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Issue 3 2008
Issue 3 2008 / 28 May 2008 /
Studies commissioned by Jernbaneverket, the Norwegian National Rail Administration, show potential for developing a high-speed network designed for Norwegian conditions.
Norway was an early builder of railways. The first line, the 54km route from Oslo to Eidsvoll, opened back in 1854 – quite some time ago! As in other countries, the rail network was expanded to its present extent (over 4,000km) for two main reasons: to accommodate an existing need to transport raw materials to the coast, and to provide the population with a radically improved long-distance transport service.
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Tagged with: High-speed rail, Jernbaneverket, Lars Erik Nybø, Norway, Rail infrastructure
Issue 3 2008 / 28 May 2008 /
Freight traffic on Norwegian railways is enjoying strong growth. All the operators on the network are reporting increased demand – signalling the need to run additional and longer freight trains. A few sections are already operating beyond their capacity. Jernbaneverket, the Norwegian National Rail Administration, is responding to this trend and proposing measures to double freight traffic over the next decade.
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Tagged with: Anita Skauge, Jernbaneverket, Norway, Rail freight
Issue 3 2008 / 28 May 2008 /
A new harbour is presently being built in Finland’s capital and will be ready by the end of 2008. The harbour is located in Vuosaari, approximately 15km from the centre of Helsinki (see Figure 1). The Vuosaari Harbour project includes the construction of a cargo harbour as well as traffic channels – a new fairway, harbour road and harbour railway line. The harbour railway line will be 19km long and have two tunnels. With a length of 13.5km, the Savio tunnel will be the longest railway tunnel in Finland and the second longest in the Nordic countries.
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Tagged with: Erkki Mäkelä, Finland, Finnish Rail Administration (RHK), Timo Cronvall, Tunnelling, VR-Track Ltd
Issue 3 2008 / 28 May 2008 /
There is no doubt that trains are the future of transport – and for NSB, the future starts now, as the groundwork is being laid to make the train the number one means of transport in Norway. Emil Eike, together with Stein Nilsen and Torod Gjermundsen, explain to readers of European Railway Review, how NSB is planning its largest ever order for new trains, and how it has also launched a comprehensive project to upgrade existing rolling stock.
From a European rail perspective, NSB is a relatively small-scale actor, serving primarily the Norwegian market. In 2007, the train operating company carried a total of 50.4 million passengers, representing an increase of 5.1% over the previous year.
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Tagged with: Emil Eike, Norway, NSB, Rolling stock, Stein Nilsen, Torod Gjermundsen
Issue 3 2008 / 28 May 2008 /
In Finland, railway undertaker VR and Finnish Rail Administration (RHK) became concerned in 2005 about the high number of level crossing accidents. VR sent a letter to the Accident Investigation Board of Finland (AIBF) and asked for it to take action to prevent level crossing accidents. They had noticed that the level of railway safety in Finland was high in international comparison, but safety on level crossings was considered much worse. At the same time, the amount of other rail accidents had decreased but the amount of level crossing accidents was shown to have increased.
At that time, AIBF didn’t investigate level crossing accidents, except those accidents in which a train had derailed or a passenger or a train crew member was deceased or injured seriously. Level crossing accidents were counted as road accidents. Fatal road accidents were investigated by the Traffic Accident Investigation Teams of the Traffic Safety Commission of Finnish Motor Insurers’ Centre (VALT). Minor accidents were investigated only by the operator and/or the police.
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Tagged with: Accident Investigation Board of Finland (AIBF), Esko Värttiö, Finland, Safety
Issue 3 2008 / 28 May 2008 /
In 2005, the Danish railway experienced a major crisis, suffering massive delays due to poor track standards and failing signalling systems. Two issues were behind the problems; the railway had been, and was, under-funded and there was a significant lack of technical and managerial control of the infrastructure. Lack of control working in concert with money shortage led to an accelerated degradation.
As chance will have it, this crisis surfaced into public view in 2005 – two years after a much celebrated political agreement for the future railway from 2005 – 2014. This means that Rail Net Denmark, the state owned railway asset management company, was then facing general political mistrust. This fact was further augmented by multiple critical reports from the state auditor.
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Tagged with: Banedanmark, Claus Rehfeld, Denmark, Rail infrastructure, Signalling
Issue 3 2008 / 28 May 2008 /
The PKP Group was established in 2001, as a result of a restructuring programme of the State-Owned Enterprise, Polish State Railways. The reform was aimed at the separation of railway operating activity and the management of railway lines as well as to set up independent commercial entries. The PKP Group is now made up of a mother company, PKP S.A., and a number of subsidiary companies.
