INFRASTRUCTURE Signalling Sub-Surface ATO on Trial
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58 April 2016 | Railway Gazette International INFRASTRUCTURE Signalling Sub-Surface ATO on trial Testing of the Thales SelTrac IS Radio CBTC to be deployed on four London Underground routes is now underway. Chris Jackson reports from Old Dalby. systems. There is also some inter-work- ing with National Rail services on the outer parts of the Metropolitan and District lines, which he adds ‘is new ter- ritory for us’. The Sub-Surface Upgrade is an essen- tial part of Transport for London’s ef- forts to cope with increased ridership as the capital’s population grows by a pro- jected 1·2 million over the next 15 years. The four lines are currently carrying 1·3 million passengers a day, and the intro- duction of longer trains operating under attended ATO (GoA2) is expected to increase peak capacity by 33%, as well as shortening journey times. Harvey says the aim is to operate 32 Test train V1 stands he sight of a seven-car Lon- at Old Dalby on Thales on the Northern Line resignalling, trains/h each way on core sections of the don Underground train- March 11 with the he is now responsible for all systems as- Circle Line, against 24 today. LU hopes set jogging through rural temporary radio pects of the ‘four-lines modernisation’. more frequent and faster trains will cut aerials attached to Leicestershire may seem in- the driving car. Serving 102 stations and with a total overcrowding, while better man age ment congruous, but it has become common of 314 km of track, the four intercon- of dwell times should allow more trains Tover the past decade. Since 2007 Bom- nected lines account for around 40% of to be squeezed through the central area bardier has been using a 5 km section the Underground network. Some sec- despite the complexity of pathing them of the former British Rail test track at tions are more than 150 years old, while through the many flat junctions. Old Dalby to commission almost 1 500 the complex junctions are controlled metro cars it is supplying for LU’s Vic- by a mix of ageing legacy signalling Collaborative partnership toria Line and Sub-Surface network. The temporary The £760m contract with Thales is in Now known as the Rail Innovation layout of the fact LU’s third attempt at resignalling onboard equipment & Development Centre (Melton) and provides easy access the Sub-Surface Lines. Former infra- operated for Network Rail by Serco, the for the test team. structure consortium Metronet original- facility is still commissioning the last of A monitor shows ly allocated the work to Westinghouse the ATO speed and 192 S Stock trains for the Circle, District, distance indications Rail Systems (later Invensys Rail) under Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan which will appear on the aborted Public-Private Partnership, lines. So far, LU has 95 seven and eight- the driver’s display. but the deal was cancelled by LU, which car sets in service; the rest are on course to be delivered by the end of this year, in- cluding an extra eight-car S8 unit ordered for the extension of the Metropolitan Line to Watford Junction (RG 1.16 p13). However, one S7 trainset is clearly different. Identifiable by the temporary radio antennae attached to the driving cabs and the mass of electronics spread out inside the cars, this is V1, the first of two trains being used to test the SelTrac IS moving-block CBTC that Thales is to install across all four Sub-Surface Lines. ‘This is probably the most complex metro resignalling project in the world’, believes Stuart Harvey, Systems Pro- gramme Director at LU’s Capital Pro- grammes Directorate. Coming from Tubelines, where he worked alongside RGIN-1604-infra-4LM-signalling-layout.indd 58 23/03/2016 17:14:52 Railway Gazette International | April 2016 59 Signalling INFRASTRUCTURE Absolute train in 2011 awarded a £374m contract for operations control centre and a signal- positioning for Bombardier to install its Interflo 650 ling equipment room containing a full moving-block technology. That in turn collapsed in set of lineside systems for testing. operation is provded by RFID December 2013, forcing another rethink. Unlike the SelTrac IS installed on tags in the track at Restructuring of the SSL upgrade pro- the Jubilee and Northern lines, which approximately 25m gramme saw completion pushed back has inductive loops for track-train com- intervals. to 2023 and the total cost increase by an munication, the Sub-Surface Lines will estimated £886m, according to a highly use an IP-based radio link. Thales’ Test critical report published by the Greater Manager Richard Kirby says surveying London Assembly last month. is under way in the central area tunnels, Despite the earlier problems, Harvey using two trollies to investigate signal says the various