We were thrilled to be invited by the Network Rail Signalling Innovations Group (SIG), to present and exhibit at the SIG-X20 event. The event took place on 11^th February 2020 at Brunel’s Passenger Shed in Bristol, where key Network Rail stakeholders and suppliers were brought together to receive the latest plans and innovations from SIG, with specific focus on Resilient Signalling Power.

The event was opened by David Shipman, Innovations Engineer Manager, Network Rail, followed by the keynote speech by Nick King, Group Director, Network Services, which set the scene for the day, focussing on the challenges faced by the rail industry and possible solutions.

Tahir Ayub, Programme Engineering Manager, presented progress with the ongoing programmes to improve signalling power resilience, initially highlighting the 297,000 delay minutes during CP5 attributable to signalling power cable faults at a total cost of £19m, before going on to describe the safety and performance benefits offered by the uptake of smart cable monitoring in the form of reduced risk of electric shock and fewer interruptions leading to loss of signalling. Potential savings from the use of smart cable monitoring were estimated to be in excess of £55m.

Gareth Morgan, Asset Engineer London North West Route and Tom Carter, Senior Asset Engineer Wessex Route, presented a summary of the two CableGuardian trials that are both now successfully complete. The presentation covered the rationale for trialling the technology and selecting the trial sites, the methods used to integrate the CableGuardian system and the lessons learned from the trials, concluding with their assessment of the impacts on maintenance of using CableGuardian. The impacts included the early identification of cable issues before they become faults, time saved testing and accessing the railway for fault finding and the potential to increase maintenance test intervals from 5 years to perhaps 10 years with the goal to remove the need for manual testing entirely.

Viper Innovations presented at the Smart Cable Monitoring Solutions session at the event’s fringe rooms, and also took part in the elevator pitches on the main stage. It was great opportunity to speak to so many enthusiastic customers about CableGuardian and to share more information about it’s unique benefits for the railways.

For more information please visit: https://cableguardian.viperinnovations.com/ or contact us at enquiries@viperinnovations.com