This month’s edition of IRSE NEWS brings you all the news about what is going on in the IRSE, with papers and articles on:

• Resignalling the East Rail Line in Hong Kong
• Control and Communications Asset Management
• The quest for system performance in Singapore
• UK Transport Select Committee report on the Digital Railway Programme
• Beijing: a personal view by Rob Taylor-Rose, our IRSE-Signet Award winner
• China Section: a dream come true

The fourth of our Presidential Programme Technical Papers will be presented in London on 10th January by Andy Stringer (Siemens) and Graeme Christmas (Network Rail).  The event takes place at the IET (Savoy Place) at 18.00, with refreshments available from 17.30.

The paper will examine how signalling solutions need to be adapted to meet the future demands of more benefit for lower cost. As well as considering traditional areas of cost savings, the paper considers different perspectives, looking at not only the price of signalling but also the value that the system provides.

Click here for more details.

The fifth of our Presidential Programme Technical Papers will be presented in London on 8th February by John Martin and Eduardo Olleta of Atkins. The event takes place at the IET (Savoy Place) at 18.00, with refreshments available from 17.30.

The paper will examine how the validation of data for interlockings can be automated to improve safety, reduce costs and the time taken to design and test signalling systems. Developments in this area are seen as crucial for delivering the Digital Railway, as well as being important for conventional resignalling.

Click here for more details.

The IRSE’s Annual Dinner will take place in The Savoy, London, on Friday 21st April 2017. 

Our Guest of Honour is David Waboso, Managing Director of the UK’s Digital Railway Programme. 

Booking forms will be available from mid-January onwards – click here.  To reserve a table now, please contact Hilary Cohen in the IRSE office (hilary.cohen@irse.org).

The Dinner follows the IRSE Annual General Meeting and election of our new President, which takes place in the IET, Savoy Place (next to the Savoy).

WSP|Parsons Brinckerhoff is kindly sponsoring this event.

The Stephenson Conference was first held in 2015, bringing together rail researchers and rail industry people from around the world to present and discuss papers on a wide range of research, coupled with real-life case studies of the application of that research.

The 2nd Stephenson Conference will take place in London on 25 – 27 April 2017.  Click here for more information and booking details

The 2017 Convention takes place in the Dallas/Fort Worth area of the USA from 25th to 29th September. Bookings will open at the beginning of February – watch out for the announcement in the next e-Bulletin and in IRSE NEWS.

For more information about the Convention, click here.

ASPECT 2017 will be taking place on 28-29 November 2017 in Singapore.  The Call for Papers has now been issued, and we are keen to receive proposals for papers to be presented at the Conference.  Go to the ASPECT webpage and download a paper submission form. Please email this to aspect@irse.org  together with a 500 word abstract outlining your topic by 31 January 2017.  The selected authors will be notified in April 2017 and will have until June to prepare a full paper.

Corporate members of the IRSE (Associate Members, Members and Fellows) will shortly receive an invitation to make nominations for the vacancies that will arise on the IRSE’s governing Council in April. The November edition of IRSE NEWS featured an article that explained what being a member of Council involves.

The IRSE publishes a set of Proceedings for each Presidential Year, as a record of the Institution’s activities.  Originally these were produced as a printed book, although in more recent years we have distributed them on CD/DVD to members.  For the year 2015-16 onwards we are making the Proceedings available only online, and will not be distributing them in CD/DVD or printed format.  To view the Proceedings for 2015-2016, which have just been finalised, click here.

The IRSE’s International Technical Committee is proposing to produce a paper on Trackworker Protection, focussed primarily on warning and protection systems.  If you have information about such systems, whether as a user, designer or supplier, Wim Coenraad would very much like to hear from you.  You can contact Wim at wimcoenraad@me.com.

On 9th January Judith Ward joins us as our new Professional Development Manager.  She can be contacted via judith.ward@irse.org. Judith is a Chartered Engineer, and a signal engineer by profession. She previously worked for Atkins in London, managing the development of their signalling resources. Judith has also served on the IRSE’s Recruitment, Marketing and Publicity Committee for several years. She will be based in London.  Her role includes:

• Encouraging members to undertake Continuing Professional Development.
• Engaging with employers on matters relating to the IRSE’s support for the professional development of their employees.
• Overseeing the management of the IRSE’s Mentoring Scheme.
• Managing the production of educational material.
• Assessing applications for the certification of externally provided courses.
• Overseeing the periodic review and revision of the IRSE Exam Study Guide material.

The presentations given at the highly successful and sell-out CBTC Seminar in Toronto on 1st December are now available on the IRSE website.  Click here to visit the page, and then click on “CBTC Seminar”.

The IRSE and the Institution of Mechanical Engineers are jointly running a one day Seminar on the subject of Automatic Train Operation.  ATO is common on metros, but so far has been little used on other rail networks.  But with the pressure to increase capacity, and the introduction of ETCS, there is both a need and an opportunity to broaden the application of ATO to national rail networks. 

For more information, and to book places, click here. 

Hopefully you will have remembered that from 1st January all those individuals who have professional registration (CEng, IEng, EngTech) with UK’s Engineering Council may be subject to a random audit of their CPD by the Institution through which they are registered.

In line with the requirements of the Engineering Council, the IRSE will be commencing the review process shortly. This means we will be selecting a number of individuals, at random, and asking to view their CPD logs.  So, if you haven’t updated or maintained your CPD log during 2016 now is the time to ensure it is brought up to date either on paper or electronically. You can, and should, add a variety of CPD activities to your log, from formal training events through to work based learning opportunities.

IRSE supports the Engineering Council’s electronic CPD system mycareerpath and if you haven’t already set up a user account you can easily do so by following the link to the IRSE’s Professional Development webpage.

Do you live or work in Denmark?  We would very much like to hear from you, to find out how many IRSE members might be interested in attending a few local technical meetings or visits in Denmark. There are many projects underway and therefore potentially much to see and discuss. A first visit to witness some CBTC testing, and to view the facilities in the new Control and Maintenance Centre at Vasbygade for the new Copenhagen Cityringen CBTC system, is being planned.  Please make contact with Ross Gammon via rega@bane.dk.

The UK’s Royal Academy of Engineering has published a report on behalf of the UK engineering profession on the implications on BREXIT.  Click here for more information.

The UK’s Digital Railway Programme has published a short report on early contractor involvement as a mechanism for delivering digital train control more efficiently. Click here to view the report.