NORWAY: Infrastructure manager Bane Nor has successfully completed ‘the first 100 days of operation of ERTMS in Norway’, following the commissioning of the first series installation on the Roa – Gjøvik line in November 2024.
80% of the Norwegian systems are relay based, so the start of ETCS Level 2 operations on the Gjøvikbanan was a significant milestone in the national resignalling programme that has been underway since 2018, Bane Nor Chief Operating Officer Sverre Kjenne said in February.
Meanwhile, Bane Nor and its contractors have completed the roll-out of GSM-R across the 4 200 km national rail network. This has required the installation of more than 600 radio base stations.
Three core suppliers
Bane Nor awarded a NKr5·5bn contract to Siemens Mobility in March 2018 to implement ETCS Level 2 across the entire network. This covers the provision of new interlockings, radio block centres and related infrastructure elements such as balises and point machines.
Alstom is supplying the ETCS onboard equipment under a separate NKr2bn package and co-ordinating the retrofitting of the rolling stock fleet, while Thales (now Hitachi) is supplying the traffic management system for NKr600m, using a scalable version of its Aramis platform.
Kjenne told Railway Gazette International that he was ‘very happy that we only have a limited number of suppliers, because of the complexity of the job. Every now and then, I need to act as a marriage counsellor between the three parties to make sure things are going in the right direction.’
Line by line
Norway’s initial pilot installation of ETCS Level 2 (Version 2.3.0d) was inaugurated on the 80 km Ski – Sarpsborg branch of the Østfoldbanen in August 2015. Following the success of that trial, the infrastructure manager decided to embark on its network-wide implementation of ERTMS, replacing a variety of obsolete signalling technologies.
An initial testbed was developed on the lightly-used Roabanan to the north of Oslo, close to the Nyland campus in the capital’s eastern suburbs which has been developed to support the ETCS programme. Test running began on this pilot section between Roa and Honefoss in October 2020.
Under the original strategy, ETCS Level 2 operation had been scheduled to start on the 500 km northern section of the Nordlandsbanan between Grong and Bodø on October 31 2022. However, the timescale was subsequently revised as a result of global supply problems in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Roa – Gjøvik line running north from Oslo had initially been envisaged as the second route to be converted, but Bane Nor decided to bring it forward in the programme as it was closer to the Nyland campus and connected with the Roabanan testbed. The route had previously been operated with manual signalling which was a significant constraint on the level of service that could be provided.
The next route to go live is now expected to be the Drammen – Tonsberg section of the Oslo – Larvik – Skien route southwest of the capital. This is ‘scheduled by August 2026’, according to Birger Steffensen, CEO of Siemens Mobility Norway.
The Nordlandsbanan is now scheduled to be the third route to be commissioned; Steffensen said the start of ETCS operation between Trondheim and Bodø is expected ‘by the end of 2027’.
