posted on 2015-05-07, 08:58authored bySam Bemment, Roger Dixon, Roger Goodall, Christopher Ward, N. Wright
The REPOINT project, led by Loughborough University, has been active since March
2011. It seeks to improve the reliability, safety and maintainability of track
switching technology, with the aim of increasing network capacity and lowering
operating costs. To do this, the project is exploring combining mature concepts
from other industries such as fault tolerance, line-replaceable units and passively
safe design, with novel mechanical arrangements, in order to bring about a step
change in performance. One design, based around a stub-switch arrangement, has
showed particular promise and is the currently the subject of three patent
applications covering the novel mode of operation. A laboratory-scale demonstrator
of all key subsystems is currently under construction, under funding from the
FutureRailway.org team. This is integrated with test and monitoring equipment,
alongside a rapid-prototyping control system. This first-generation design will be
used to prove the concept of operation and to develop the associated control and
monitoring technology.
The goal of this paper is to provide an overview of the REPOINT project to date,
and the design and operation of the proposed novel REPOINT design. This paper
firstly introduces the REPOINT project and highlights of the proposed novel design.
It then discusses the simulation, modelling and design of the demonstrator rig, and
the associated test and development equipment. The conclusions highlight the
progress so far – on the REPOINT project and the Demonstrator rig - and comment
upon potential next steps towards network deployment.
Funding
The authors wish to acknowledge the financial support provided by the United
Kingdom EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) and the UK
RSSB (Railway Safety and Standards Board) in grant number EP/I010823/1, for the
project titled ‘REPOINT: Redundantly engineered points for enhanced reliability and
capacity of railway track switching’. The authors also wish to acknowledge the
support of the UK’s EIT (Enabling Innovation Team), for providing follow-on
research funding towards concept demonstrator design and construction
(http://www.futurerailway.org/).
History
School
Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering
Published in
THE STEPHENSON CONFERENCE - RESEARCH FOR RAILWAYS
Citation
BEMMENT, S.D. ... et al., 2015. Design, construction and operation of a REPOINT laboratory demonstrator. IN: Proceedings of the Stephenson Conference - Research for Railways, Institution of Mechanical
Engineers, London, 21 - 23 April 2015.
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/