British Rail Telecommunications
Encyclopedia
In May 1837 William Fothergill Cooke
(1806-1879) and Professor Charles Wheatstone
(1802-1875) entered into a partnership, and on 10th June patented a five-needle telegraph for which five wires were necessary. The telegraph worked by deflecting any two of the needles at the same time to point to any one of 20 letters on the grid behind the needle. Sending and receiving messages was a slow process, as each word had to be spelt out. With only 20 letters on the grid, the spelling sometimes contained inaccuracies. On 25th July, Wheatstone’s and Cooke’s telegraph was demonstrated to the directors of the London and Birmingham Railway
between Euston
and Camden Town
, a distance of just under a mile.
In 1839 the world’s first commercial telegraph line using the Cooke and Wheatstone five-needle system was commissioned by the Great Western Railway
and built between Paddington
and West Drayton, a distance of 13 miles. It was working to Hanwell by the 6th April and was completed to West Drayton on 9th April. The public could pay one shilling (5p) to view the telegraph and could send their own telegrams. The undertaking marked the first commercial use of electricity. The line was later extended to Slough, but when it was proposed to carry it to Bristol, the Directors of the railway company objected and the agreement with Cooke and Wheatstone was rejected. Eventually, it was agreed that Cooke was allowed to retain the wires in position on condition that he worked the system at his own expense and sent the railway signals free of charge.
British Rail Telecommunications was created by British Rail
(BR). It was the largest private telecoms network in Britain, consisting of 17,000 route kilometres of fibre optic and copper
cable which connected every major city and town in the country and provided links to continental Europe
through the Channel Tunnel
.
BR also operated its own national trunked radio network providing dedicated train-to-shore mobile communications, and in the early 1980s BR helped establish Mercury Communications’, now C&WC, core infrastructure by laying a resilient ‘figure-of-eight’ fibre optic network alongside Britain’s railway lines, spanning London, Bristol, Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester.
Realising the enormous commercial potential, BR Telecommunications Limited (BRT) was created in 1992 to exploit its wayleave rights and to take responsibility for the management and maintenance of the industry’s voice, data and radio networks associated with the operational running of the railway and its business needs.
BRT was bought by Racal Electronics in 1995 and became Racal-BRT. This merged with Racal Network Services (RNS) in 1997 to become Racal Telecom. Two companies, Thales Translink and Thales Fieldforce evolved from Racal Telecom in 1999 and were merged into Thales Telecommunications Services
(TTS) in April 2002. TTS provides specialist telecoms services to the UK transport market.
On 1st April 2009 under TUPE around 480 telecoms experts moved from Thales to Network Rail to maintain the telecoms network.
locomotives:
’s telecom systems and networks.
The fixed bearer network is at the core of railway communications and thus is vital to the operation of the railway. It provides essential circuits for signalling and electrification control systems, train radio systems, lineside communications, level crossing CCTV, customer information systems as well as more general IT and business telephony needs.
The fixed bearer network infrastructure comprises transmission systems and telephone exchanges linked by a fibre optic and copper cable network that is located mainly within trackside troughing routes.
British Rail had several analogue radio networks that support mobile communication applications for drivers and lineside workers. These radio networks comprise of base stations, antenna systems and control equipment.
The National Radio Network (NRN) was developed specifically for the operational railway; it provides radio coverage for 98% of the rail network through 500 base stations and 21 radio exchanges.
The NRN offers full access to the BRT telephone network; public service telephone network (PSTN) dialling, including international, is also available. It can provide 'dedicated' open channels on talk-through mode for incident management and an override priority facility to ensure that all emergency calls are immediately connected to the railway's Train Control Offices (TCO) and Electrical Control Rooms (ECR).
The NRN and ORN are based on analogue radio technology and provide a high level of coverage throughout the railway network for mobile communication at the trackside. The ORN offers facilities for driver emergency communication with the local train control office.
The RETB system is based on similar technology as the NRN and ORN but provides data communication for signalling token block exchange as well as voice communication.
