И. А. Курбасова Е. И. Силантьева

TEXT 7. STEP TOWARDS UNMANNED RAILWAY
Advanced electronic equipment designed for the Bed­ford— St. Pancras commuter line north of London could make this line Britain's first completely automatic railway.

The equipment enables one computerized signal box to control the entire 50-mile line, including driverless trains, unmanned stations, and announcements to passengers on trains and at stations.

Station announcements are made by computers imitat­ing the actual human voice. The system is much cheaper and more flexible than using human announcers or tape-recorders.

Train control is achieved through lineside cables link­ing the signal box with its video (TV) and computer and the radio transmitters located at intervals of 5 to 15 km along the track. The transmitter, in turn, sends messages to passing trains.

For the present, the system is limited to two-way com­munications between the driver and the dispatcher control­ling the train. It is a significant achievement which means that in an emergency a driver needs no longer stop the train and walk along the line to a telephone: he can talk directly to the dispatcher.

In the future, however, not a single line, but the entire network, with hundreds of commuters travelling up and down the line or waiting at dozens of stations, could be controlled with this system from a single box.