Tim Lane

Said the following about GSM-R Engineering Team:

“From IVRS to FRMCS – A journey of engineering determination.

The year is 2002, the Ketchup Song has gone straight to number one, Railtrack is in administration and the UK Government is focussed on spiralling West Coast modernisation project costs. European mandate will force UK to implement GSM-R and the struggling WCML project is faced with the operational challenges of replacing track circuits with axle counters. Enter a fledgling GSM-R engineering team, delivering the first British deployment of GSM-R supporting yellow IVRS (Interim Voice Radio System) drivers’ handsets as a replacement for track circuit operating clips.

The uniqueness of the British GSM-R challenge would continue through the noughties, for the now national team, as the requirements of the UK mainland operational concept needed to be turned into a technological reality. The Strathclyde GSM-R operational pilot delivered huge challenge and stretched team-members engineering skills to the limit. But challenges were overcome, and new techniques and practices were developed. At the end of the decade, GSM-R as we know it today was born and the national rollout concluded in 2014.

As the last GSM-R areas came into service there was no time for the team to catch their breath - another challenge was appearing, this time from across the boundary fence. An unquenchable thirst for ever-more mobile data for smartphones saw the way that mobile network operators use their radio spectrum change, with significant consequences for GSM-R. The GSM-R engineering team were again stretched to the limit in responding to instances of lost GSM-R service around mobile masts near to the railway. Collaborating to mitigate the impact on an established network of GSM-R masts was not enough. New masts needed to be built and the team supported a difficult, but necessary, upgrade of the entire UK mainland train fleet with a new, Version 4, GSM-R cab mobile swap-out.

But how essential is GSM-R? If you’ve travelled on an ETCS (European train control system) equipped line (Cambrian, Thameslink Central Section, Crossrail), your journey would not have happened without GSM-R delivering the signalling connection to your train. If you’ve been on a train on the rest of the UK mainland network (inc HS1, London Overground and parts of Nexus) that’s stopped at a signal, it’s very unlikely that the driver left the cab to use a signal post telephone – GSM-R made this quicker and safer. There are even level crossing telephones supported by the ubiquitous GSM-R service. And let’s not forget the instances where rapid and reliable safety communications using GSM-R has saved lives, such as in the case of the 2016 Watford Tunnel derailment.

But where are they now - has the GSM-R engineering team been disbanded? Definitely not, it’s business as usual for a team that continues to evolve and assure an essential national capability. The reason most people outside of the GSM-R community have never heard of this team is because of how well they do their job. And, as the foregoing hopefully shows, that’s not just the daily norm, it’s responding to the major, unforeseen and unfunded challenges which are always the focus of their radar.

Where next for the team? As Europe puts the finishing-touches to the specifications for the successor to GSM-R, the Future Railway Communications System (FRMCS), the team must continue managing GSM-R for another decade or more whist the new FRMCS network is developed and deployed.

Please recognise this team, both for the challenges they have overcome, and for the future FRMCS migration they will need to support.“