Bombardier Transportation participated in the European Union-funded railway industry partnership for integrated security of rail transportation, Protectrail, as a consortium partner.

As part of the project, Bombardier demonstrated its EBI Gate 2000 level crossing system, one of the latest state-of-the-art rail security solutions, at a test track in Żmigród, Poland. The system is manufactured in Poland and has an obstacle detector integrated into it for the first time.

The successful testing was the result of the collaboration between Bombardier’s site in Katowice and the global technology company Honeywell, which provided the radar scanner.

When integrated, the EBI Gate 2000 system is able to receive information about an obstacle on the level crossing, which may impact the crossing or train operations, and send data to the Protectrail system. The information can then be used to alert crossing, station or train personnel. This successful testing also provides the foundation to develop a mechanism to inform the train driver about the need to brake.

Protectrail is one of the largest integration projects for railway security at present, according to Bombardier. The consortium is composed of 29 companies, which have been working together since September 2010, to integrate existing security solutions in the rail environment to meet future security challenges. The objective is to develop a global framework, taking existing solutions, making them interoperable and testing them in demonstrations with real-life scenarios.

As a leading consortium partner, Bombardier’s Network Solutions group is responsible for the global integration efforts of the 29 members to improve overall passenger security. In Poland, the consortium has demonstrated an effective common approach to reduce the engineering costs associated with integration while improving the overall situational awareness in security and operational control centers.

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