are watching what we are doing in the UK in terms of the deployment of new technologies. Mark Ferrer, Operations Director - Digital Railway, Siemens Rail Automation UK
Ferrer. “Different drivers may have slightly different driving styles, so with ATO, we’re making sure that trains are being driven at the optimum speed at each location along the track.
“This enables operators to increase the accuracy of prediction, because if they know the performance of the train, the speed-distance profile it will follow and its exact position, all of a sudden the capacity increases which provides the opportunity to add more trains onto the network.”
The knock-on effect of that predictability is that passengers are more confident in their train service. But ATO is not appropriate or cost-effective for every railway, so there is a secondary option for where trains are still being driven manually.
Says Ferrer: “With these digital technologies, we can inform the driver of the speed at which to drive the train for them to reach a given point on the railway at exactly the right time. That’s where a Connected Driver Advisory System also comes into play, by transmitting information to the driver to slow down or speed up, or to advise them about events elsewhere on the railway that may affect their service.
“That has the potential to remove congestion and delays, which then increases the capacity of the infrastructure. The deployment of a digital railway using all these technologies removes the need to put signals trackside. We aren’t there yet, certainly not in the UK, but some European networks are. On High Speed 2 the trains will be going so fast that the driver won’t be able to see the signals, so that information has to be transmitted to the cab.”
There are significant benefits to removing infrastructure from the trackside. No signals means no need to dig holes, fill them with concrete or maintain them, reducing costs and making for a safer workforce because there is less requirement for staff track-time. Reducing the infrastructure also means fewer bits of kit to go wrong, so the reliability improves.
Combining the best of available and future technology brings abundant benefits to the railway - increased capacity, reduced cost and improved reliability. But, as Ferrer explains, the secondary benefit is huge amounts of data. The key will be making use of it.
“There will be a point where it’s possible to predict what tomorrow is going to look like and how the rail service is connected with other modes of transport, so as a nation, we will end up with a connected mobility strategy whereby everything becomes connected and congestion is removed. That can only be a good thing for the UK economy.
“But it also enables us to export that capability to other countries, with many of them in exactly the same situation as us, facing the same challenges of rapidly increasing demand. From a Siemens perspective, I see that lots of other countries are watching what we are doing in the UK in terms of the deployment of new technologies and they are starting to follow our lead. It is important for the UK to maintain that leading role in forward-thinking technologies and the application of them to solve transport problems because, if we don’t, other countries will start to copy and overtake us.”