EUROPE: Unisig, a voluntary grouping of Siemens, Alstom, Adtranz, Invensys, Ansaldo and Alcatel, defined a minimum set of functions for ETCS/ERTMS that was approved on April 25 2000 by the European Commission, the International Union of Railways and the Union of European Railway Industries (Unife).
This has become known as ETCS Class 1 and forms the basis for the various pilot projects and commercial applications, although some earlier schemes will need to migrate to Class 1 to conform. Individual companies have developed suites of their own products, from Eurobalises and lineside radio block centres to the various types of on-train equipment, including the standard Eurocab, but interoperability is guaranteed and will be checked with cross-acceptance tests at the pilot sites.
Ansaldo has developed Avanrail 1000, 2000 and 3000 corresponding to ERTMS Levels 1, 2 and 3. Adtranz Signal offers Ebicab 2000, which can be married with the RBC950 radio block centre. Alstom has developed Atlas 100, 200 and 300 corresponding to the three ERTMS levels, and Alcatel is offering Altrac, which is a complete range of ETCS components. Invensys Rail Systems' products for ETCS/ERTMS include a radio block centre that works with Westrace safety critical processors and the Westlock computer-based interlocking.
GSM-R is available from several manufacturers, including Siemens, Sagem, Hörmann, Nortel, Kapsch and Alstom.
