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FEATURE
- THE CONNECTED ASSET -
WHEN A CAB RADIO IS NOT (JUST) A CAB RADIO
PAUL DARLINGTON
T
he railway of today faces many challenges and these include the need to reduce costs, improve operational efficiency, and improve passenger / freight customer benefits. The industry needs to make the best use of the assets already invested, and providing reliable data connectivity for trains can deliver huge benefits for operators and customers. This article discusses how the GSM-R cab mobile asset, already fitted to main line train fleets in Britain, could be used to meet these objectives. Railways consist of a huge number of assets which must all work seamlessly together to deliver a good, consistent service to passenger and freight customers. Every asset will show signs of wear and tear over time. These signs will appear differently depending on the type of asset, how it’s used, and what components fail first. Maintainers and asset managers won’t always notice changes in conditions or be able to associate these with particular hazards or failures. However, connected remote condition monitoring can provide information on how asset condition measurements on both trains and ground systems are changing over time, and allow interventions to take place before failure occurs. To achieve this requires a good train data connection.
CHALLENGES Fitting new communication and control technology equipment to existing rolling stock is a challenge. First-in-class train fitments can be costly and not run to programme. Any new device will need space on the train, connection to an existing reliable power supply, an interface to on-board systems, an external antenna causing no interference or compromising the vehicle integrity, and a means of sharing information with train staff. No two types of rolling stock design are the same and each will have its own peculiarities and limitations. Any fitment programme will take valuable trains out of service and require a competent resource to plan and undertake the work. All of this takes time and money the rail industry cannot afford. Siemens Mobility SVR-411 V4 cab radios, however, have already been fitted to all of the British main line fleets by the GSM-R project,
Rail Engineer | Issue 203 | Jul-Aug 2023
providing reliable, secure track-to-train voice comms’ across the network. This required many years of engineering to provide a spaceefficient, robust, and flexible cab radio rack in the space available, together with a compact control panel unit for the use of train drivers. A little-known fact to many in the industry is that the Siemens cab radio hardware / software is designed and made in Britain, so all the knowledge and capability to support and enhance the product is readily available. To date, over 12,000 cab units have been fitted to trains in Britain and the technology has also been successfully deployed in other countries including Denmark, Australia, Ireland, and Norway. The design of a unit to allow the scale of deployment achieved by the GSM-R project required a special ‘gland box’ system to allow easy installation and replacement, and the development of an optional uninterrupted power supply unit to provide up to four hours backup power in the event of failure of train power. Two versions of the unit were originally created, one to provide voice communications only, the other to enable ETCS L2 data connectivity with the ground system. The very high availability requirements were met by a design which provided good thermal efficiency and shock resistance. The mean time between failures currently runs at around 250,000 hours, and the mean time to replace a unit is around 30 minutes. In Britain, a textual display is used to provide the human machine interface, but a full graphical unit is also available if required. So, we have a successful product sitting on practically every train in the country, but what else could it do?