Electrical Safety for Railway Stations

The railway station itself is now a building with a variety of uses. It is not only where the train is loaded and unloaded, it also accommodates a considerable service center including supermarkets, restaurants and many other shops. These are all fed centrally from the main distribution board and should also continue to function if there is an electrical fault in one small part of the system. This can be perfectly achieved using an RCMS residual current measurement system (ground-fault monitoring). This means faults are detected long before a normal fault current circuit breaker would trip. This increases the availability of the system as a whole and thus significantly improves the satisfaction of both tenants and passengers. The RCMS also improves and simplifies maintenance and troubleshooting.

A service depot for the repair and maintenance of railway vehicles requires and services all current drives for locomotives and carriages and also external lifting and transport equipment. This should still work when there is an electrical fault. Faults are detected by an RCMS residual current monitoring system (ground-fault monitoring) before a normal fault current circuit breaker would trip. This increases the availability of the system as a whole and significantly accelerates maintenance and troubleshooting. Ungrounded power supplies are monitored via ground-fault detectors to check the condition of the insulation. Faulty outgoing circuits of the power supply can be identified using ground-fault location systems.

Railways in mountainous areas run over a series of tunnels and bridges. The operators of the routes must be prepared for a train accident in a tunnel. Valuable time is often lost before rescue trains reach the scene of the accident. Therefore, new stretches are fitted with fire stations and technical emergency services along the route for disaster relief. In order to round off the rescue system, there are hydrants and electrical panels installed in the tunnels. This gives the emergency services quick access to sufficient quantities of water and electrical energy. The power supply is essentially executed as a floating system.