There are numerous digital technologies available to help develop the railway systems of the future, says University of Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education director Professor Clive Roberts.

Roberts also leads the UK Rail Research and Innovation Network (UKRRIN) digital systems centre of excellence.

UKRRIN is a collaborative effort between eight UK universities and 14 industrial partners, such as Bombardier, Siemens, Thales and British Steel.

The UK rail system faces a number of challenges, similar to those faced by the industry worldwide, says Roberts.

The UK rail system carries 1.65-billion passengers a year, as well as 75-million tons of freight.

“Fundamentally, our railways are full.”

Roberts says there is also room for improvement in terms of customer satisfaction, with 9% of UK trains more than five minutes late.

Freight trains, often using busy passenger networks, also often  face delays.

Trains are also often not very green, especially those powered by diesel.

By 2040, the UK will not longer allow the use of diesel traction.

“Building railways is also really expensive in the UK – everywhere, really. We need to reduce the cost of these systems,” says Roberts.

The project pipeline for rail projects in the UK currently stands at around £100-million.

Fuelled by these challenges, the UK rail sector has made a decision that it requires increased innovation in the rail sector, and that it has to export these solutions to the rest of the world, says Roberts.

“UKRRIN aims to accelerate how quickly these innovations get to market.”

UKRRIN has a £65-million budget over the next ten years.

In Birmingham, Roberts and his team are working on a number of interesting technologies.

One of these is digital twinning.

Digital twinning is to create a virtual replica of the real word.

“We got the contract to do the first national project on this side,” notes Roberts.

The project sees the UKRRIN team modelilng the 200 km rail system between Birmingham and London.

“We’ll simulate all railroad operations, logging real time data as we go,” explains Roberts.

This simulation allows the team to run the system at fast forward, quickly creating what-if scenarios to problems such as trains delays, thereby improving traffic management.

“Twinning is also increasingly being rolled out to make investment decisions,” says Roberts.

Using the digital twin system, and combining it with a predictive algorithm, Roberts and his team are also determining if it could produce better results than a human train controller.

Indeed, this has proved to be the case, he notes, with delays in peak periods on the twin system cut from 2 300 seconds to 800 seconds.

UKRRIN has also developed a robotics system that performs rolling-contact track fatigue detection.

This system moves along on its own, looking for cracks in the rail. When a crack is detected, it uses a different sensor for detailed analysis.

“At the moment people are doing this work, with not very reliable results,” notes Roberts.

UKRRIN has done similar work with measurement trains. In fact, it has just created a spin-off company to market this technology with industrial partners.

This project sees the UKRRIN place sensors on in-service vehicles to measure track geometry.

In the UK, this is usually done by a specialised train, with the unit carrying a price tag of around 20-million pounds.

“However, the box of electronics [on this project] is around £15 000 to £20 000,” says Roberts. “It also uses an in-service vehicle, which means there is no need to schedule and run a dedicated train.

UKRRIN has also, for example, worked with the Beijing Metro to reduce energy use through in-cab technology showing the driver how he or she should be driving.

“Ours is a low-cost version of more expensive systems. In trials we managed to save 22% energy . . . You can save millions on electricity.”

If stations are also placed at a bit of an incline, it is possible to save energy, as this incline saves on braking requirements when coming to a stop, while the train then also requires less energy to pull away, says Roberts.

One other big project UKRRIN is involved in, is the development of a hydrogen fuel cell train, in light of the 2040 UK diesel ban.

This train was launched in June. The project successfully reconfigured a 25-year-old train into a hydrogen powered vehicle.