British Rail Telecommunications was created in 1992 by British Rail (BR). It was the largest private telecoms network in Britain, consisting of 17,000 route kilometres of fibre optic and copper cable which connected every major city and town in the country and provided links to continental Europe through the Channel Tunnel.
BR also operated its own national trunked radio network, providing dedicated train-to-shore mobile communications, and in the early 1980s BR helped establish Mercury Communications’ (now Vodafone) core infrastructure by laying a resilient figure-of-eight fibre optic network alongside Britain's railway lines, spanning London, Bristol, Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester.
Realising the enormous commercial potential, BR Telecommunications Limited (BRT) was created in 1992 to exploit its wayleave rights and to take responsibility for the management and maintenance of the industry's voice, data and radio networks associated with the operational running of the railway and its business needs.
BRT was bought by Racal Electronics in 1995 and became Racal-BRT. This merged with Racal Network Services (RNS) in 1997 to become Racal Telecom. Two companies, Thales Translink and Thales Fieldforce, evolved from Racal Telecom in 1999 and were merged into Thales Telecommunications Services (TTS) in April 2002. TTS provides specialist telecoms services to the UK transport market.
On 1 April 2009, under TUPE employment regulations, around 480 telecoms experts moved from Thales to Network Rail to maintain the telecoms network.
Early history
In May 1837 William Fothergill Cooke (1806–1879) and Professor Charles Wheatstone (1802–1875) entered into a partnership, and on 10 June patented a five-needle telegraph for which five wires were necessary. The telegraph worked by deflecting any two of the needles at the same time to point to any one of 20 letters on the grid behind the needle. Sending and receiving messages was a slow process, as each word had to be spelt out. With only 20 letters on the grid, the spelling sometimes contained inaccuracies. On 25 July, Wheatstone's and Cooke's telegraph was demonstrated to the directors of the London and Birmingham Railway between Euston and Camden Town, a distance of just under a mile.
In 1839 the world's first commercial telegraph line using the Cooke and Wheatstone five-needle system was commissioned by the Great Western Railway and built between Paddington and West Drayton, a distance of 13 miles. It was working to Hanwell by 6 April and was completed to West Drayton on 9 April. The public could pay one shilling (5p) to view the telegraph and could send their own telegrams. The undertaking marked the first commercial use of electricity. The line was later extended to Slough, but when it was proposed to carry it to Bristol, the Directors of the railway company objected and the agreement with Cooke and Wheatstone was rejected. Eventually, it was agreed that Cooke was allowed to retain the wires in position on condition that he worked the system at his own expense and sent the railway signals free of charge.
Assets
This section briefly describes the assets that constitute British Rail's telecom systems and networks.
The fixed bearer network is at the core of railway communications and thus is vital to the operation of the railway. It provides essential circuits for signalling and electrification control systems, train radio systems, lineside communications, level crossing CCTV, and customer information systems as well as more general IT and business telephony needs.
The fixed bearer network infrastructure comprises transmission systems and telephone exchanges, linked by a fibre optic and copper cable network that is located mainly within trackside troughing routes.
British Rail had several analogue radio networks that supported mobile communication applications for drivers and lineside workers. These radio networks consist of base stations, antenna systems and control equipment. The National Radio Network (NRN) was developed specifically for the operational railway; it provides radio coverage for 98% of the rail network through 500 base stations and 21 radio exchanges.