Technical Meetings are held three times per year.
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Thavorn Ratanavaraha, B.Eng. FIRSE, FICE (Thailand) Director of the Signalling and Telecommunications Department State Railway of Thailand
Gareth Topham C Eng, B Eng, MSc, MIRSE, MIET, MSaRS Rio Tinto Decisions on rail safety are traditionally based on established practice and experienced judgment, supported by tests and trials as judged necessary. However, the past is not always a useful guide when conditions are changing and practice needs to keep pace with technology. The Yellow Book was developed in the UK to provide a pragmatic set of guidance to applying engineering safety management in line with the internationally adopted CENELEC Standards (50126/8/9). The Yellow Book is no longer supported and a new international Engineering Safety Management publication has been developed to fill this gap. The primary purpose of the new international Engineering Safety Management (iESM) is to help people who lead and undertake railway engineering make sure that their work contributes efficiently to improved safety and helps new railways and changes to be accepted more efficiently. The new iESM Handbook should help: • Tackle the pressures from increased complexity of railway systems;• Address decreased public and passenger tolerance for avoidable accidents;• Focus spending on preventing incidents and smooth the way for acceptance of new technology or novel applications.
Damian Crompton Union Switch & Signal Pty Ltd Brian Ingleton Fluor Australia This technical paper discusses the modifications to the signalling system to facilitate of the amalgamation of the Hamersley Iron Railway and Robe River Iron Associates Railway and the new rail connection to Robe's new mine at west Angelas. Robe operate a heavy haulage railway system between its port facility at Cape Lambert and its iron ore mine at Pannawonica, and Hamersley Iron between its port at Dampier and mines at Tom Price, Brockman, Yandi, Marandoo and Paraburdoo. West Angelas is a new mine which is located approximately 100 kilometers northwest of the town of Newman in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. A spur from the existing Hamersley Iron railway at a junction called Juna Downs to West Angelas was constructed, along with a connection between Robe and Hamersley Iron railways at a junction referred to as the Northern Link. This Project is referred to as the West Angelas Rail Project (WARP).
Brian Luber Since railways were established, many systems have been developed to ensure a safe and economic rail service. A signalling system which has played a major role here is that based on the fail-safe principle - instructions on line ahead are passed to the driver via trackside signals. However, it soon became clear that the best safety equipment is of no use when a driver fails to recognize or wrongly interprets the signal indications. For this reason, different types of transmission equipment, mainly mechanical, were designed to ensure that a train is brought to a standstill after passing a stop signal. Mechanical transmission equipment has, however, two disadvantages - frequent maintenance and its unsuitability for high train speeds. Consequently, Siemens developed an inductive system of automatic train control which has three resonant frequencies and which functions without physical contact during transmission. An additional advantage of this system is that no trackside power supply is required for the line equipment. The first installation employing this principle of operation, known as Indusi, was installed as long ago as 1932 on the Berlin-Hamburg Line. According to the same basic principle, Indusi is still very much in use today, for example on approximately 6,700 vehicles and along 16,000 kilometres of German Federal Railway line. The demand for additional on-board monitoring as well as for a larger volume of transmission data led to the development of our ZUB 100 automatic train control system. In so doing, the up-to-date technology of microelectronics was utilized and the excellent operating experience gained with the Indusi resonance system applied.
Stephen George Dip Eng, FIEAust, CPEng OPUS Rail The signalling power distribution network for the Victorian Regional Rail Link project is provided in two distinct ways, from the metropolitan rail systems secure 2.2kV single phase system and from a new VLine 2.2kV three phase system. This paper will discuss the design, equipment and operation of the VLine 2.2kV three phase system.The VLine 2.2kV three phase distribution system is designed as two end fed radial feeders with a common centre point and multiple ring main unit HV/LV Locations. The three substations, referred to as Power Equipment Huts or PEH, and each of the ring main units are remotely controlled and indicated over the Metro Trains SCADA network through to the electrical control centre [ELECTROL]. Circuit protection is principally centred on the substations with cable fault detection and transformer protection in each of the HV/LV Locations.
Phil Hingley, C. Eng., MIEE, MIRSE GHD - Transmark This paper describes the management of the risks inherent in adapting the UK developed system of computer-based interlocking for the signalling of the Eastern Harbour Crossing of the Hong Kong Mass Transit Railway Corporation.
