2013

Canadian government worried LRT will debilitate flagship observatory

The federal government is worried Ottawa's light rail transit line will cripple a premier scientific observatory and jeopardize a national monitoring network used to track the weather in space, documents show.

Natural Resources Canada’s geomagnetic research laboratory is planted in a bog in the city’s east end and keeps tabs on how energy particles thrown off by the sun affect Earth’s magnetic field and technologies such as satellites and GPS navigation systems. But the department is concerned that some more terrestrial interference emitted from the city’s $2.1-billion electric transit line funded in part by the federal government may put the facility on the fritz, an internal memo states.

“From observations of magnetic noise at similar facilities internationally, and modelling by NRCan and other groups, suggest that such LRT systems are very powerful sources of low-frequency magnetic noise, and will generate sporadic noise levels sufficient to exceed international standards,” says the document obtained by The Canadian Press under access to information.

“Predicted noise will significantly impact observatory operations at Anderson Road and render the calibration facility inoperable at its present location.”

The lab serves as the headquarters of the federal government’s geomagnetic monitoring service and is relied upon to set calibration standards for its network of 12 other magnetic observatories dotting the country. The facility also aids efforts to monitor earthquakes, among other duties.

Observatory sites are specially chosen to meet tough international standards for magnetic interference, the levels of which must remain stable over the long term so Earth’s magnetic fields can by measured accurately, the memo notes. As such, the 45-year-old Ottawa lab sits in a carved-out section of the 3,500-hectare Mer Bleue peat-moss bog. But that may be too close to the easternmost station on the 13-stop Confederation Line, which will be placed above ground nearly seven kilometres away.

The August 2012 memo notes that on the federal government’s urging the transit line’s design has been tweaked to hopefully reduce the magnetic-noise impact, but cautions the full extent of just what the interference will do to the facility won’t be known until the LRT — built with $600 million in federal funding — has its maiden test voyage in 2017.

“There are several diverse NRCan programs which operate from and rely on the Anderson road facility. There are ongoing discussions about the possible relocation of the magnetic calibration facility but, at this stage, the costs are not yet defined,” Jacinthe Perras said. She added that the department will “continue to review” its options for the electromagnetic monitoring network if the “national reference” Ottawa observatory is knocked out.

The City of Ottawa insists the 12.5-kilometre LRT line won’t take a toll on the flagship research post. “The city has a close, productive working relationship with NRCan and does not believe the Confederation Line will impact their facility on Anderson Road,” director of rail implementation Gary Craig said in an email. “Specifically, the city has been in regular communication with NRCan for over a year and a half to address their concerns” through the technical and environmental review process, he said.

But Perras reiterated that answers won’t arrive until the transit line is finally powered up. “NRCan maintains that the impact on the magnetic measurements at the Anderson road facility will only be known for certain once the (light rail) testing and regular operations begin,” she added.

1999

Upgrades to Helsinki trams interfere with hospital on their route

The Helsinki City Transport (HKL) rolling stock is ageing fast. The most recent trams were built 20 years ago. Hitherto, all auxiliary equipment, such as ventilator fan motors were DC and the maintenance of these units was becoming something of a nightmare. Spares were costly and it was a very labour intensive process keeping them in service.

In each HKL tram there were six ventilation fans with DC motors cooling the passenger compartment, brake resistor, and traction motor. The thinking was that one big variable speed (‘inverter’) drive supplying six AC motors was going to be cheaper than several smaller inverters supplying one motor each, so a 15kW unit was mounted in the main electrical panel of one of the trams. The existing cabling was retained because of cost considerations and this connected the various motors in parallel.

EMC problems very quickly surfaced. Not only was the vehicle’s own radio system badly affected, but – crucially – third party electrical equipment also suffered interference, including that of a hospital on the tram’s route.

The problem was solved in the end by siting individual inverters, each rated 1.1 - 1.5kW, close to the motors they controlled, to minimise the length of their motor cables.

2000

UK rail infrastructure EMC requirements are unknown

These quotations are from a hearing that was made public into complaints from the rolling stock suppliers (Adtranz and Alstom) against the infrastructure operator (then Railtrack) regarding the inability of Railtrack to provide technical data for acceptance of new rolling stock onto the UK rail network.

Adtranz/Alstom: Railtrack still does not know where its infrastructure is or how it performs. Nor does Railtrack know where its own infrastructure is non compliant with its own norms. The result has been that Railway Group Standards fail to define in key respects, mainly electromagnetic interference and gauging, the actual requirements that Railtrack will demand compliance to when trains are presented for approval.

Railtrack's fundamental failure to know where its infrastructure is, how it performs and the condition that it is in, continues to produce extraordinary turbulence in the requirements for safety acceptance. We have £500 million vehicles parked in the sidings. All those vehicles are built within existing gauges. They are built with lower interference levels than any of the vehicles in service and we are trying to get those vehicles approved against criteria which are spiralling towards the impossible and left to individuals and subjective appraisal.

Railtrack: Railtrack's inherited infrastructure is 57,000 track circuits of a variety of different types. Many of them have been introduced over a number of years, tens of years, thirty years plus. Many of those track circuits were never designed for the concept of modern traction packages that we currently have being used today. Most of them were originally designed for something like very statically controlled EMUs etc. A lot of those track circuits are susceptible to certain generated interferences that will come off these new trains. It is an inherent factor of the new train design. The track circuits which were installed by BR do not necessarily meet today's standards.

