It’s my pleasure to be a guest at the rising star amongst the signalling newsletters.

With your extensive experience in railway signalling and specifically with ETCS and CBTC systems, could you share how you initially became interested in this field and describe your journey in the railway signalling industry?

Sure. I spent the entire European period of my career in mainline signalling, and in the late 1990’s it was almost inevitable to get in touch with that then brand-new ETCS technology. In some shape or form I have been involved with ETCS ever since which now added up to nearly 25 years – time flies when you are having fun. For CBTC, my introduction was a bit rockier as I was thrown into the deep end of CBTC involvement only a month after having migrated to Australia.

This is a longer story, probably too long for this brief small talk, but I was able to improve my CBTC knowledge a lot over time, eventually becoming the only person who has worked on all three CBTC initiatives in Australia – in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.

What attracts me to both CBTC and enhanced varieties of ETCS is the potential of those technologies to improve the capacity and performance of a railway system. It always bothered me when “my” signalling discipline was seen as the bottleneck for higher railway capacity, and with technologies for “High Capacity Signalling” this bottleneck can be remedied.

How do you see the evolution of signalling technology, particularly ETCS and CBTC, influencing the future of railway transportation? Are there any emerging technologies or innovations that you believe will revolutionize how we implement and manage these systems?

That is quite a complex question. In my consulting practice I always focused on advising my clients on things that are feasible today or in the very near future. I’m not a fan of “pie-in-the-sky” concepts such as ETCS Level 3, which remains elusive but prevents railways from implementing something beneficial in the meantime.
With ongoing population growth and increased mobility demand in our cities, existing rail networks are more likely to reach their capacity limits while facing strong demand for further capacity increase.

Advanced signalling solutions such as CBTC or enhanced ETCS can increase the capacity of an existing railway network, which is usually a much more cost- efficient option than building additional rail infrastructure in the densest parts of our city centres.

The most practical evolutions I see are improvements of ETCS towards higher performance, more like CBTC, which is what I meant when I mentioned “enhanced ETCS”. And I’m curious to see whether CBTC will evolve towards interoperability between suppliers, as we have recently seen happening in China.

Regarding better implementation and management of those technologies, the biggest challenge, in my view, is the necessary mindset shift of the wider railway organization from the traditional use of fixed-block signalling systems with “lights on sticks” towards cab signalling technology that enables a step change towards metro-style high-performance operations. This requires a “people innovation”, if you will, which I think is a more pressing challenge than any further incremental improvements in the technologies themselves.

Given your reputation for delivering insightful courses on signalling systems, what approach do you take to educate new professionals in this complex field, and how do you ensure your courses remain current with the latest developments? Can you say a little bit more about the “High Capacity Mindset” concept, which is one of your latest courses?

With pleasure. When I started my first public training course in 2014, that “CBTC Kickstarter” training was meant for railway people with very little or no prior knowledge of CBTC. What turned was that this training was even understandable by students without signalling experience in general, or even without railway experience. And I think this is a main differentiator of my trainings, to make them understandable for anyone interested in the topic, regardless of prior signalling knowledge. This is highly important when introducing “High Capacity Signalling” since that will require railway people who never before needed to know about signalling to have a fundamental understanding of those new technologies.

The CBTC Kickstarter has constantly evolved with updates and is today the longest-running public CBTC training in the world, something that makes me proud and baffles me at the same time. Over the years I have added further training courses to cover the field of advanced signalling more fully. An ETCS training which is unsurprisingly called ETCS Kickstarter, a training about interoperability between different technologies for Automatic Train Control, an introductory training for busy executives, and a training discussing how CBTC and ETCS need to be applied to achieve real capacity increase in practice.

Anyone interested is welcome to check out https://docfranktraining.podia.com which has become the most comprehensive training platform for advanced signalling on the planet.

My latest training course development delves into that necessary mindset shift which I mentioned in my previous answer. Sticking to a “legacy mindset” as I call it was perfectly okay in the old world of traditional signalling, but it can be a major hurdle to getting the most out of new technologies that rather require what I call a “high capacity mindset”. In the training I discuss 60 examples of a no longer helpful legacy mindset, an alternative high capacity mindset, and ways how to get from one to the other. What I also added are so-called “transformation guide” lessons, which give more general tips on how to achieve and facilitate change towards something new, hoping that this training will not just benefit changes in the work environment but also changes in the personal lives of my students. A nice value-add I would think.

For those aspiring to become experts in railway signalling and train control systems, what advice would you give about the possible educational path, and are there any emerging trends or technologies they should be particularly aware of?

Becoming an expert in signalling requires a profound understanding of the historical developments of traditional or conventional signalling. There are many trainings out there, and the one I would highlight as a recommendation is the licensing program of the IRSE, the Institution of Railway Signal Engineers. This is a long-winded way to develop a career in signalling, but just like any other technology career development. They are all time-consuming as you would expect.

If someone just wants to get a fundamental understanding of the most modern, advanced signalling and train control technologies, such as CBTC or ETCS, without having to spend years of learning signalling basics, I’m unashamed to claim that my own training courses offer some of the best shortcuts that can be found anywhere. So, “signalling people” who want to add those new technologies to their knowledge portfolio are equally well served as “non-signalling” railway professionals who just need a foundational high-level understanding of those technologies, combined with the confidence that they are smart enough to understand them and don’t need to hide from discussions with more experienced signalling peers.

How do you see railway signalling systems adapting to different global railway infrastructures, and what are the key factors in ensuring successful implementation across various countries with differing railway standards and operational needs?

Wow that’s a deep question. Coming from a traditional differentiation of the signalling industry between urban and mainline railways, I think there is an interesting trend of “hybrid” railways in and around major cities. Those railways are traditionally suburban commuter railways with a mainline pedigree, but emerging requirements for higher capacity turns those railways closer to urban “metro-style” operations. Interestingly, such hybrid railways could be candidates for either high-capacity ETCS variants or for CBTC, and it depends on the specific network characteristics which technology turns out to be more suitable.

Here in Australia, for example, I was involved in multiple technology selection processes, which resulted in picking enhanced ETCS in some cities and CBTC in others. Quite fascinating.

For such technology selection, I came up with a simple yet powerful “3C Formula”. All the possible criteria for selecting the next generation of signalling technology usually fall into one of three categories starting with a C, hence the 3C Formula. The most important one is the Core Value, one requirement that is more important than all others. For most city railways, this will likely be Capacity (which conveniently starts with C as well). The next-most important category is Compatibility, that means how the new technology fits into the existing environment of the railway. If higher capacity is paramount, it may require some radical changes to the railway. The third and least important of the C categories is Costs which may come as a surprise to many who think the cheapest must be the most important. But if I need capacity increase I cannot accept a technology that does not give me such capacity increase, regardless how cheap that technology is.

Anyone interested in learning more about any of the things discussed here can simply find me as Doc Frank Heibel on LinkedIn. For now, thank you again, Ivan, for this opportunity to address the readers of your promising newsletter. And as I tend to say at the end of my training lessons (or podcast episodes): Keep it simple, and bye for now.

Frank, thank you very much for your contribution to this newsletter and everything you are doing for the railway signalling community.