Most of my media trips tend to be at civilised hours of the day, but a recent outing with Govia Thameslink Railway to see progress with the move to digital signalling on the Northern City line took place, by necessity, in the early hours of the morning.
Before our trip on the Moorgate branch though there was the chance to observe European Train Control System in action with a ride through the Thameslink core. Readers may recall that the original intention of introducing ETCS with Automatic Train Operation through the core was to permit smooth operation of the planned 24 trains per hour service between St Pancras and Blackfriars proposed as part of a series of uplifts through 2018 and 2019. Of course, this level of frequency was never reached, and since then Covid has slowed the pace of crew training while GTR has focused on fine-tuning the ETCS software.
GTR reports that around onequarter of all services through the core now use ETCS and ATO – of around 700 affected drivers, some 200 are trained so far, and it will take a couple more years until all are trained. Once they are trained there is an obligation on the operator’s part to ensure they use these systems, as they are safer than the conventiona…
