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105 years of manual hand lever operation at London Road Depot came to an end at 23.46 on 14th December 2010 as Train 232, driven by Driver Jan in Motor Car 3299, traversed Point 13 in the facing direction to road number one. Power assistance had taken over from manual operation.
A point machine designed by Micromotive specifically for use in depots officially commenced trials for LUL nominee BCV Ltd.
Call Point Train Maintainer Sam operated the machine to set the correct route and 'Lock' the switch, the events being witnessed by Peter and Steve from LUL. Ten minutes later, after using the new point machine to move the point switch, train 212 traversed the point into road number two.
We have a superb software program written for us by Alan Winter that will calculate the cost of stopping a train to operate a manual hand lever or a rail/road crossing and then restarting, compared with running without stopping using the remote control. Factors included in the calculations are train speeds, gradients, weight of train, number of operators and wage rates plus more.
We will provide this software to those seriously considering our products.
Our latest project
Remote points
Power points for LUL
Improved efficiency and lower costs
We are delighted to have recently installed our fiftieth Rail/Road crossing control system.
These crossing control systems are currently employed in steelworks, docks and train maintenance depots, but really there’s no limit to its use. Three steelworks have changed to the exclusive use of our system for the control of the rail/road crossings and other access warning systems.
Although designed primarily for Rail/Road crossings the application has been adapted for use in other areas, for example Road/Road crossing control where large plant has to share, and/or cross, roads used by smaller vehicles and domestic traffic.
The same handset that controls the point machines is used to control the crossings systems and can be used to operate both types of equipment if required which is the usual mode of operation in the steelworks.
A range of about 800m can be obtained from the handsets with a clear line of sight.
This photograph shows another recent installation where main line freight trains traverse points using our system. The train drivers move the points to suit their requirements on the inbound and outbound journey with considerable benefit to the train crews and, with a shorter obstruction time at the road/rail crossing, less disruption to road traffic
During last summer we conducted trials to determine what, if any, damage would be sustained in the event of a trailing movement throughthe points with the unit in a pressurised state (photos right)
