Northern is to equip as many as 40 of its trains with new equipment that will enable them to become ‘data hoovers’. The new trains will help transform the way the rail network is maintained alongside helping with sustainability and reliability across its network.
The trains will become ‘Intelligent trains’, and would travel the network and feed information about the track and surrounding infrastructure to Network Rail alongside operating within the public service.
The equipment which will be fitted includes Horizon-scanning LIDAR cameras, thermal imaging software and HD CCTV footage. They are designed to record infrastructure defects, environmental factors and maintenance issues whilst operating.
At the end of service that day, the trains will perform a ‘digital handshake’ which will allow all the data to be downloaded and analysed.
The scheme is part of Northern’s Intelligent Trains programme, and is a collaboration with Network Rail.
Rob Warnes, strategic development director at Northern, said: “We have always sought ways to do things smarter, safer and more efficient.
“Each of our trains travel, on average, 100,000 Km around the North of England every year and that presents an amazing opportunity for data capture.
“We would only need 40 of our fleet of 335 trains to be fitted with this technology to regularly sweep our entire network, which spans 3,000 Km of track.
“Those trains could provide engineers with data from the same section of track over many days, weeks and months – enabling maintenance issues to be identified and repairs scheduled whilst they are within operational safety standards.”
Northern is in talks with Network Rail to secure funding for the programme, which it estimates would save tens of thousands of ‘delay minutes’ caused by urgent, unscheduled maintenance each year.
Northern is the second largest train operator in the UK, with 2,500 services a day to more than 500 stations across the North of England.
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