Railway Conversations with Doc Frank
Railway Conversations with Doc Frank
Latest Episodes
#112 – Why More Review Comments Make Railways Less Safe, with Andy Petrie
Twenty people comment on a document. Nineteen of them have no expertise in it. Every comment has to be answered, and the two that mattered get lost in the noise. Andy Petrie has spent thirty years watching this happen and has stopped being poli...
#111 — Fitting ETCS to a Freight Railway, with Craig Evans
Freight is where the ETCS business case really gets tested. Many freight locomotives were built long before anyone drew a European Train Control System (ETCS) fitment design, and there is no factory fit to fall back on. So the fair question is ...
#110 — Why Digital Signalling Never Got Cheaper, with Andy Harrison
Twenty years ago the promise was simple. Digital train control would get cheaper, and ETCS and CBTC would become the default for every new scheme. Neither happened. Costs keep rising, and the system knowledge keeps migrating into the supply bas...
#109 — The World's Most Modern ETCS Runs in India, with Vinay Kumar Singh
When people picture the most advanced ETCS in the world, they think Europe. They should look at Delhi. The Regional Rapid Transit System runs ETCS Level 2 with Hybrid Train Detection, Automatic Train Operation, and LTE radio in place of GSM-R. ...
#108 — CBTC Interoperability: Why It's Harder Than You Think, with Dr Alan Rumsey
CBTC has been the world's de facto metro signalling standard for 40 years. In all that time it has never been made interoperable across suppliers, so why is the question suddenly back on the table, and why is it proving so hard to answer?
