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These photographs show 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.
With a brief introduction to the new system the drivers and other staff have enthusiastically accepted and understood the operation. This was emphatically demonstrated by Jason, the first driver to use the system, who suggested an additional feature that would enhance the system within minutes of completing his initial training. This option has now been added to the systems repertoire.
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.
The efforts of the members of staff to drive the initial concept through to the trial have been considerable, and we cannot thank them enough. We would also like to thank our industrial customers who permitted LU personnel to see the operation of our product at their sites during the evaluation process.
And special thanks and acknowledgements to Alan Winter for setting off this chain of events five years ago.
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.
This moment was the culmination of over three years of demonstrations, meetings and testing that resulted in the concession to commence the trial of this point machine.
We apologise for the quality of the photos. It was midnight and there was no time for posed pictures as the depot operations had to continue uninterrupted.
Our customer requested smaller indicating lights which are slightly distorted in the photos.
We are grateful to LUL for permitting us to use these pictures on our website".
IMPROVED EFFICIENCY and LOWER COSTS
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 success