19-05-2025
The end of railway signal failures? A digital plan points a way
Usually if a man turns up with an angle grinder and starts cutting down signals by a train track, it means disaster: cancelled trains and commuter misery.
Not on Saturday night. Men in steel toe-capped boots arrived and cut down the signals — the traffic lights that control our railway — on a crucial section of line under London.
On Monday the Northern City Line, which is operated by the brand Great Northern, becomes the UK's first railway to operate without signals at the side of the track, preparing for the end of signal failure.
The trains use ETCS, the European train control system, digital signalling that is shown on the dashboard of the cab and allows drivers to 'see around corners'. Unlike a rogue
