Technical Meetings are held three times per year.
Papers are available here for download.
You must be logged in to be able to download content.
Dr Frank HeibelPhD MSc (Hon) MIEAust CPEng FIRSE Doc Frank Pty Ltd Travelling by train in a major Australian city has become an increasingly challenging experience. The drastically risen patronage over the last decade brought a number of inconveniences that affect passenger comfort: Crowded platforms, difficulty to board an already packed train, no vacant seating, huddling with fellow passengers, and delayed journeys with trains stacking up behind each other are unfortunately regular effects of peak hour traffic. Transforming passenger transport towards higher capacity by building additional railway lines in CBD areas, as planned in Brisbane with Cross River Rail and Brisbane subway, turns into mega projects with very long lead times and pending uncertainties for funding – certainly not a quick fix. To some extent the same applies to platform lengthening for accommodating longer trains. The transport plans for Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth envisage the modernisation of existing signalling as a key measure for increasing capacity of the existing rail infrastructure, to allow running more trains and prevent debilitating congestion when passenger numbers continue to grow further.This paper aims to point out a few benefits of modern Automatic Train Control (ATC) that may help transforming passenger transport, just as ATC transforms the signalling system legacy in Australia.
J. Rose BSc, C. Eng., FIRSE M.L. Engineering (Plymouth) Limited Ever since the earliest days of railways there has been a requirement to detect the presence of a vehicle on a railway track. The first such methods were based on the notorious time delay block - a practice which, quite justfiably achieved an unenviable reputation for being extremely dangerous. The invention of the electric telegraph and its application to railways permitted the adoption of the manual absolute block system. Perhaps the most significant signalling development in the nineteenth century was the invention of the track circuit - most often accredited to an American, William Robinson in the 1870's. Robinson certainly foresaw its use as an essential element in an automatic block system and thus we can begin to see the development of the two basic branches of train detection (or track supervision as it is now sometimes referred to) continuous and intermittent systems, see Fig. 1. It is the purpose of this paper to examine the relative merits of various means of train detection for block systems and in particular to discuss the solution adopted on the North Island Main Trunk line.
R.N. Upton Signals Project Engineer New Zealand Railways Wellington is the southern terminus of New Zealandts North Island Railway System handling freight and suburban, provincial and long distance passenger traffic. The suburban area of 90 route kilometres over three lines is electrified at 1600V dc via overhead catenary and is serviced by electric multiple units. The two double track main lines, the North Island Main Trunk and Wairarapa Line converge at Distant Junction, the access to the freight yard two kilometres from the Passenger Terminal. The 10km single track passenger only Johnsonville Line connects directly into the Wellington Platform Junction.
J. Waller International President of IRSE J Waller's Presidential Address to the Australian secion of the IRSE, to be read in Brisbane on Saturday 30th 1991.
David Dalton BE (Civil), MBA Transport lnfrastructure Development Corporation The Transport lnfrastructure Development Corporation will deliver projects which will significantly redevelop the Sydney rail network over the next five years, with the opening of the Epping to Chatswood Rail Line, implementation of the Rail Clearways Program and the opening of new transport interchanges at Parramatta and Chatswood. The majority of the work required to realise these projects will be undertaken by the private sector.
Trevor Moore B Eng, MBA, FIRSE, FIEAust Australian Rail Track Corporation Signal Engineers are great users and drafters of signalling standards. This often means that each organisation has their own standard for a subject and national standards are ignored. This paper gives an insight into the process for developing Australian railway signalling standards by the Rail Industry Safety and Standards Board. It also provides an overview of standards developed and under development. The drafting and adoption of national railway signalling standards will assist the development of signalling practices in Australia and the portability of the signalling workforce.
