About this blog
A.R.T is the International Air Rail Organisation's blog, with news, articles and comment on all things related to air rail links world-wide. Your comments and thoughts are welcome: for obvious reasons, they will be moderated and may be edited.
Search
Categories
Recent Articles
Have you missed one?...
Archives
- May 2012 (2)
- April 2012 (9)
- March 2012 (9)
- February 2012 (23)
- January 2012 (12)
- December 2011 (19)
- November 2011 (18)
- October 2011 (14)
- September 2011 (24)
- August 2011 (32)
- July 2011 (14)
- June 2011 (13)
- more...
Friends of A.R.T
Syndicate this blog
- RSS 0.92 (Userland):
Posts, Comments - RSS 1.0 (RDF):
Posts, Comments - RSS 2.0 (Userland):
Posts, Comments - Atom 0.3:
Posts, Comments
Other Links
Sep25
Stunning Swiss signalling system
The signalling system in the Lotschberg Base Tunnel in Switzerland uses a variant of the ETCS (European Train Control System).
This has a unique reversing feature. If there is an emergency and a train has to reverse out of the tunnel, this can be done under ETCS control without the driver having to leave his cab.
This is pretty amazing. Normally a train couldn't be reversed without a driver at the (new) front: in a very long and very deep tunnel like the Lotschberg, this would either mean having a loco and a driver at each end of each train just in case something bad happened, or (if it ever did) waiting until a new loco could be found, driven up to the rear of the train, attached and then driven out again.
This system allows a very quick reaction to problems.
The downside is that it is unique: it's yet another variant of ETCS whic means it isn't truly inter-operable across Europe (and indeed the world: take-up of ETCS seems to be higher outside Europe than inside!).
|