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Tagged with: PKP, Poland, Robert Kuczynski
Issue 3 2008 / 28 May 2008 /
The newly-founded, independent organisation, CD Cargo, intends to concentrate on renewing its rolling-stock, supporting the construction of logistics centres and improving the quality of the services it provides to its customers. In an interview for European Railway Review, Josef Bazala, Chairman of the Board of Directors and Director General of CvD Cargo, claims “Only with this strategy will we succeed in continuing the growth tempo in carriage established in recent years and reinforcing our share of the transportation market.”
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Tagged with: CD Cargo, Czech Republic, Josef Bazala, Rail freight
Issue 3 2008 / 28 May 2008 /
This article aims to present the main aspects concerning the experience that the development of the ERTMS system in Spain has produced. It will also describe the established criteria for the migration to this new system.
The subjects that are going to be presented are as follows:
- Implementation in the infrastructure
- Implementation in the rolling stock
- ERTMS migration strategy
- GSM-R implementation
- STM status and perspective
- Compatibility between a SRS 2.3.0 train and SRS 2.2.2 Spanish trackside
- Conclusions
Current ERTMS implementation in the infrastructure
High-Speed Network
The actual development of the ETCS system involves the trackside of the high-speed lines and commuter lines.
The line between Madrid and Barcelona is 650km and has been built by the company Ansaldo. Thales was used for the line from Madrid to Lleida (460km) and also the line from Lleida to Barcelona (190km). The installation of the system is completed and in operation in Level 1 at 300km/h.
The line between Zaragoza and Huesca incorporates Alstom technology and is also finished and in the reliability testing phase before being entered into service.
The line Madrid-Segovia-Valladolid (part of the future high-speed line from Madrid to northern Spain) is built with Thales and is in operation with Level 1 at 300km/h. The same characteristics apply to the line between Cordoba and Malaga, built by Dimetronic (Invensys).
Level 2 is available in all the lines as a basic/main system and level 1 as a backup – except on the line between Zaragoza and Huesca where only Level 1 is installed. Currently, trains are working only with Level 1 because Level 2 is still in the verification and validation process. Delays have occurred due to the incorporation into the RBCs of the Change Request 458.
Conventional Network
In the conventional network, the line between Albacete and La Encina (93km long), which forms part of the line between Madrid and Valencia, is currently undergoing tests, and has been the Pilot line developed in Spain within the TEN projects. This line has served to validate the functionality of the system.
The installation of the system in Madrid´s suburban railway network has already started by Thales and Invensys (Dimetronic). The system in these lines is based on Level 1 being also complemented with Level 2 in the tunnels which connect the two most important railway stations in Madrid (Atocha and Chamartín). This is a really important project since it is the first step towards the migration process of the ETCS system into the conventional network.
To sum up, nowadays the situation of ETCS´s system development in the Spanish infrastructure, is that more than 1300km of double track lines have been totally constructed or are being constructed, by all UNISIG companies except Siemens.
Current ERTMS implementation on the rolling stock
Currently, 167 trains are in operation with ETCS on-board. The BT Talgo Lab Trains and the High-Speed A-330 Séneca Lab Train are owned by ADIF to perform tests on the infrastructure.
The other trains are owned by Renfe and are used in commercial operation. The S-102, S-103 and S-104 series are high-speed trains in service on the high-speed network. The S-120 series is a variable-gauge train that are able to run both on the high-speed and in the conventional network.
A new contract for 217 vehicles has been placed with different suppliers to equip commuter trains for the Madrid area.
Migration strategy
The criteria that will be followed in the process of migration towards the ETCS system in Spain is different from the high-speed network for the conventional network.
In high-speed lines, the main objectives to pursue, besides safety, are interoperability and an appropriated level of capacity. For this reason, the foreseen future is the implantation of Level 2 as the main system in all the high-speed lines constructed at present or near future and Level 1 as a backup. In future projects, and once high level of reliability has been achieved, the exclusive implantation of Level 2 will be studied.
In conventional lines, the main objective is to increase safety and to increase capacity in the lines with high traffic density; mainly the lines in the suburban railway network. This has to be achieved at the minimum cost possible. Currently, a detailed analysis for this migration process is ongoing, but taking into account the existing infrastructures and signaling, a starting point Level 1 will be deployed on the network and Level 2 will be considered for high density lines. The economic impact of the complete deployment will be evaluated in each case, including interlocking renewal, wiring, etc…, added to the ETCS costs.
Within the migration process, the freight corridors proposed by the European Commission are a very important way of accelerating this process that will serve to motivate the implantation of the implementation of the ETCS system. Spain participates in the corridor D which connects the Valencia-Barcelona-Lyon-Torino-Ljubljana project, where three other countries collaborate; France, Italy and Slovenia. This corridor links the ports from Valencia, Tarragona and Barcelona (which are the most important ones in Spain) to other corridors that run within France and Italy.