D.E. McCauley FIRSE Manager Signals The existing Perth Urban Passenger Rail System consists of three double track 1067mn1 gauge lines radiating fron City to Fremantle, Midland trnd Armadale. (A eection of single track exists over the Swan River near Belmont Park). The Fremantle to City and Ouildford line was opened in 1681 and cxtc!nded to Midland in 1884, the Armadale line was opened in 1893. Trains on the existing system consist of diesel r a i l cars most of wltich are in a deteriorated condition, in peak hours locomotive hauled saloon car sets supplement the service. In 1984 the Government through the Co-ordinator General of Trana port commissioned an inquiry into the electrification of the Perth Suburban railways, the report, presented in February 1985 resulted in the Government announcing in September 1985 its intention in principle to electrify the suburban system. They then establiehed the Urban Rail Steering Committee comprising representative fron the key Government Departments involved. A project team comprising Westrail and Transperth officers with assistance of consultants was established by the Steering Commitee to produce a Master Plan, this was presented to the Government who accepted the plan and formally announced the commencement of the project on February 14 1988 concurrent with announcing the contract for the Electric Multiple Unit rail car manufacture. This paper describes the signalling system adopted for the project, other papers will describe the Train Control Concepts including the Interlocking Control system and Remote Interface Modules, Train Describer function and the Communications and Train Information Systems.
Dr. Jack Zhang Centre for Railway Engineering Central Queensland University The paper presents a Matlab/Simulink based simulator for tract circuit in railway signalling system. The sub-systems in this simulator includes the simulink models for running rails, transmitter, receiver, boosting unit, train occupation and termination circuit. Both time domain waveform and frequency domain spectrum in the track circuit can be observed on the computer screen. To investigate the impact of train position on the receiver signals, the running rail model for a fixed track length is implemented as two variable length track circuit, separated by the moving train. The impacts of track length, boosting unit, and carrier frequency can also be investigated by means of this simulator.
JEFF BYRON, M. ENG. SC., B. E. COMMUNICATIONS ENGINEER Digital transmission of information for NSW Railways purposes dates back at least to 1857 when the NSW Electric Telegraph department installed a morse system between South Head, Sydney and Liverpool. The telegraph department at that time was separate from both the Railways and Post Office, although it utilised railway telegraph system was set up in about 1876. A major purpose of the telegraph was, of course, train safe working. The next major step in NSW Railway data transmission occurred in 1949, when the morse telegraph system between Sydney and Lithgow was replaced by a teleprinter system. Within the next few years, many more systems were updated, although it was not until 1968 that the last morse system was decommissioned. Teleprinters message switching system was introduced to save retyping messages destined for a location not directly connected to the originator. the teleprinter network remained in service until 1986 when the present message switch (to be discussed later) was introduced. The 1970's saw the introduction in the railways of remote terminals requiring connection to mainframe computers via a data communication network. It was to support this need that the Data Communications section was established.
Philip Baker MIRSE Aurecon Australia Pty Ltd This paper will examine the challenges for signalling designers that follow from the move of signalling and control systems from the trackside to the cab. A case study will be drawn from the Llanbadarn incident where the train driver’s workload was such that he was perhaps distracted by looking at the ERTMS screen rather than out of the window. The signalling designer had not incorporated a level crossing warning into the ERTMS system so the train entered a level crossing where the booms were not down. Lessons learned and discussion about how we can avoid a similar situation.
In this paper, we would like to introduce an innovative proposal based on the research conducted by the Hitachi Rail Innovation team to further improve the existing available tablet application, particularly
This Paper investigates the issues regarding use of passive level crossings for livestock movements in the agricultural industry. This unavoidable practice presents a different risk profile to the typical user, with livestock movement being
I started in signalling more than 30 years ago at British Rail, where I learnt how to design interlockings, initially in relay circuits, and then by programming Solid State Interlockings. This work sparked my interest in safety critical syste
The term signalling principles is often referenced with regards to the design of a signalling system. It is also used as part of the title of a person ‘Principles Verifier’ or ‘Principles Tester’. Some rail managers also reference signalling p
This paper offers a detailed FRMCS integrated migration strategy as a preparatory guide for current GSM-R users, particularly Rail Transport Operators (RTOs), as well as for projects in the planning and developmen
The Public Transport Authority of Western Australia (PTA) is currently building a new mobile radio and backhaul transmission communications network across the Perth metropolitan electrified railway network.
Today’s railway fatalities are arguably more likely to occur at level crossings than in the train collisions we tend to focus most attention on controlling. Designing for level crossing safety can be messy and grey, especially when the dependen
The Netherlands is rolling out the European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS) across the national network. The government created a Programme Directorate to manage the rollout. Cyber security for both ERTMS as well as the transportation syst
To support the acceptance of safety risk for configuration changes to railways, systems engineering recognises both qualitative and quantitative hazard and risk assessment methods. Quantitative analysis can be perceived as objective and quali
Cybersecurity is a hot topic worldwide with regular attacks being performed against multiple domains.