Edinburgh Waverley Re-control Case Study

Edinburgh Waverley Re-control

The Project

DeltaRail made a major contribution to the successful delivery of the prestigious Edinburgh Waverley project helping to ensure that it was on time and on budget.  The full scope of the works included remodelling, resignalling, platform works and structural work to the listed station structure.  Transport Scotland funded the infrastructure works with Network Rail managing the delivery.  Westinghouse Rail Systems Ltd were the signalling contractor and Amec Spie performed the construction work.  DeltaRail provided signalling control using their Integrated Electronic Control Centre (IECC).

Edinburgh Waverley is the second largest station in Britain.  The station has been operating at peak capacity since 2005, handling more than 23 million passengers a year and 576 trains each day, a 50% increase in trains over the past fifteen years.  One of the main purposes of the project was to increase capacity, allowing up to four more trains an hour to use the West Throat Approach to the station.

The old Edinburgh Waverley signalling centre was commissioned in 1976 and comprised mainly GEC geographical interlockings at a number of sites, controlled from a push button control panel.  The controlled area, extending from Fife to the English border, includes over 200 route miles and over 500 main signals.

The Benefits

The advantages of selecting the IECC for the project included:

• availability of a proven, tried and tested control system.
• flexibility to facilitate infrastructure changes on a multi-stage basis to meet very tight timescales.
• capacity for expansion to encompass follow-on projects such as the Airdrie to Bathgate reopening.
• automatic route setting (ARS) to optimise the capacity benefits of the new signalling layout.
• capability of the system to provide a consistent signaller interface across a control area with a mixture of interlocking types, allowing the retention of 24 relay interlockings that were not life expired.