The West Coast Main Line (WCML) is Great Britain’s busiest mixed traffic
railway corridor. It runs from London’s Euston Station to Birmingham,
Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow and is used by more than 2,000 trains per
day.
As part of the West Coast Route Modernisation (WCRM), extensive resignalling,
remodelling, track renewals and provision of bi-directional signalling have
affected the area south of Manchester through two projects, the Manchester
South Capacity Improvement Project (commissioned in April 2003) and the
Sandbach-Wilmslow Resignalling Project (commissioned in 2007). The two projects
have resignalled around 40 miles (65 km) of railway lines with four main
junctions (Cheadle North Junction, Wilmslow South Junction, Sandbach North
Junction and Sandbach South Junction), three stations (Cheadle Hulme, Wilmslow,
Sandbach), and eight train stops (Adlington, Poynton, Bramhall, Handforth,
Alderley Edge, Chelford, Goostrey and Holmes Chapel). The lines are mainly
electrified at 25 kVa.c. and the maximum line speed is 125 mph (or 200
kmh-1).
The two projects have been implemented with, and are currently controlled by, a
single ACC Multistazione interlocking located in the new control centre at
Edgeley. On implementation it was the largest ACC Multistazione system in
operation in terms of addressed geography.
The use of a modern, modular Computer Based Interlocking (CBI) System - the ACC
Multistazione - has provided not only improved maintainability and operation of
the route, but also implementation of complex new safety logic principles that
would have been uneconomic to implement using a conventional Route Relay
Interlocking or competitor Solid State Interlocking..
Ansaldo STS’s ACC CBI system was designed to dovetail with ERTMS, the European
Rail Traffic Management System, which is designed to enable railway
interoperability among differing European railway networks, facilitating
cross-border operations and thus encouraging economic trade. ERTMS enables more
efficient use of the rail system, increased capacity, enhanced safety and full
interoperability among differing country networks.
