foto: Manuela Much / DB AG / Public domain/Next-Gen Railways: Unprecedented ETCS Retrofit Achievement by Deutsche Bahn and Partners
Deutsche Bahn, Stadler, and AngelStar have pioneered the retrofitting of locomotives with the European Train Control System (ETCS). For the first time, this has been achieved without the direct involvement of the locomotive manufacturer.
In the framework of retrofitting, two DB Cargo locomotives of 185.2 series are now, for the first time, equipped with Stadler's GUARDIA Baseline 3.4.0 ETCS automatic train protection system, an order the company is mostly used to carrying out on its own vehicles. As Germany is set to retrofit around 13,000 locomotives with ETCS, this marks a critical step in the nation's railway digitalization.
The GUARDIA system serves as a high-level digital communication system for trains using radio signals to manage and control train movements. It consists of the following components:
- Balise Transmission Module (BTM), a communication device on the train that interacts with special markers placed on the tracks called balises from which it gets all the relevant train data.
- Electronic Vital Computer (EVC), a special on-board computer handling crucial information (e.g. the fastest speed the train is allowed to go).
- Driver Machine Interface (DMI), the interface or dashboard the train driver uses. to track all the critical information about the train's operation (e.g. speed, signals, etc.) to control various aspects of the train's systems.
- Based on these, Radio Block Centre (RBC) locates where the trains are and how they're moving, and then sends continuous instructions to the trains (e.g. how fast they should go and which route to follow) through a mobile communication system (Global System for Mobile Communication - Railway or GSM-R).
The fact that Stadler, along with AngelStar and DB, succeeded in retrofitting ETCS without the manufacturer's involvement is groundbreaking as it, according to Hang Peter Lang, CTO at DB Group, will "facilitate the ETCS roll-out for the entire industry in Germany" and "create more capacity for travel and freight transport by rail."
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