SD
SIGNAL+DRAHT | Issue 04/2011

Amsterdam – Utrecht: ERTMS L2 as an overlay to conventional signalling

April 2011 | Fokke Bronsema, Martin Zweers, Maurik Wulfse

On December 20, 2010 the main line between Amsterdam and Utrecht was commissioned with INTERFLO 450 ERTMS L2 as an overlay system on the national signalling system ATB-EG. Being one of Europe’s busiest passenger railway lines, Amsterdam–Utrecht is now also the first legacy railway line in the Netherlands that is migrated to the European standard for train authorization. Amsterdam – Utrecht is equipped with the EBI Lock 950 computer-based interlocking and the EBI Com Radio Block Centre supplied by Bombardier Transportation. The new wayside system technically allows ETCS equipped trains to be registered, authorized and safely driven with a line speed of 160 km/h across the entire 4-track main line amongst the regular traditional train fleet. This so-called mixed L2/LSTM operation will be introduced and gradually intensified during an extensive trial period over the coming years.