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My valued editor of this newsletter asked me to write something about the Australian ETCS market, so in today’s article, I will do just that.

A short while ago, I was asked to give a virtual presentation for an audience in New Zealand (that’s even further away than Australia for most places in this world, for example, Europe), and I decided to talk about ETCS lessons from Australia. Assuming none of you readers attended that event for New Zealand, it will not be an undue repetition if I repurpose some of that content here.

One of the lessons I discussed is the ‘Mountain Miracle’ of ETCS, and you will see why in a moment.

Around 2006, following a severe train derailment in 2003 and the recommendations of the subsequent investigation, it was clear that Sydney would have to roll out Automatic Train Protection (ATP) across their electrified suburban rail network. Having looked at various technologies available at the time, the prudent decision was made to go with the European Train Control System (ETCS). More specifically, with ETCS Level 1 because it would allow for a relatively simple add-on of ATP to the existing signalling system in Sydney. Another reason was that ETCS Level 2 was still rather immature at the time, definitely for city railways with many trains to be controlled via limited radio channels offered by the standard radio technology for ETCS Level 2, GSM-R.

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