Global System Mobile – Railway (GSM-R)
For many years, in fact close to 150 years I would estimate, there was no ability for anyone to communicate with the driver, guard or indeed anyone on board a moving train. Communications relied on the train stopping, and the driver making a phone call to the signalman from a signal post telephone, lineside phone, or reporting issues to station staff or lineside staff.
It was not until the 1980s that British Rail started installing the National Radio Network (NRN), with radio telephones installed in the cabs of locomotives and units for the first time. As an analogue system, reliant on base stations and electronics from the 1980s, the system had its limitations – but in the absence of anything else, it worked reasonably well, and British Rail arguably had one of the first mobile networks long before anyone had a mobile phone.
All our Class 50s were fitted with NRN equipment, and this equipment remained in use until around 10 years ago.
Its replacement with a reliable, digital, recordable, court-admissible system which finally allowed signallers to contact drivers of moving trains when necessary was well overdue. The GSM-R equipment can also broadcast distress messages of its own – it is linked to the Driver’s Safety Device (DSD – often better known as the Dead Man’s Handle). If a driver becomes incapacitated and fails to acknowledge the DSD alarms within the correct timescale, this “fail to acknowledge” is broadcast to the local signalling centre via the GSM-R.
The GSM-R also has large “Red Button” – this sends out an “All Trains Stop” emergency call to the local signalling centre and all other trains within the same mobile cell, only to be used in the event of an emergency. I have personally witnessed the carnage that ensued when a Red Button was pressed in error on a locomotive stabled in Platform 8 at Crewe station – it took hours to sort out the mess! Most operators now have a secondary safety cover over the red button to prevent such things happening again.
Such a system allowing signallers to contact traincrew on a secure line would have prevented two accidents in the 1980s that I recall – one at Ais Gill on the Settle and Carlisle line and one at Cowden on the Uckfield branch, where on both occasions the signallers knew trains were going to crash before the incidents occurred, but had no way to contact the train crew to prevent the incident from occurring.