IM and Digital Services Manager Ben Earl discusses Hitachi Rail’s pioneering use of technology in rail maintenance

Across the UK’s rail network, there are faults with overhead lines around 15 to 20 times a year. Often occurring in out-of-the-way sections of track between stations, where access and frequent inspection can be difficult, these faults can cost anything from £15,000 to well over £3 million, with sections of track out of action for as little as 30 minutes, or, in the worst-case scenario, up to a week.

At the moment, the only way to prevent these faults is to conduct visual inspections to assess the state of the overhead lines. This is costly in terms of money, resources, and manpower. Furthermore, human error can also be a factor, especially in poor light or in bad weather – not to mention the safety concerns that are always present when staff are on or by the track.

Although faults can vary in the amount of time and money it costs to fix them, our entire industry shares the same objective of reducing passenger disruption. The ability to automate and live-monitor overhead lines is the perfect example of how a business like Hitachi Rail can help modernise the railway, and to improve safety and reliability.

Hitachi Rail’s pioneering solution

One way we are helping to modernise the railways is with our digital infrastructure monitoring solution, which uses cameras mounted on the train to live monitor overhead lines.

In May 2022, we began a six month trial to prove this digital technology on the East Coast Main Line. Cameras were installed on the roofs of LNER Azuma trains running along the line. This provided a continually-updated visual dataset, more accurate than the human eye, which could be made available to maintenance teams. The data was automatically uploaded to Hitachi Rail servers, enabling the system operator to monitor infrastructure and locate faults in near real-time.

Maintenance teams were further assisted by the development of a bespoke machine-learning analytics program, which automatically identified deviations of the overhead lines that provide early indications of material failure. Over time, this tool has continued to learn and improve itself, increasing its reliability at identifying and predicting faults.

We successfully completed the trial last year, clearly demonstrating that operational trains can be used to live-monitor existing rail infrastructure on the East Coast Main Line. One direct result is the continued use of the technology on the line following the conclusion of the trial, as well as Southeastern announcing they are exploring the prospect of adopting the technology as part of a planned suite of upgrades to its fleet and services.

A new era of collaboration

The development of this technology was the product of a uniquely collaborative process. Centrally convened by Connected Places Catapult, the UK’s innovation accelerator for cities and transport, we were able to work hand-in-glove with Network Rail, the customer, and GlobalLogic, a digital engineering leader and Hitachi Group Company.

For me, it felt like a step-change in the way we at Hitachi Rail do business. We were able to be in absolute alignment with the customer, right across their teams, including the King’s Cross CCTV technicians whose knowledge – integrated in the early design of the overhead cameras – was invaluable. Across the board, engineering changes to ensure system integration across a range of separate technical and structural elements were implemented at a rapid pace, with Hitachi Rail, the customer, DB ESG, and Agility working hand-in-hand to achieve our shared goals.

It was a unique experience to be part of designing a product and a service in such close partnership. Everything we did on the project was done with the end-user in mind. This includes Network Rail maintenance teams, back-end system architect specialists, and the Hitachi Rail and customer teams across various sites along the East Coast Mainline, who helped design the dashboards so the information was presented in ways they could use day -to-day. The buy-in that we had let us fix problems and iron out bugs quickly and straightforwardly. Our hope is our partners will be able to use this technology in the not-too-distant future as part of their everyday maintenance and monitoring routines – our ambition is that the intuitive tools that we have developed in collaboration with partners continues to assist end-users with being able to perform visual maintenance inspections through digital intelligence.

We’re fortunate at Hitachi Rail in that we were able not only to draw on the expertise and experience of our partners, but also on the wider Hitachi business.

GlobalLogic, a Hitachi Group company, played a pivotal role delivering an easy-to-use digital customer experience. As part of a wide-ranging project pioneered by Hitachi Europe, GlobalLogic and Hitachi Rail created a bespoke cloud-based platform that made the data easy to visualise and analyse. The friendly interface created data-driven insights and used AI to turn these into clear actions for Network Rail, additionally further enhancing our and our partners’ abilities to use that insightful, actionable data to make better-informed decisions.

The ability to draw on Hitachi’s digital expertise gives us the depth, skilled workforce, and technical expertise to create pioneering and tailored solutions for the UK railways.

The future of digital monitoring and maintenance

The world is changing. Electric trains are absolutely vital to help the world reduce emissions, but as we continue to see temperatures rise, with hotter, drier summers across the globe, we will also have to keep a closer eye on the overhead cables that power them. Hotter conditions, and larger seasonal temperature swings, cause considerable stress on overhead lines – just as they do on the national grid. It’s vital that we’re able to play our part in addressing this.

In a warming world, delays and outages threaten to make people turn away from the railway, by far the cleanest and most-efficient form of travel, and journey by car. Needless to say, this further compounds the problem. Our chief concern is to ensure that our customers, the train operating companies and the travelling public, have as reliable a service as possible.

This technology is part of a suite of tools that Hitachi Rail is trialling, developing, and rolling out that will allow us to ensure safety and reliability of the service in a predictive, rather than a reactive, manner. This includes our intelligent bogie digital monitoring solution which reduces depot downtime in depots to boost train availability, and our digital monitoring of the track can spot ‘rough ride’ sections.

We are already achieving tangible results. Within a few days of installing this technology on the East Coast Main Line, for instance, we identified a pantograph vane in need of attention, which was subsequently pulled from service and rectified by our maintenance teams in Doncaster.

One of the exciting things about Hitachi Rail is the relentless drive to innovate. We are driving forward technological solutions to long-standing issues – with the ultimate aim of bringing about a safer, faster, less expensive, greener and more resilient railway.

As seen on Rail Business Daily.