GSM-R deployment
GSM-R is an essential element of this plan in order to achieve the necessary levels of safety, interoperability, capacity and quality of service. The implementation criteria of the GSM-R system is delimited by the economical resources and the productive capacity of the sector.
According this criteria, all new high-speed lines and trains will be installed with the GSM-R system.
On the conventional network, the migration process towards the GSM-R system will prioritise the commuter’s lines and freight corridors.
STM development
Within the migration process, which was described above, it is necessary to have at disposal the corresponding STM for the ATP national systems. This is due to the fact that these trains may circulate in lines which are or are not equipped with the ETCS system. Moreover, this will mean that profits will be made in the near future with the on-board ERTMS equipment installed in the trains.
The ASFA STM, the Ebicab STM and LZB STM have their development phase completed and are being installed on the rolling stock. The STM-LZB is in operation on the S-103 trains running on the Madrid to Sevilla line.
Compatibility between a SRS 2.3.0 train and the SRS 2.2.2 Spanish infrastructure
The lines and on-board equipment currently in commercial service in Spain are equipped with the version 2.2.2. To achieve the maximum compatibility with new version 2.3.0, the use of functions on the infrastructure that are not backwards compatible and not essential for the operation have been avoided. Also, specific engineering rules (2.3.0 compatible) have been applied for the implementation of some functions. Nevertheless, in the version 2.3.0, there are certain change requests that are incompatible with the infrastructure currently installed, that can be classified in two categories:
- Change request that resolves problems identified during tests and are needed for the operation of the lines: CR 458, 257
- Change request that is not needed for the operation of lines currently installed: CR 20, 792
These modifications have a great economic impact for their implementation on the infrastructure.
For the rolling stock, the impact is even higher, because the great majority of the change request affects the on-board equipment.
Conclusions
Spain has been a pioneer country in the development and deployment of the ETCS system, as shown by the amount of kilometers and train units installed and in operation, being the biggest installations in Europe. Spain is fully committed to the deployment of the ETCS system, having clear future plans for the deployment and migration toward this system.
Out of the Spanish experience, the most negative factor is the continuous revision of the version of the specifications, leading to important actuations, involving economic investments and disturbance in the commercial operation of installations that are already in commercial service.
Once version 2.3.0d has been established as the interoperability reference for the freight corridors, all future modifications to the specifications will be compatible with this version.
Tagged with: ADIF, Antonio Domínguez Chala, ERTMS, ETCS, GSM-R, High-speed rail, Rail infrastructure, Rolling stock, Spain
Issue 3 2008 / 28 May 2008 /
The International Union of Railways (UIC) was founded in 1922 to create standards to facilitate the operation of international railway traffic. These standards are contained within UIC-Leaflets which define technical specifications for interoperability for rolling stock, infrastructure, signalling systems and catenary. Other Leaflets cover agreements on operational and commercial rules. Some Leaflets are mandatory (e.g. braking systems, wheelsets, draw hooks and buffers) whereas others are only recommendatory.
At the beginning of the 1950s, the UIC member railways expressed a common interest in carrying out international research on diesel traction, primarily to address maintenance and traction problems. As a result, the daughter organisation of the UIC responsible for research, ORE, later to become ERRI, established an expert committee on a permanent basis to cover aspects relating to diesel traction.
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Tagged with: Environment, Hans Paukert, UIC
Issue 3 2008 / 28 May 2008 /
Bombardier Transportation develops and produces bogies for a complete range of modern railway vehicles1, 2. The calculations and analyses of running dynamics play an indispensable part in the development of these products. This article outlines the usage of computer techniques to investigate vehicle dynamics during the individual product development phases of a project, the typical calculations and the latest challenges on running dynamics, illustrated with examples picked up among Bombardier’s experiences.
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Tagged with: Bogies, Bombardier Transportation, Dr. Oldrich Polach, Rolling stock
Issue 3 2008 / 28 May 2008 /
This article discusses new technologies, dimensions and production systems for rail freight traffic – based on genuine situations in Germany.
The growth of goods traffic in Europe that has come along with globalisation and the actual discussions about the environmental impact of the transport sector require new concepts to increase the efficiency of rail freight traffic. The predicted growth of rail freight will soon exceed the capacity of today’s railway system. For this reason, operational innovations which will impact promptly will be necessary in order to cope with the expected growth at a customer-friendly service level. The intended enhancements of the network – which are necessary as well – may be implemented too late. In the view of many customers, rail freight is too inflexible, too expensive and too slow in comparison with other means of transport. However, the environmental friendliness and safety reasons speak in favour of it.
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Tagged with: Germany, Helge Stuhr, Jürgen Siegmann, Rail freight, Technische Universität Berlin
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