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PRZOOM - /newswire/ -
Bury, Lancashire, United Kingdom, 11/03/2009 - Rail safety systems specialist, Rowe Hankins, has just completed the largest on-train monitor and recorder upgrade in the history of the company. The installation on the fleet of Tubelines Limited, the Jubilee Line operator, involved 63 trains.
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Rail safety systems specialist, Rowe Hankins, has just completed the largest on-train monitor and recorder upgrade in the history of the company. The installation on the fleet of Tubelines Limited, the Jubilee Line operator, involved 63 train sets and OTMR’s. The contract was undertaken in close cooperation with fleet maintenance contractor, Alstom Transport Services.
The original HaslerRail Teloc 2200 OTMR’s were supplies in 2000, but upgrades to the signalling and the trains had resulted in these having insufficient data capacity for current needs. An urgent replacement or upgrade was needed, but this had to be achieved with minimal operational disruption.
After careful evaluation, upgrading the existing equipment was selected as the most viable option. This required significant hardware and software modification and the development of production and installation techniques for rapid implementation. Following initial design work, prototypes were exhaustively type tested before full scale production and scheduled improvements commenced.
The scope of work was extensive: replacement of the erasable, programmable read only memory (Eprom) in the existing OTMR’s, reconfiguration of loading file software, installation of a new ‘master’ OTMR, known as the Databin and fitting a crash proof memory (CPM). The new Databin’s, CPM’s and wiring were pre-engineered by Rowe Hankins to allow each OTMR set to be turned round rapidly.
Logistics were carefully coordinated between Rowe Hankins, the Swiss OTMR supplier HaslerRail and Alstom. This ensured that the necessary components were received into Rowe Hankins and pre-engineering work completed as the original equipment was removed from the trains and shipped to the works. A benchmark time of four hours per upgrade was established at the start of the programme. With a minimum of 24 hours necessary for the curing of the sealant meant a complete turn round time within 48 hours was achieved.
“Our team pulled out all the stops to complete this project on time and to budget,” explained Rowe Hankins managing director Amanda Jones. “On occasions I had components delivered to my home over the weekend to ensure that work could commence first thing on Monday. At other times we had staff working through the weekend and late into the night to meet deadlines. It was a remarkable effort.”
Rowe Hankins Ltd, Power House, Parker Street, BL9 0RJ, UK. For more info, please visit rowehankins.com/.
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