by george matthews
The European Union's rail department wants to harmonise all the signalling systems in Europe.
There may of course be dangers of hacking the new system, mentioned in the BBC article.
GSM-R roll-outhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16347248
A group of manufacturers met to address this and decided to switch to a single digital standard to ensure they could source replacement parts and make different companies' systems interoperable.
They developed GSM-Railway (GSM-R), a more secure version of the 2G wireless standard used by mobile phones.
It allows traffic controllers and train drivers to talk to each other, and for data to be transmitted recording the vehicle's speed and location. The control centre then uses the data to give the train permission to enter the next part of the track, theoretically making trackside signals unnecessary.
The technology is already being used in parts of Europe, Africa and Asia. Network Rail is rolling it out in the UK and aims to cover all Britain's rail lines by the end of 2014.
There may of course be dangers of hacking the new system, mentioned in the BBC article.