Secure communication between drivers and signallers is provided by the Cab Secure Radio (CSR) systems located in various parts of the country. This application of analogue radio technology is deigned to offer complete radio coverage at the trackside within the limits of its deployment.
Fixed communication at the trackside is provided by lineside communication systems. These systems are primarily provided for signallers’ communication with drivers and the public through telephones located on signal posts and at level crossings.
Signal Post Telephones (SPTs) and other lineside phones are linked to telephone concentrators at the signal box.
Special self-monitoring systems (PETS) are also provided for high-risk level crossings.
CCTV systems are provided on platforms where driver only operation train services are operated and at some stations with sub-surface platforms. These self-contained systems comprise of cameras, monitors, cabling and control equipment.
Voice recorders are also classed as telecoms assets.
In the late 1960s the National Telecoms Plan (NTP) was launched which brought about a centrally managed (BRHQ) project to install a nation-wide co-axial cable based 4 MHz system of transmission bearer services for voice and on-line real time data networks. This was completed in 1972.
The fixed network as we know it today was installed piecemeal as part of BR’s electrification and signalling projects between 1972 and 1993.
Fault reporting is localised and system failure is generally only uncovered as a consequence of customer complaint. The fixed telecommunications network consists of a wide variety of mostly old technologies, some of which are obsolete.
As a result of the privatisation process, a significant proportion of the fixed telecommunications network is now provided through lease agreements with Global Crossing
and it is maintained by the former BRT.
radio systems are being introduced across Europe under EU legislation for interoperability. In the UK, Network Rail has established a stakeholder’s board with cross industry representation to drive the UK implementation of GSM-R to replace the National Radio Network (NRN) and Cab Secure Radio (CSR)
systems currently in use.
Rail Safety & Standards Board (RSSB) are revising the current train to shore radio standard GO/RT3410, and renumbering it as GE/RT8080, and developing a new standard GE/RT8081 that contains requirements that are specific to GSM-R. The Railway Group Standards are being developed to support the European Functional Requirements Specification (FRS) and should be read in conjunction with this document.
There have been two rounds of consultation on these documents, and a final round of consultation is planned for the summer of 2003, with the intention of publishing the standards in December 2003.
The Network Rail National Project for the introduction of GSM-R plans for the radio service to be live nation-wide by 2007, with the current radio systems switched off at the end of 2009.
Britain’s GSM-R network should be fully operational by 2013 at a cost of £1.2 billion. This cost though does not include the WCML
. The WCML transmission equipment is Marconi and is maintained by Telent.
This will replace the existing CSR, NRN and legacy telecoms system (formerly BRT/Racal/Thales/Global Crossing).
GSM-R is the bearer for the ERTMS signalling being introduced from 2010.
William Fothergill Cooke
Sir William Fothergill Cooke was, with Charles Wheatstone, the co-inventor of the Cooke-Wheatstone electrical telegraph, which was patented in May 1837...
(1806-1879) and Professor Charles Wheatstone
Charles Wheatstone
Sir Charles Wheatstone FRS , was an English scientist and inventor of many scientific breakthroughs of the Victorian era, including the English concertina, the stereoscope , and the Playfair cipher...
(1802-1875) entered into a partnership, and on 10th June patented a five-needle telegraph for which five wires were necessary. The telegraph worked by deflecting any two of the needles at the same time to point to any one of 20 letters on the grid behind the needle. Sending and receiving messages was a slow process, as each word had to be spelt out. With only 20 letters on the grid, the spelling sometimes contained inaccuracies. On 25th July, Wheatstone’s and Cooke’s telegraph was demonstrated to the directors of the London and Birmingham Railway
London and Birmingham Railway
The London and Birmingham Railway was an early railway company in the United Kingdom from 1833 to 1846, when it became part of the London and North Western Railway ....
between Euston
Euston
Euston may refer to:Communities*Euston, Suffolk, UK*Euston, New South Wales, AustraliaStations*Euston railway station, London, UK*Euston tube station, London, UK*Euston Square tube station, London, UKOther...
and Camden Town
Camden Town
-Economy:In recent years, entertainment-related businesses and a Holiday Inn have moved into the area. A number of retail and food chain outlets have replaced independent shops driven out by high rents and redevelopment. Restaurants have thrived, with the variety of culinary traditions found in...
