It would almost certainly be copper wire. While fibre-optics may be used for communication purposes, you still need copper wire to supply power to signals, point motors and track circuits or axle counters, at least to or from a local relay room.
Copper signalling or power cable is significantly heavier than fibre. As are copper paired telecom cables that have a large number of wires.
Though to my knowledge it's not been unknown for them to cut fibre optic cables not realising that they are fibre optic.
Never mind that since the time of Railtrack, all fibre optic cables are (supposed to be) marked every meter with “fibre optic cable”… By marked, embossed/marked at the time of manufacture.
Ultimately the solution to this is probably going to have to be either a dramatic increase in fencing around the railway property [which we might want anyway], or the use of railway designs that minimise the amount of places that need powered equipment.
They have been known to break or cut through fences, and fencing hundreds of miles of railway is not cheap.
Well in theory we could use GSM-R to control a lot of trackside equipment, and that would just leave us with power cables to deal with.
Copper cables will still be needed to supply power to signalling equipment and for the control of equipment like point machines.
Long distance communication is already by the railways own telecom network, which uses fibre optic cables.
Could you make whatever the cables are run through harder to access? E.g. if it's running through a trench, concrete over the top of the trench?
Or is anything that presents serious obstacles to the thieves also likely to make normal maintenance and repairs impossible?
The main problem is that cables are either run (loose) on the surface, or in surface concrete troughing (SCT) routes (like a duct, but made with concrete sections, the bottom having a U shape cross section, and a lipped lid, both of which are either 0.5 metres or 1 meter long). It’s not difficult to take the lids off and pull cables out.
There are various fixings that can be bolted together to try to prevent trespassers from taking the lids off of SCT. But a determined person can overcome the less secure types. Various ‘local’ solutions have been used from time to time. Including using BAND-IT stainless steel tape and long lengths of steel bars to make it extremely difficult to get the lids off of the SCT.
For new schemes, I would like the railway to install buried ducts (like BT use). But this costs money so does not happen.
In the past in some areas (1950s to late 1960s, but may vary across the country) the main cable routes were buried (some were 6 foot deep). Strangely enough, these don’t suffer from cable theft!
The reason the railways did this, is because even back when telegraph systems and the early telephone systems were being installed on pole routes, the copper wires were being stolen. This problem of theft continued through to the 1950s and beyond.
I think part of the problem with the GWR electrification was that the signalling cables had been buried to reduce theft, and then mast foundations were piled through them.
Part of that was the railways poor record keeping (there are supposed to be cable route diagrams), ad-hock cable renewals that did not confirm to the standards, lack of knowledge and incompetence. Unfortunately the railways have a nasty habit of drilling, cutting, or otherwise damaging their own cables. I’ve attended about as many self inflicted cable strikes as cable thefts. One funny one being an external utility company using a cable mole to install a new cable under the railway, but which cut two railway buried cables in the process! One telecom cable used for signalling circuits and a 650V signalling power cable.
Does the railway use copper or aluminium in power cables these days?
The latter are significantly less valuable to metal thieves.
All railway signalling cables are copper including the signalling 110V ac, 230V (240V) ac, 650V ac and 110V dc power distribution for the signalling equipment. We also use copper paired telecom cable for both signalling (including axle counters, remote control systems and signalling data links) as well as for telephone circuits. For long distance communications fibre-optic cable is also used. Some older long distance telecom cables are also copper.
Someone from the distribution and plant section/department should be able to tell you if they use aluminium cables for 400V (415V) three phase and higher voltage power cables. I’ve only ever seen copper 400V (415V) three phase cables used. But I’ve had no involvement with third Rail or OHL power systems.
how does the backend of long distance signal cabeling work these days?, if IP based then should be easy to design so that the data can take multible routes so breakage of a cable wouldnt take out the signalling abiet you prob want to replace the cable ASAP
Signalling systems normally only use the railways own private telecom network. Where SSI (solid state interlocking) data links are used, there are two networks and these are (supposed to be) diversely routed. This is done for reliability (and is called system redundancy), so that if one cable is cut, the system should continue working.
If the Railway resignalled for a GSMR system with In-Cab Signalling, would such a system be affected by cable theft?
You still need power cables to supply the equipment with power. For example the GSMR equipment buildings with the radio and communications equipment. And equipment like point machines still needs cables, location equipment cupboards and copper control/communications cables.
You'd still need points, and they're typically powered by transforming 650V down to the required voltages.
There are two legs, and they should be diversely routed so that a break/fire/whatever is unlikely to knock out both paths at once.
Exactly.