Iarnród Éireann, Irish Rail, has been implementing the Frequentis fixed terminal railway dispatcher terminal to enhance rail operations across Ireland.
The new digital platform provides increased situational awareness for the controller and geo redundancy, providing a modern and future proof solution as an upgrade to the existing Frequentis system, installed in 2013.
The Frequentis FTS 3020 is used by many of the world’s major railways as a component of the operational communication system. The new platform allows for more information to be displayed at a glance and on larger HD screens.
“Iarnród Éireann are an important, long term customer of Frequentis and this enhancement represents continued trust through the extension of our partnership, which will deliver modern solutions to support our customer’s vision for a truly digital railway,” said Frequentis vice-president public transport, Thomas Karl. “The challenges of Covid-19 meant the teams on both sides needed to adapt to new ways of working but, thanks to the dedicated teams and excellent customer relationship, the installation was completed smoothly.”
Around 45 terminals were delivered as part of the project and the system acceptance took place at Dublin’s most important rail and urban transport station, Connolly. The advanced and geo redundant terminals ensure Iarnród Éireann have valuable crisis mitigation in their Operations Centre. The networked solution provided by Frequentis also enables load sharing capability across all terminals, providing improved reliability and resiliency.
“This milestone is extremely important to Iarnród Éireann and we would like to thank the whole team for the huge effort put in to see the project through to this stage. I’d just like to say a special thanks to the Frequentis team for coming to Dublin during these difficult times. Their professionalism and dedication is something to be proud of and meant that even under Covid-19 limitations the baseline for project execution could be met,” noted Brian Noble, Iarnród Éireann project manager.
Over the past few years Frequentis has evolved FTS 3020 to become a multi-bearer solution which allows its simplified rail communications application to operate with not only GSM-R (Global System for Mobile Communications-Railway) but also TETRA and LTE (Long Term Evolution) wireless communications networks, therefore providing bearer independence and unifying the experience to the operator at the same time.