, a distance of just under a mile.
In 1839 the world’s first commercial telegraph line using the Cooke and Wheatstone five-needle system was commissioned by the Great Western Railway
Great Western Railway
The Great Western Railway was a British railway company that linked London with the south-west and west of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament in 1835 and ran its first trains in 1838...
and built between Paddington
Paddington
Paddington is a district within the City of Westminster, in central London, England. Formerly a metropolitan borough, it was integrated with Westminster and Greater London in 1965...
and West Drayton, a distance of 13 miles. It was working to Hanwell by the 6th April and was completed to West Drayton on 9th April. The public could pay one shilling (5p) to view the telegraph and could send their own telegrams. The undertaking marked the first commercial use of electricity. The line was later extended to Slough, but when it was proposed to carry it to Bristol, the Directors of the railway company objected and the agreement with Cooke and Wheatstone was rejected. Eventually, it was agreed that Cooke was allowed to retain the wires in position on condition that he worked the system at his own expense and sent the railway signals free of charge.
British Rail Telecommunications was created by British Rail
British Rail
British Railways , which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was the operator of most of the rail transport in Great Britain between 1948 and 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the "Big Four" British railway companies and lasted until the gradual privatisation of British Rail, in stages...
(BR). It was the largest private telecoms network in Britain, consisting of 17,000 route kilometres of fibre optic and copper
Copper
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...
cable which connected every major city and town in the country and provided links to continental Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
through the Channel Tunnel
Channel Tunnel
The Channel Tunnel is a undersea rail tunnel linking Folkestone, Kent in the United Kingdom with Coquelles, Pas-de-Calais near Calais in northern France beneath the English Channel at the Strait of Dover. At its lowest point, it is deep...
.
BR also operated its own national trunked radio network providing dedicated train-to-shore mobile communications, and in the early 1980s BR helped establish Mercury Communications’, now C&WC, core infrastructure by laying a resilient ‘figure-of-eight’ fibre optic network alongside Britain’s railway lines, spanning London, Bristol, Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester.
Realising the enormous commercial potential, BR Telecommunications Limited (BRT) was created in 1992 to exploit its wayleave rights and to take responsibility for the management and maintenance of the industry’s voice, data and radio networks associated with the operational running of the railway and its business needs.
BRT was bought by Racal Electronics in 1995 and became Racal-BRT. This merged with Racal Network Services (RNS) in 1997 to become Racal Telecom. Two companies, Thales Translink and Thales Fieldforce evolved from Racal Telecom in 1999 and were merged into Thales Telecommunications Services
Thales Group
The Thales Group is a French electronics company delivering information systems and services for the aerospace, defense, transportation and security markets...
(TTS) in April 2002. TTS provides specialist telecoms services to the UK transport market.
On 1st April 2009 under TUPE around 480 telecoms experts moved from Thales to Network Rail to maintain the telecoms network.
Locomotives
British Rail Telecomms inherited four British Rail Class 20British Rail Class 20
The British Rail Class 20, otherwise known as an English Electric Type 1, is a class of diesel-electric locomotive. In total, 228 locomotives in the class were built by English Electric between 1957 and 1968, the large number being in part because of the failure of other early designs in the same...
locomotives:
- 20075 - Sir William CookeWilliam Fothergill CookeSir William Fothergill Cooke was, with Charles Wheatstone, the co-inventor of the Cooke-Wheatstone electrical telegraph, which was patented in May 1837...
