Industry urged to get behind digital signalling

THE challenge of introducing in-cab-only ‘moving block’ signalling on a busy main line “is worth it - but everyone must own the project”.

That’s the message from Toufic Machnouk, Director, Industry Partnership for Digital Railway at Network Rail. Backing him up, NR Chairman Lord Peter Hendy is calling on the industry for “everyone to share a bit of optimism”.

Speaking at the Digital Signalling: East Coast and Beyond event, organised by Network Rail and attended by 563 people, Machnouk said that whereas building the European Train Control System (ETCS) into a new railway such as HS2 is “pretty straightforward”, for NR the challenge is to “transition a complex and fragmented operation that’s been this way for decades”.

He asked: “Frankly, is the challenge worth it?” And he replied that the answer is ‘yes’, adding: “Digital signalling achieves far more for less. It’s almost half the unit cost and half the access requirements, so how can we afford not to?”

Drawing on his experience at Transport for London, where digital signalling is being rolled out under the Four Lines Modernisation,

Hendy said cost benefits are crucial. He cited the Victoria Line’s digital signalling, where “we run more trains, more reliably than anybody had imagined during the investment case”.

Accepting that ETCS Level 2 on a mixed-use railway is different from a metro-style operation, Hendy added: “The overall point is delivering more services, more reliably, by using modern technology on an existing railway.”

He acknowledged: “It’s quite hard to get the railway to deliver to the best of its ability. We are not going to discuss rail reform [today], but we know enough about the latest government to say that it looks like they subscribe to our reforms.

“One of the reasons they do is because it’s so hard to get things done in terms of minimising the cost of the railway and the benefit we get from the government’s investment.

“The East Coast Main Line could easily support more passenger trains, taking advantage of the new patterns of traffic, but it is restrained by the signalling system.

“Why wouldn’t you do something that increases the total capacity for only a modest investment, and one that is justified because the existing signalling equipment is life-expired.”

The real issue, he said, is: “how we do it on a railway that is contractualised, very complex, and has very many clients?”

He said the answer is that the railway “has to come together and deliver something that is greater

than the sum of all its parts, by leaning in and participating in a process that requires everyone to share a bit of optimism.

“We know it’s not just our project, it has to be owned by everybody who is on the railway, and not only by those on the south end of the ECML… because we’re poised to extend it to other parts of the network and progressively replace obsolete (or nearly obsolete) signalling with something that has far greater flexibility.”

It is now a decade since the 2008 pilot ETCS on the Cambrian Line started, which Machnouk described as what was then the “most advanced in the world”.

The Thameslink core brought in the first ETCS with Automatic Train Operation.

ECML South is the next step, applying this to a mixed-use railway with freight, track machines, express and local passenger trains, and due to be implemented from 2025 from Welwyn to Hitchin as part of a £1 billion scheme.

More than 70% of the investment in ECML South “is an investment in the rest of the network, from hundreds of trains and drivers, that go beyond it from Brighton to Inverness”, said Machnouk.

LNER Managing Director David Horne observed that ECML South has an advantage with new ETCS-fitted stock - his company’s Azumas and Lumo’s similar AT300s, alongside Govia Thameslink Railway’s Class 700s, which cover around 70% of existing passenger trains on the route.

“Now we’re starting to get into the implementation, it brings together over 27 industry partners at a senior level, with representatives of the key players and smaller players through a group structure,” he said.

With its ETCS training simulator in York, GTR’s driver conversion process is under way, with the Moorgate branch being the first.