New Measurement Train, St Pancras to Bedford
June 8 2006
Network Rail's New Measurement Train (NMT) was the setting for the IRO Young Professionals second field-trip. Eddy Locke, NMT manager, was host on a return trip between London St Pancras and Bedford on Thursday 8 June 2006, and explained what the NMT was capable of.
The NMT runs on a basic two weekly cycle covering the East and West Coast Mainlines in their entirety, the Midland Mainline, and the Great Western Mainline as far as Bristol Temple Meads. Some other secondary routes are covered on a less frequent basis.
During each run, the train captures video footage of the front and rear facing views, the rail/wheel interface and the overhead line. Lasers and other instruments are used to make other measurements of the overhead line and track geometry such as the overhead 
line height and stagger, and the track gauge, twist and cant, and the spacing of the six foot. The latter is important for the West Coast Mainline, where particular care has to be taken to ensure that clearances are maintained for the use of tilt on trains.
The train contains a development coach for systems being trialled before being put into regular use. In this coach we saw a French system, already in use on some TGV trains, for recording the pandrol clip fastenings holding the rail to the sleepers. Video recognition software is used to detect where clips are missing. This, once in use, will reduce the need for track patrolling, 
which in turn will decrease the delays caused to trains by this activity.
The data recorded by the train can be put to immediate use if it has detected a fault which needs immediate attention. In this case the train is brought to a halt and the signaller telephoned to stop trains. Other important, but slightly less urgent, faults are telephoned to the appropriate fault line so that remedial work can take place within 36 hours. Otherwise, summary emails are sent to the appropriate engineers at the end of a run, with the full data made available once the train returns to Derby.
Written by Andrew Spratley.
Photos courtesy Andrew Spratley (top) and Michael Pead (middle and bottom - © 2006)
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