- rebuilt as 20309 and in service with Direct Rail ServicesDirect Rail ServicesDirect Rail Services is a freight operating company created by British Nuclear Fuels Limited. The company started rail operations in 1995 using five heavily refurbished Class 20/3 diesel locomotives. Since then it has expanded greatly, and has acquired many more locomotives, most bought...
(DRS) - 20128 - Guglielmo MarconiGuglielmo MarconiGuglielmo Marconi was an Italian inventor, known as the father of long distance radio transmission and for his development of Marconi's law and a radio telegraph system. Marconi is often credited as the inventor of radio, and indeed he shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand...
- rebuilt as 20307 and in service with DRS - 20131 - Almon B. Strowger - rebuilt as 20306 and in service with DRS
- 20187 - Sir Charles WheatstoneCharles WheatstoneSir Charles Wheatstone FRS , was an English scientist and inventor of many scientific breakthroughs of the Victorian era, including the English concertina, the stereoscope , and the Playfair cipher...
- rebuilt as 20308 and in service with DRS
British Rail Telecoms assets
This section briefly describes the assets that comprise British RailBritish Rail
British Railways , which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was the operator of most of the rail transport in Great Britain between 1948 and 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the "Big Four" British railway companies and lasted until the gradual privatisation of British Rail, in stages...
’s telecom systems and networks.
The fixed bearer network is at the core of railway communications and thus is vital to the operation of the railway. It provides essential circuits for signalling and electrification control systems, train radio systems, lineside communications, level crossing CCTV, customer information systems as well as more general IT and business telephony needs.
The fixed bearer network infrastructure comprises transmission systems and telephone exchanges linked by a fibre optic and copper cable network that is located mainly within trackside troughing routes.
British Rail had several analogue radio networks that support mobile communication applications for drivers and lineside workers. These radio networks comprise of base stations, antenna systems and control equipment.
The National Radio Network (NRN) was developed specifically for the operational railway; it provides radio coverage for 98% of the rail network through 500 base stations and 21 radio exchanges.
The NRN offers full access to the BRT telephone network; public service telephone network (PSTN) dialling, including international, is also available. It can provide 'dedicated' open channels on talk-through mode for incident management and an override priority facility to ensure that all emergency calls are immediately connected to the railway's Train Control Offices (TCO) and Electrical Control Rooms (ECR).
The NRN and ORN are based on analogue radio technology and provide a high level of coverage throughout the railway network for mobile communication at the trackside. The ORN offers facilities for driver emergency communication with the local train control office.
The RETB system is based on similar technology as the NRN and ORN but provides data communication for signalling token block exchange as well as voice communication.
Secure communication between drivers and signallers is provided by the Cab Secure Radio (CSR) systems located in various parts of the country. This application of analogue radio technology is deigned to offer complete radio coverage at the trackside within the limits of its deployment.
Fixed communication at the trackside is provided by lineside communication systems. These systems are primarily provided for signallers’ communication with drivers and the public through telephones located on signal posts and at level crossings.
Signal Post Telephones (SPTs) and other lineside phones are linked to telephone concentrators at the signal box.
Special self-monitoring systems (PETS) are also provided for high-risk level crossings.
CCTV systems are provided on platforms where driver only operation train services are operated and at some stations with sub-surface platforms. These self-contained systems comprise of cameras, monitors, cabling and control equipment.
Voice recorders are also classed as telecoms assets.
Asset information
This section gives a brief insight into the origin of British Rail’s telecom assets and why they are in the condition they are today.In the late 1960s the National Telecoms Plan (NTP) was launched which brought about a centrally managed (BRHQ) project to install a nation-wide co-axial cable based 4 MHz system of transmission bearer services for voice and on-line real time data networks. This was completed in 1972.
The fixed network as we know it today was installed piecemeal as part of BR’s electrification and signalling projects between 1972 and 1993.
Fault reporting is localised and system failure is generally only uncovered as a consequence of customer complaint. The fixed telecommunications network consists of a wide variety of mostly old technologies, some of which are obsolete.
