Professional Engineering visited
Railtex, a trade show for the railways industry at the NEC in Birmingham, to get an early look at the latest innovations coming down the line from forward-thinking companies all over the planet. Here are four new technologies that caught our eye.
Switching seats
Getting a seat on the train to work is a daily lottery for many commuters, while for others it’s a distant dream. Meanwhile, travelling in the middle of day is generally much less arduous, with ample space and seating for most passengers. But the way railway carriages are configured has generally been set up for either one or the other – the New York subway, for example, has plenty of space for standing but not many seats; while suburban rail services into London tend to take the opposite approach.
That could be set to change with new types of seating which can be easily reconfigured. At Railtex, design consultancy PriestmanGoode unveiled a new seating system called
Island Bay. It provides normal seating during off-peak hours and a higher density configuration that can add an extra 15 to 20 per cent more seats and increase standing capacity during busier times. The regular seats slide up to become more like high stools, giving room for the table to in the middle to fold out and become a regular seat.
Special delivery
Another form of convertible carriage could help take thousands of cargo trucks off the roads. The ‘adaptable carriage,’ developed by
42 Technology and funded by the Rail Safety and Standards Board allows seats and table in a passenger carriage to be automatically stowed away to create space for cargo. It takes under three minutes for 20 rows of seats to be automatically compressed and stowed in a typical passenger carriage using the unique sliding and locking mechanism. There's also a sensor system to make sure no sleeping passengers get caught out by the transformation.
A typical passenger carriage has the same amount of storage space as an articulated lorry. It’s estimated that there are 15,000 lorries’ worth of spare capacity just going in and out of London every weekday – with services running against the commuter flow at peak times particularly empty, for example. This extra space could, according to 42 Technology, be used for the delivery of high value packages from online retailers, or fresh foodstuffs.
"Adaptable Carriage could be a real game changer,” Zane van Romunde, the head of 42 Technology's transport sector business, told
PE. He said it could prove a key source of additional revenue for train companies. “This income could be invested in improved facilities and services for passengers or used to limit ticket price increases. The approach could also help reduce emissions, cut road congestion and speed up delivery of goods bought online.”
Keeping it clean
Nanotechnology could help fight vandalism, thanks to a product showcased at Railtex.
Aqueous Guard, which is being distributed by Unipart Rail, is a ceramic coating for exterior and interior train surfaces. It's a technology that's been used in the marine sector for about a decade, particularly on luxury yachts.
Now it's been tweaked and modified for use in the rail industry. It forms a coating that chemically bonds with the underlying layer. "It makes it almost like glass in terms of its appearance - so it fills all of the pores of a substrate," Unipart product manager Mike Smith told
PE. "It's the pores of a substrate that enable something to adhere to it, including dirt and graffiti. This creates a glass-like finish that effectively fills all of those pores and creates a barrier that reduces cleaning significantly." This means easier and less frequent cleaning. In the case of graffiti, it could actually act as a deterrent, said Smith, because spray paint will just run instead of sticking to the surface.
Some operators have seen a 70 per cent reduction in cleaning with the coating. It would take about eight to 10 man hours to apply to a typical UK train carriage, if coating the exterior, the cab and the toilets, for a cost of around £2000, depending on volume.
It was originally formulated for defence purposes, and Nasa used it for rockets, and has now been adapted for the rail industry. "From marine, they've taken that base starting point and developed it, adapted it, put different solvents in it to make it cure quickly," said Smith. "So there's quite a lot of adaptation to make it work in the industry and make sure it's flexible and has the long life without cracking or yellowing."
There are also safety benefits. A separate, diluted hydrophobic coating for glass creates a very thin barrier that repels water, allowing drivers to see the way ahead more clearly. An
MIT study found that hydrophobic coatings could improve driver reaction time, and decrease fatigue.
Ears to the ground
Safety at level crossings is usually managed by traditional signalling systems, which use electronic sensors built into the rails to tell when a train is coming and transmit that information to the level crossing. The most common systems rely on an electrical circuit being formed between the train and the tracks.
But if the sensors fail, there’s no way of telling what’s coming down the line. A new technology developed by Norwegian company
Wavetrain Systems is set to change that, though. The approach relies on audio detection – the sensors are attached to the rails much nearer to the crossing point, within 15 to 20 metres. They pick up the unique soundwaves created by approaching trains. The digital data is sent to a control unit, which can then activate warning signals at the appropriate time. This reduces the need for long lengths of cabling alongside the tracks, and allows the system to operate autonomously.