1972 'Horizon' documentary and 'AWS+'

[transmanche]

I came across this rather interesting BBC Horizon documentary from 1972 called 'Rail Crash'. It looks at how historical rail crashes led to improvements in safety as the railway industry learned from its mistakes.

In the final few minutes, it has a brief look at two safety systems being developed by BR at that time and shows some test runs. One looks like an 'AWS+', in that it visually distinguishes between yellow, double-yellow and red and that the driver has to 'cancel' the appropriate aspect to avoid an automatic brake application. The other system (which the documentary says is nearly perfected) looks like an early implementation of what ETCS delivers today, giving a continuous in-cab display of the target speed in km/h.

I had no idea that development of protection systems on BR was that advanced. Were there later insurmountable technical glitches which prevent implementation? Or was it just financial and a lack of political will to spend the money needed? It makes me wonder how many lives would have been saved had one or other of these systems been introduced in the 1970s.

[youtube]3s9Ey5VLJr4[/youtube]

 

[edwin_m]

The first one was known as Signal Repeating (or Southern Region) AWS, and was abandoned in favour of standard AWS despite the "double yellow" issue it talks about (I don't know why but probably cost-related). I don't recall the second one, but it may be a version of the automatic driving system that was tried out on the Mickleover test track. Not too many years later APT was fitted with something similar (C-APT) but I think that was based on balises rather than loops - given that both came from BR Research they were probably related.

 

[snowball]

There's a recent thread about it here:

http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?p=2519768

 

[FordFocus]

The other system (which the documentary says is nearly perfected) looks like an early implementation of what ETCS delivers today, giving a continuous in-cab display of the target speed in km/h.

It became ATP. Virtually the same principle but major difference is the drivers display is in mph and LEDs are used instead. It was rolled out in the early 90s on the Great Western fast lines and Chiltern line.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9eTG51aHEg

 

[edwin_m]

It became ATP. Virtually the same principle but major difference is the drivers display is in mph and LEDs are used instead. It was rolled out in the early 90s on the Great Western fast lines and Chiltern line.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9eTG51aHEg

It's quite likely the display for the GW and Chiltern systems was specified based on the earlier work by BR Research, though the C-APT display that happened in between bore no resemblance to either. But I'm pretty sure no other part of the earlier work was incorporated into the GW and Chiltern systems, which are different from each other and based on off-the-shelf products from overseas.

 

[Philip Phlopp]

BR Research, on a good day, would better anybody anywhere in the world when it came to train technology. Light years ahead of their time and a body of patents which now expired, people are still in awe of.

I know I bore people with bogies, but we're only now starting to see a proper adoption of the inside frame bogie which was a BR Research project.

The problem was the government didn't give them enough money for 365 good days in the year, so they were forced into abominations like the BRE-Leyland LEV1 contraption.

 

[ainsworth74]

BR Research, on a good day, would better anybody anywhere in the world when it came to train technology. Light years ahead of their time and a body of patents which now expired, people are still in awe of.

I think that's something that is sometimes forgotten about but BR did have a truly world beating research department which did a hell of a lot of good work. Not often talked about but a legacy worth remembering.

 

[transmanche]

There's a recent thread about it here:

http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?p=2519768

Thank you, I hadn't managed to find that one.