Rail manufacturing specialist Aldridge is aiming to improve safety around level crossings with its ITS Wireless Level Crossing Controller.
Level crossing safety is front of mind for the rail sector. The industry came together in March for a level crossing roundtable to create a cohesive direction for the sector to improve safety around level crossings, particularly in regional areas.
Rail specialist Aldridge, through its Intelligent Transport Systems division (ITS), is aiming to be at the forefront of this.
Aldridge can trace its roots back to 1989 where it began as a series of companies called the Aldridge Group. They then acquired a company that had tooling with the ability to manufacture railway signals, thus beginning the company’s foray into the rail space.
The company prides itself on never compromising on quality to ensure safety. With 25 years’ experience in producing railway crossing components and manufacturing signalling equipment, the company uses best practice to get maximum value out of every project dollar.
This experience has laid the foundation for Aldridge to develop a new product to improve safety for level crossings.
WLX System
The Aldridge-ITS Wireless Level Crossing (WLX) Controller has been designed in Australia by Aldridge-ITS to provide a low cost, low maintenance, stand-alone solar and battery-powered active level crossing solution.
The WLX utilises wireless communications and axle counter-based train detection to control type-approved RX5 warning devices and includes data logging and alarm management (local and remote) along with live remote monitoring.
The controller has been designed from the ground up with a design criteria of lower cost, lower power consumption and integration resulting in a reliable and secure level crossing system.
In Australia, the majority of level crossings are in remote regions with low population density and little or no surrounding infrastructure.
Installation of traditional level crossing protection systems is expensive where buried cable routes are necessary. In addition, the lack of infrastructure and a reliable power supply increases the cost of installing a traditional level crossing system.
The WLX system is activated using an axle counting sub-system for train detection at the Up and Down strike-in point.
The level crossing operation commences upon detection of a train passing the strike-in point in the direction of the road/rail interface and cancels once the rear of the train is detected to be clear of the roadway.
Power is self-sufficient, being derived from solar panels with battery backup. Two standard RX5 assemblies with an electronic bell and appropriate signage are installed at the roadway.
The efficient use of a low-power solution that incorporates secure and redundant wireless communications between system elements eliminates the requirements for the installation of cables.
The WLX System can be installed and commissioned in five days.
Rail Express had the opportunity to speak with Managing Director, David Aldridge, to learn more about the new technology and what it means for the rail sector.
“What we are doing is reducing the price for crossings in remote farming or mining locations, where access is needed to a property over a railway line, but the costs currently associated with existing systems, are exorbitant,” he said.
“The system can be installed for a fraction of the cost of standard automated level crossing systems.
“And our system is bespoke for rail crossings. “In other words, we have not just grabbed components off a shelf and bolted them together; we have designed every component and manufactured it locally allowing us to have complete control of the manufacturing and the IP.
“For example, the wheel flange sensor was designed and built to meet Safety Integrity Level 4 (SIL4).
“It includes lightning and surge protection and it’s permanently active, allowing it to monitor all complex rail traffic movements.
“Because we designed it to be maintenance-free, requiring no adjustments during the normal course of operation, we then tested its integrity by fitting it to a 20-metre test track at our Lidcombe factory.
“It has now completed 2.5-million-wheel detection cycles.”
In another example of Aldridge’s “Ground Up” approach, the WLX controller utilises the latest micro controller technology (ISO 26262 ASIL D) with a Texas Instrument chipset designed for IEC 61508 SIL 3 Safety-Critical Applications.
“The micro controller provides advanced integrated safety features and is companioned with a multi-rail power supply designed to supply micro controllers in safety critical applications,” Aldridge said.
“The integration of this micro controller technology into the WLX controller has significantly reduced the cost of the system while maintaining functional safety.
“Then we needed to work out how to get the signal from the sensor without using cables, so we designed our own radio system. The WLX radio system is also a bespoke, proprietary radio system specifically designed for this application.
“It’s a 900Mhz ISM, Broad Digital Spread Spectrum with 20-channel Frequency Hopping, Forward Error Correction (FEC), AES128 security encryption and dual antenna diversity.”
Finally, Aldridge recognised the need for a management system that allows it to monitor the performance of any WLX Installation both locally and remotely.
The system integrates a range of safety features to support users and ensure the system is operating at an optimal level of safety.
“The WLX can provide email alerts on any system faults and warning messages, back to base monitoring and a web server for remote monitoring, generating system reports with multiple sites managed from the server,” Aldridge said.
“The server can manage maintenance records and integrate with existing control room monitoring equipment. It provides vehicle and train analytics, monitoring of vehicle compliance, integrated video camera with analytics support, and a systems manager for maintenance staff.”
The Aldridge-ITS WLX is Australian designed with all components manufacturedlocally.
The company has also begun exporting globally. It is 51 per cent Aboriginal owned, managed and controlled and Aldridge was awarded the 2023 Australian Indigenous Exporter of The Year. Being locally built means that Aldridge understands first-hand the challenges of maintaining 100 per centreliability.
“We understand that much of these systems are operating in harsh and remote areas of the country so we ensured we designed a system that could stand up to those challenges,” Aldridge said.
“That’s why all WLX components are housed in lockable stainless-steel weatherproof cabinets and there is an option for integrated video camera surveillance and anti-pole climbing security to ensure the equipment is not vandalised.
“To further minimise the risk of any disruption, we utilise forward and reverse facing warning lights at the level crossings so that if one unit goes down, then there is a second unit on the other side to warn users.”
Aldridge’s system eliminates expensive installation and maintenance and can be delivered for a quarter of the price, with uncompromising safety, performance and reliability and is already operating at multiple sites in Australia.
WLX is scalable for multiple track operations and it’s even possible to include type-approved gates. WLX can be installed and commissioned in 5-7 days whereas existing systems can take six to eight weeks to be up and running.
“The system can be installed much faster than existing automated systems with only four poles to be installed,” Aldridge said.
“As a matter of fact, you can install one system a day. After all it is simply four poles in the ground.
“We are beginning to get a lot of interest from overseas now and so we are gearing up to really roll it out.
“We make it in Sydney, and we ship from our factory fully tested. We are excited to really grow this product in Australia.”
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