As a result of the privatisation process, a significant proportion of the fixed telecommunications network is now provided through lease agreements with Global Crossing
Global Crossing
Global Crossing Limited was a telecommunications company that provides computer networking services worldwide. It maintained a large backbone and offered transit and peering links, VPN, leased lines, audio and video conferencing, long distance telephone, managed services, dialup, colocation and...
and it is maintained by the former BRT.
FTN and GSM-R
GSM-RGSM-R
GSM-R, Global System for Mobile Communications - Railway or GSM-Railway is an international wireless communications standard for railway communication and applications. A sub-system of European Rail Traffic Management System , it is used for communication between train and railway regulation...
radio systems are being introduced across Europe under EU legislation for interoperability. In the UK, Network Rail has established a stakeholder’s board with cross industry representation to drive the UK implementation of GSM-R to replace the National Radio Network (NRN) and Cab Secure Radio (CSR)
Cab Secure Radio
Cab Secure Radio is an in-cab analogue radiotelephone system used on parts of the British railway network. Its main function is to provide a secure speech link between the train driver and the signaller which cannot be overheard by other train drivers...
systems currently in use.
Rail Safety & Standards Board (RSSB) are revising the current train to shore radio standard GO/RT3410, and renumbering it as GE/RT8080, and developing a new standard GE/RT8081 that contains requirements that are specific to GSM-R. The Railway Group Standards are being developed to support the European Functional Requirements Specification (FRS) and should be read in conjunction with this document.
There have been two rounds of consultation on these documents, and a final round of consultation is planned for the summer of 2003, with the intention of publishing the standards in December 2003.
The Network Rail National Project for the introduction of GSM-R plans for the radio service to be live nation-wide by 2007, with the current radio systems switched off at the end of 2009.
Britain’s GSM-R network should be fully operational by 2013 at a cost of £1.2 billion. This cost though does not include the WCML
WCML
WCML may refer to:* West Coast Main Line, a mainline railway in the United Kingdom* WCML , a television station licensed to Alpena, Michigan, United States...
. The WCML transmission equipment is Marconi and is maintained by Telent.
Roll out
The Network Rail GSM-R system is being rolled out nationally alongside the Fixed Telecom Network (FTN).This will replace the existing CSR, NRN and legacy telecoms system (formerly BRT/Racal/Thales/Global Crossing).
Safety recommendations
GSM-R addresses the relevant recommendations from several accident inquiries:- ClaphamClapham Junction rail crashThe Clapham Junction rail crash was a serious railway accident involving two collisions between three commuter trains at 08:10 on the morning of Monday, 12 December 1988....
(1988) - Abbeyhill (1994)
- CowdenCowden rail crashThe Cowden rail crash occurred on 15 October 1994, around 350 metres southeast of Cowden Station in the English county of Kent. There was a head-on collision between two trains in heavy fog after the driver of a northbound train ran past a red signal and entered a single line section.Five people...
(1994) - Ais Gill (1995)
- Doncaster (1995)
- WinsfordWinsford rail crashThere have been three major rail accidents near Winsford in Cheshire:-1948 accident:On the evening of 26 December 1962, cold weather and snow in and around Crewe had caused points to become frozen and trains were being detained at signals...
(1999) - Ladbroke GroveLadbroke Grove rail crashThe Ladbroke Grove Rail Crash was a rail accident which occurred on 5 October 1999 at Ladbroke Grove, London, England. Thirty-one people were killed and more than 520 injured...
(1999) - Llanbrynmair (2000)
- Tregoss Moor (2000)
- HatfieldHatfield rail crashThe Hatfield rail crash was a railway accident on 17 October 2000, at Hatfield, Hertfordshire, UK. Although the accident killed fewer than other accidents, Hatfield exposed the major stewardship shortcomings of the privatised national railway infrastructure company Railtrack and the failings of...
(2001)
GSM-R is the bearer for the ERTMS signalling being introduced from 2010.