Rail Tech Talk – Safety First for Updated & Automated Railways

Welcome to our recurring post, Rail Tech Talk, highlighting how technology is helping the Rail Industry charge forward.

Replacing Chile’s Aging Railway System

Boasting a ridership of just over 50 million people per year, Chile’s railways have fallen into disrepair, making travel cumbersome and dangerous.” The country ranked 70th out of 103 for quality of railroad infrastructure in the 2019 World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report, and reached the 61st place for the efficiency of train services. These results may seem positive if compared to the likes of Argentina and Brazil, but in the broader picture, they position Chile far behind major rail markets like Japan and Germany.”

The country’s Chile on Rails project seeks to change that.

Chile has $5bn set aside for repair and laying new track, as well as doubling cargo volumes in an effort to enhance not only its safety and volume capacity, but also its global competitiveness. Complementing the safety portion, Chile would do well to build in its training protocols in tandem by bringing key players up to speed on new railroad technology as quickly as possible to meet planned efficiency goals!

Renovating High Speed Lines in Spain with Automation

Thales Spain will be working with the Madrid-Seville and Córdoba-Málaga high-speed lines to maintain and renovate their traffic control facilities. There will be changes made to signaling components, fallen object detectors, hot boxes and lateral wind detectors.

Probably most interesting upgrades is Thales’ commitment to predictive maintenance. And they’ll be integrating on-board control systems on 43 automated trains to make this a reality, along with renovations to buildings and technical rooms. “Thales will carry out predictive maintenance of the facilities by monitoring existing operations to optimize high-speed railway services.”

Thales Spain is continuing to update their railways, with high-speed trains as their focus. This is a great opportunity for Thales and Spain to kick off amazing innovation!

Be sure to check out our Rail Virtual Training Solutions to see why BNSF, CSX, Amtrak, NS, UP, CN & KCS partner with Heartwood to deploy a variety of railroad training simulations and guides. And if you have any questions about these technologies, please reach out!

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