SWISS Federal
Railways (SBB) has announced the successful completion of tests to remotely
control an electric locomotive. Working in partnership with Alstom, a number of
test movements were carried out in February and March.
The purpose of
the tests was to determine whether drivers could remotely move a defective
train to a safe place using automatic train operation (ATO). A total of 24
freight and passenger drivers based in a control room at Zurich Oerlikon
controlled an electric shunting locomotive in Zurich’s Mülligen marshalling
yard.
These are some
of the first tests in Europe that were carried out in real-life conditions in a
marshalling yard rather than on a section of track separated from the rest of
the network.
An
Alstom-developed remote control panel was used by the drivers. Similar to a
simulator control panel, the images on the screens are live feeds from a number
of cameras installed on the locomotive. The locomotive was driven remotely at
speeds of up to 30km/h. During the test drives, a driver and driver manager
were both onboard the locomotive and were ready to intervene and stop the
locomotive at any stage.
Mr Beat Rappo,
project manager for the remote control test drives, says the tests were
completed successfully: “As 24 colleagues took part in the test drives we
received a large volume of useful feedback, which is invaluable to us for the
further development of the technology,” he says.
The role that
human factors play, and how the participating drivers could imagine themselves
really driving the locomotive, were studied by the German Aerospace Centre
(DLR) as part of the test drives.
SBB is looking
to deploy remote control for a variety of uses, including tunnel maintenance
work or at overnight engineering work sites where only short movements are
required. However, SBB says it does not expect ATO to be put into regular use
for several years.
As the results
of the test movements are analysed, an interim and final report will be created
and made available to the Swiss Federal Office of Transport (OFT). The tests
were completed under the Horizon Europe programme Europe's Rail Innovation
Pillar and were funded from the OFT and the Swiss State Secretariat for
Education, Research and Innovation (SERI).