Page 46 - Vía Libre Special - 25 Years of Spanish High Speed Rail

SPECIAL

years of Spanish high speed rail

Turnouts
availability which would enable punctuality rates of
over 99%, as was already the case of the Madrid-Se- On the Madrid-Seville line the best turnout has a
ville line. radius of 10,000 metres and 4,000 on the turnout
These operating and journey time require- track itself. The best current technology, the AV4
ments, and the need to handle maximum capacity at turnout, has a radius of 17,000 metres and 7,300
some moments, was the challenge required to inspire on the turnout track itself.
and drive each of the state-of-the art technological The turnouts on the Madrid-Seville line on
developments and to determine the functional and the main line track permitted a maximum speed
technical design of stations, sidings, crossovers, tur- of 160 km/h and were equipped with eight mo-
nout speeds, signalling and telecommunications sys- tors. For the new generation of high speed li-
tems, train speed and acceleration, dimensioning of nes new longer turnouts have been developed
the power available from the electrical system, cha- allowing trains to change tracks at 220 km/h and
racteristics of the OHL, maximum speed of the trains, so increase the capacity of the line. They are fit-
traffic regulation systems, supervision and control ted with ten motors and a hollow sleeper.
detectors and sensors, etc.

Mobile telecommunications

Until the Madrid-Zaragoza-Barcelona high speed line was built the telephony system installed was analogical,
known as Train-Ground, which used radiotelephony base stations to connect trains with the command post. The
system enabled short, predefined messages to be sent or phone calls to be made. The waveband used was
between 447 and 459 MHz.
With the new developments in telephony there was a move to a digital system called GSM-R, which com-
bined the performance of GSM telephony with railway specific functions (hence the R for railway). This system
provides greater quality, reliability and availability, together with new functionalities including data transport for
ERTMS Level 2 signalling.
This system enables trains to communicate with the control and regulation centre and permits com-
munication between trains and service staff on the trains. It also includes a data channel enabling continuous
communication between the onboard signalling equipment and the RBC (Radio Block Centre) when the train is
running under ERTMS L2.

46 Vía Libre • Special 25th Anniversary of the AVE Edition