"Wave Train" level crossing to be trialled on the Fen Line

[Beeyar Wunby]

News has just reached us that NR intends to trial a new type of level crossing at New Road (UWG) level crossing on the Fen Line. This is just south of Blackhorse Drove crossing. In recent years Blackhorse Drove has been the scene of a serious collision with a road vehicle, along with similar incidents at Hatsons crossing and Pleasants crossing.

The new technology is called Wave Train and uses acoustic sensing to detect when a train is approaching. In this way it offers a cheap and efficient implementation as it is stand-alone and does not need to be tied into the existing signalling system.

Linky to company website here

Link to EDP blurb here


BW

[richard thompson]

Would be good if they can it working reliably.
Richard

[bramleyman]

Having worked this line until a few years ago, I experienced a Dust Cart being driven over one crossing mentioned, as the train approached and our driver getting the V sign for sounding the horn, From the dust-cart driver, I have been saying, something SHOULD have been done along there Long before now.

In fact I still live in the area, and have seen several near-misses by those too lazy to check for any trains approaching first.

[Beeyar Wunby]

Yes we still have a lot of near-misses on the Fen Line. In addition to Bramleyman's comments about people with poor attitude (which I've experienced myself), I also think fatigue sometimes plays a significant part. Particularly during harvest time out on the Fens when agricultural workers are working from before dawn to long after dusk. It's not unusual for them to work in excess of 20 hour days - many of them are foreign nationals, and in any case they seem to be exempted from the sort of EU Working-Time restrictions that we have !

The previously mentioned bi-directional line between Downham Market and Littleport has a linespeed of 90mph, and all trains except the 2 daily sand trains are EMUs, so are almost silent on approach. People really don't appreciate just how quickly a distant train gets to them.

On UWGs (User-worked gates) the person wishing to cross is required to look out for themselves. Sometimes when they've been backwards and forwards across the line many times a day they get a little blasé. And they're often dog tired. Or they reckon they know the times of all the trains because the Kings Lynn service is a clock-face timetable......when in fact due to ECML problems it can be up to 30 mins late occasionally.

It's part of irrational human nature to believe that the more often you repeatedly do something that's wrong and get away with it, the more you convince yourself that it's not dangerous. Sadly though what you're actually doing is repeatedly exposing yourself to a risk, and are therefore more likely to invoke an incident.

So hopefully the new Wave Train technology will make the railway safer by giving audible and visual warnings at occupational crossings which currently have none. It would be great if there is a (relatively) cheap answer to making User Worked crossings safer.

The paradox about safety is you often never know when someone's life has been saved, but you always know when it hasn't.

BW