Philip Haigh

Rail franchising.

Great changes are coming to railway signalling. Interlocking - the logic behind signal aspects and point positions - is set to move into the cloud.

That’s the cloud that provides storage and computing power which leaves individual users less dependent on the capabilities of their physical computer. And for railways, there are several advantages.

They will no longer need to build and maintain physical infrastructure to hold interlocking equipment. They will no longer need to run control cables to each and every point, signal or piece of train detection equipment. They will need a connection to their interlocking, but this could be simpler than today or might even be a wireless link. Cables will not become entirely redundant - points will still need electrical power to shift them from normal to reverse, and signals will still need power to illuminate their aspects.

The change is similar to that seen in offices. Many have removed the tangle of internet cables in favour of wireless links. Telephones no longer sit on every desk. Instead, staff log onto their computer and it becomes their telephone. Or they just use a mobile phone that joins them and their number to the local network.

Of course, to do this with interlocking and signalling demands much higher security to ensure they remain reliable and resistant to hackers. But if I can control my house’s heating and lighting via my mobile when I’m away, it shows the possibilities that can apply to signalling.

Rail companies will need to assure people that their cloud interlocking isn’t sitting on computers in some distant and unreliable country. They could still choose to own and house those computers, or they might hire their computing power and interlocking from a third-party such as a signalling company. In this, it’s rather like a computer user paying an annual fee for access to a piece of software rather than buying something physical and installing it on their computer.

Siemens believes the change will revolutionise rail. I suspect it’s right, but it will take a marked change in the way infrastructure managers think about their railways. And I say that as someone who still prefers to buy music on CDs rather than download.