Certainly the manufacturing requirement from Westinghouse or Alstom or previous companies that designed these track circuits would have designed it for work at a certain length. For reasons of fitting it to the infrastructure, the infrastructure will sometimes be of varying lengths, sometimes they are much longer because clearly if you could just increase it by 50% you can reduce the number of track circuits being fitted to the railway, has a nasty effect of making it far more susceptible to the EMC.

At the time the BR engineers did that, there was perfectly reasonable reason for doing it. They could make the track circuits work, they could make them reliable to operate the railway in a safe manner to detect trains. Unfortunately that same design criteria has made them more susceptible to the design of traction packages today.

Chairman: Sitting where we are if 15 years ago the British Railways Board had mandated that track circuit design ought to be a fairly limited range of track circuits that appeared to be roughly right in terms of emerging traction packages for the next ten years then we might not be sitting here now talking about electro-magnetic interference.

2003

More problems for Pendolino

The high-speed tilting train project on the West Coast Main Line has been hit by more problems after tests revealed it can interfere with signals. The hitch was discovered during a non-passenger test run of the Virgin Trains Pendolino train between Crewe and Liverpool. It was discovered that electromagnetic interference from controls driving the motors on the trains can change the lights on the signals.

The roll-out of the service, which is planned to run between London and Scotland, has already been subjects to delays. Network Rail - the company that has taken over from Railtrack - said it was now discussing the problem with Virgin, the Strategic Rail Authority and the Alstom company, which is building the Pendolinos.

There is speculation that trains' traction motors might have to be re-designed and that special filters will need to be fitted to the signals. But a Virgin spokesman insisted on Friday that the company did not anticipate having to put back the autumn 2004 date for the Pendolinos to switch from 110mph to a full tilting mode of 125mph.

The trains were due to be introduced in full 125mph tilt mode on the West Coast line in May 2002. But a series of delays have seen the cost of the West Coast upgrade reach £9.8bn and have meant the Pendolino project timetable has slipped.

Virgin has so far received 15 of its 53 Pendolinos. But they are only running at 110mph in non-tilt mode and only on Tuesdays between London and Wolverhampton and on Wednesdays and Thursdays between London and Manchester. Virgin hopes to run Pendolinos on five days a week by the end of the summer and, by 2006, reduce journey times between London and Scotland by about an hour to four hours 33 minutes.

1996

Eurostar north of London delayed by concerns over interference

Eurostar and Railtrack officials admitted this week the threat of EMI causing signal failures is delaying the introduction of European rail services north of London. EMI generated by overhead power lines can affect the trackside signals such that red lights are forced to green. A Eurostar spokesperson said: "In electrical terms, we have found with new trains, such as Eurostar, there tends to be a degree of stray electrical current. This can cause an interference with signalling and effect the integrity to cause a signal to go from red to green." Railtrack, responsible for the track and signalling systems, is refusing to allow the trains to run commercially until Eurostar can demonstrate their safety.

"We are working hand-in-hand with to solve this problem as quickly as possible," Railtrack said. Eurostar engineers have designed an interference current monitoring unit. When it senses EMI, the motor is stopped and the train coasts to a stop. However, for the highest safety the unit must be set to maximum sensitivity. This could cause the train to stop every few miles.

Also see the Lords Hansard text for 14th July 1998 (180714-02) in which Baroness Hayman, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions stated:

"My Lords, the technical issues which prevent the operation of regional Eurostar rolling stock on parts of the existing network relate to electrical interference associated with track circuits. These matters have prevented the issue of safety clearances which are required before passenger services can be operated."

NB: Eurostar never has run north of London.

1990

Railway signalling interferes with recording studio

Around 1990 Alan Little leased a derelict arch under the railway line in Camberwell from British Rail. He borrowed money to convert it into a two-level mix of recording and rehearsal studios. The total cost was pushing £50,000. Up until November 1991 it was popular with up-and-coming bands needing somewhere to rehearse and record. Then, one fateful Saturday morning, with three bands booked for the morning and three for the afternoon, disaster struck. All the studio equipment, and the bands' amplifiers, started warbling. The bands and studio crew thought at first that they had an equipment fault. Then other studios in other railway arches in the area began phoning each other. They all had the same problem. Alan Little phoned British Rail and on the Monday morning a BR engineer came round, listened and said the cause was a new signalling system installed by BR.

BR controls its track lights by feeding electric current through its rails. When a train runs over the rails it provides a short-circuit between them, triggering a red light behind the train. Recently BR has begun changing to the use of alternating current. The long rails act as a highly efficient aerial, radiating a powerful AC magnetic field. The AC is at audio frequency, using tones of between 1 kHz and 4kHz. The tones are complex warbles, to safeguard the system from outside interference.

The effect was heard through the mixing desk, with pick-up from mains and connecting leads. It was even heard through unpowered loudspeakers. It was worst when an electric guitar was plugged into an amplifier. Guitar pick-ups are designed to convert their magnetic fields, modulated by the movement of the steel guitar strings, into sound. They cannot distinguish between magnetic fields from a BR signalling system and those from vibrating strings.