AA Radio puts Zetron to work on the rails.

Over recent years the State Government in Victoria Australia has undertaken to implement a “Regional Fast rail Project” to improve the speed and frequency of trains on the rail corridors to several provincial cities. In reality, the Fast Train touted in the press is a misnomer as the underlying requirement was to provide an upgrade of railway infrastructure that had been installed in the early 1900’s.

One of Australia’s major construction companies, Thiess, together with railway signaling company Alstom combined in a Joint Venture to provide the new equipment for two of the four Fast Rail corridors. With the incorporation of radio communications in the Contract the Joint Venture partners approached AA Radio Services to provide the expertise in that area. Ian Miller, a Director of AA Radio Services, said that the need for Radio Consoles in the system meant that Zetron was an obvious choice for the project.

Although the actual radio systems were very simple, the fact that the radio coverage had special requirements meant that Zetron systems were perfectly suited to the application. A combination of Zetron DCS5020 digital switches, the PC based Graphical User Interface and a Zetron Audio Management Unit gave the signal operators a flexible and reliable communications system. The radio system comprised tait fixed radio units with connection between the radio sites and the Control Location being by circuits within the Fibre Optic network provided by the Government agency who control the actual railway infrastructure. The trains on the system are operated by private companies and all radio equipment in all trains is common, the need to retain operations within the existing channeling of the train radios provided one of the many design constraints.

AA Radio Services were forced to operate under quite awkward conditions at times, because the rail system was fully operational for much of the contract period, some works had to be carried out ‘After last train and before first train’, effectively between midnight and 0500. In addition, staff had to have Railway Trackside Safety Certification if any of the works were within three metres of the track, effectively for almost all works. In addition to the radio system, AA Radio also installed a third-party supplied telemetry system at many of the Trackside sites that enable the signal system to be able to monitor items such as Boom barriers at level crossings.

In any project of this magnitude there are always minor works that are required that were not forecast initially. One of these turned out to be the ‘train Describer bells’, a relatively simple system whereby a signalman indicates to the next signal operator along the track that he is releasing a train from his control to the next site. These bells are in part a hang-over from a bygone ear, however, to signalmen they are still part of the operational needs. Where the old system provided signal bells on the copper circuits using telephone ringing voltages and format, these technologies won’t operate in a Fibre Optic environment. AA Radio Services designed a simple and effective system utilising tone signaling to replace the old Bell System and give the signalmen their alerting system. This was just a small instance of AA Radio’s ‘can do’ attitude that was part of the success of the project.

“It didn’t matter what we threw at AA Radio, they just went away and made it work, no fuss, no complaints, it just happened” said Stuart McLean, a Railway Signaling Engineer with Alstom. “AA Radio were professional in their approach, worked very effectively with all parties and sought to have involvement from the users to ensure that they would be happy with the finished product, we were extremely happy with their approach and results”.

Ian Miller was also very complimentary about the Zetron involvement in the Project. “Even though Phil Dowd from Zetron Australia had been involved in early discussions on the project with Alstom, he was very co-operative and supportive of AA Radio taking over the sale and installation of the equipment” Ian said. “The technical support from Zetron was also excellent, from the engineering staff who came to our workshop to set up for the Factory Acceptance Tests and train our technicians, through to the back-up support, they were terrific”.