Charles Page BSc. Elec/Electron, MBA, FIRSE Director of Marketing & Sales Westinghouse Rail Systems Australia The Windah-Grantleigh project arose out of Queensland Rail's strategic planning process that identified line capacity improvements required in the Blackwater system in Central Queensland. It was the first in a series of such projects conducted under a new contract model, designed to deliver cost effective and high quality upgrades in the minimum possible time in a collaborative environment. The Windah-Grantleigh was successfully delivered in a very challenging timescale and included a number of novel technical features. In particular, it was the first Australian application of the WESTRACE WNC in a hot standby configuration.
Nick Thompson Signalling Operations Manager Invensys Rail This paper is attempting to answer the question of how to move towards a "Metro" style of rail operation, from the traditional state wide based urban systems of today. Australia has a rapidly increasing population and current government projections suggest that by 2050, Australia could reach 33M people #1. This equates to over a 40% increase in population from today, and further Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane accounts for 45% of the total Australian population #1. This makes our "big brown land" one of the most major urbanised population spreads in the world. If the current trend is maintained, the need to have higher density public transport systems becomes an essential requirement. So, for rail passenger transport in the major cities of Australia, it is contended that there are only two realistic options: either build new rail lines with the associated timeframes which are typically 10 years+, not including land purchases and public consultations. In NSW for example the Parramatta – Chatswood rail project, took over 11 years to open and that was only ½ of the line, #2. The recent suspension of the Sydney metro project again highlights just how difficult it is to build new railways. The alternative and far more attractive option is to "sweat" more out of the existing rail network. This paper attempts to deal with the "sweat" option and also explains how some other international railways have solved similar issues and the related implementation challenges. In essence there is no one single solution to this problem, just good sound system engineering practices. It is also recognised that new railways will still be required to service new areas of development and solve the ultimate rail capacity problem, but in the short term there is much engineers can do: and the writer believes its time for the IRSE and the rail community to properly debate the real issues of future rail passenger capacity. A strategy for rail capacity improvements using modern signalling techniques could prove very cost effective and allow time to properly consider new rail lines and alternative public transport systems to meet the ever increasing demand, for what in reality is a four hour per weekday problem.
KC Selfe Chief Engineer, Teknis Systems Division, Teknis Consolidated Pty Ltd The Dry Creek - Port Pirie C.T.C. System controls the section of the Australian National Northern Standard Gauge Line between Dry Creek and Crystal Brook and the section of Standard Gauge Crystal Brook to Port Pirie, along with entrances and exits to the Crystal Brook to Wallaroo Standard Gauge and the Snowtown to Brinkworth Broad Gauge. The system comprises eleven field stations at passing loops and a communications interface field location at Salisbury and office facilities at Mile End. The main bearer provided is a 600 ohm pole line between Salisbury and Port Pirie with a full duplex, 4 wire, carrier channel, providing an alternate path to Port Pirie, which is back fed to the pole line automatically under pole line fail conditions. All communications traffic between Salisbury and Mile End is via carrier channels. The telemetry, communications equipnent, processor and ancillaries and mimic display drive equipment were supplied by Teknis Systems. The mimic diagram, manual control panel and console and all installation and commissioning were carried out by the Signals and Conununications staff of Australian National.
Aaron Fraser BSc, BEng, Post.Grad.Dip RailSig, S.I.R.S.E. Ansaldo STS This paper documents the proposed development of new automated signalling design tools to facilitate improvement in the current design lifecycle for Ansaldo STS. The project was undertaken as part of the CQU Postgraduate Diploma in Railway Signalling – CPD6 Signalling Research Project. It investigates methods of automating signalling design for the Ansaldo STS Brisbane signalling design office and the benefits of these tools to the company. The design methodology for a typical QR Regional signalling project forms the basis of the research. The project has determined four tools to assist in the production of signalling design: the Bid Tool for generating cost estimations for signalling works; the Drawings Tool for generating circuits; the Microlok II Design Tool for generating Application Logic; and the V&V Tool for automatically validating and verifying the system against safe Signalling Principles. This paper discusses the goals of the project, the project methodology, major findings, and recommendations for Ansaldo STS and all signalling design companies.
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
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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
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