organisations have now propagation distances and ensure ad- established a ‘genuine collaborative part- equate radio coverage. nership’, in which Bombardier still plays All four lines will be controlled from ‘a pivotal part’ as manufacturer of the a new centre in west London, which trains. Other partners include Balfour was built under the Bombardier con- Beatty, which is working on the track tract. There will be 21 workstations in layout changes; Harvey says seven of the the control room, similar to those that eight major schemes have been com- Thales has supplied for other SelTrac platform too early, saving energy and pleted, including installation of a new applications around the world. A flex- avoiding long dwell times. Passenger scissors crossover west of the Circle Line ible configuration will allow the control information displays at each station are platforms at King’s Cross. room staff to rebalance their workload driven from the SMC using the predict- LU is managing the enabling works as necessary, helping to relieve a busy ed arrivals up to 30 min ahead, to ensure and has built two new signal equipment controller during the recovery from any any disruption is reflected correctly. rooms at Hammersmith and Baker incident, for example. The control centre Train running commands from the Street; a third is ‘well advanced’. More will also manage the CCTV and cus- SMC are passed to the 14 Vehicle Con- than 22 km of new cable supports have tomer information at stations, as well as 23 trol Centres which each oversee part of been installed, while remodelling and emergency alarms and help points. the network. These vital interlockings extension works have been undertaken At the heart of the Thales control sys- days use two-out-of-three voting to establish at Neasden, Ealing Common, Upmin- tem is the System Management Centre, and lock the necessary routes, commu- LENGTH OF TIME ster and Ruislip depots. Still to come is providing the Automatic Train Supervi- EACH S STOCK nicating with local Station Controllers a planned stabling facility at Farringdon sion functions. This manages the entire TRAIN WILL BE OUT installed in a mix of new and repurposed which will help accommodate the en- four-line network based on predeter- OF SERVICE WHILE equipment rooms. In moving-block op- larged fleet and enable LU to start some mined timetables developed by LU; BEING MODIFIED eration, the VCC ensures safe separa- WITH CBTC services in the city centre. these can include special service patterns EQUIPMENT tion, preventing the SMC from issuing More power will be needed to support for public holidays and major events, as unsafe commands. The margin between the more frequent air-conditioned trains, well as weekday and weekend schedules. successive trains is based on their re- and LU is planning to increase the trac- Routes are set for each train, based on the ported positions, the braking distance tion supply voltage on the four lines from train number entered by the driver. from the currently permitted speed and 630 to 750 V DC. This would allow the LU puts a high priority on keeping a Safety Distance of at least 50 m. S Stock to run at its designed maximum to timetable, and Thales has developed Primary train location is achieved speed of 100 km/h in ‘full performance its control system to recover as quickly using passive RFID transponders from mode’ — today the trains are limited to as possible following any failure, by run- Tagmaster, which are positioned in the 72 km/h in manual operation. ning to minimum headways. The service track at approximately 25 m intervals, controllers can intervene if necessary to or more frequently in station areas. Automatic Train Operation modify the traffic pattern, regulate trains These provide the train with informa- Barely six months after the award to even out the service or turn some back tion about its absolute location and of the signalling contract to Thales, V1 before their destination. The SMC will the position of the following tag. Each is already operating in ATO mode at also command a train to run slower if train reports its position back to the RIDC, where Thales has established an it predicts it would arrive at the next VCC, allowing the SMC to update its A temporary control centre at Old Dalby (left) is linked to a signal equipment room housing the System Management Centre and the Vehicle Control Centre which provides the core interlocking functions (right). RGIN-1604-infra-4LM-signalling-layout.indd 59 23/03/2016 17:15:08 60 April 2016 | Railway Gazette International INFRASTRUCTURE Signalling migration from legacy signalling is now planned to begin in mid-2019, al- though the team is hoping to bring this forward. Work will start at Hammer- smith, with the rst phases covering the Hammersmith & City and Circle lines, followed by the District, and nally the Metropolitan.