HASLER Rail

Headnote

Railway data acquisition and recording systems

Almost half of the world's locomotives operate in Europe. It is therefore not too surprising that Europe leads the way in defining new requirements and standards and, moreover, is able to implement them internationally.

The expansion of the European Union due to the opening of its eastern borders and eastward enlargement means that the railways-the most environmentally-friendly means of mass transport-have to improve their performance with new rolling stock and through automation.

To reach the ambitious goal of a uniform European railway network, not only finance but also new technologies have to be made available. Trains must operate at shorter headways, higher speeds, and beyond national borders. They must also be interoperable. ERTMS (European Rail Traffic Management System), consisting of ETCS (European Train Control System) and GSM-R (Global System for Mobile Communication for Railways) for railway radio communication, has been designed for this purpose. It allows national signalling systems to be "Europeanised" so that the driver will always receive the same signalling information in the same way, regardless of which country he or she is operating in at the time.

Therefore, a modern data acquisition and recording system is also needed. The first Hasler® data acquisition and recording systerns-the Hausshälter type-were developed and produced in 1887. G A Hasler obtained his first patent in 1891 for a device that not only enabled speed and time to be recorded, but also the distance travelled by the locomotive.

Since then, Hasler speed indicators have been designated with the trademarks TEL® or TELOC®, which derive from Telegraphenwerkstätte von G Hasler'.

However, due to their conception, the most approved precision-mechanics Hasler®RT railway tachographs (Fig 1) are not very well suited for use in automatic systems. Therefore, an electronic product line was developed in 1970, which complies with the most diverse requirements and may be combined in different ways.

Constant development and adaptations to meet both market and customer demands led to the current Hasler® TEL®1000, TELOC®1500, and TELOC®2500 (Fig 2) systems. Simple...