The spotlight on safety in the rail industry is becoming ever brighter.

The standard system for distributing information relating to emergency speed restrictions, track conditions and other safety notices to drivers has been to fax the notices and then for these to be pinned up in the appropriate safety notice boards. But what is the time lag between issuing the notice and the actual display of the paper notice in the cabinet? To complement the paper system and to ensure that information can be made available instantly, Nexus Alpha have developed a version of their public display screens, working with their Tyrell2 system..

Tyrell2 is a template based message system where operators can, with minimal effort, enter specific details into the fields of pre-defined templates. Those messages can then be sent to a multitude of recipients - ranging from other Tyrell users to faxes, pagers, SMS and of course screens. Tyrell also supports comprehensive address book and filtering functions so once the system is configured, one mouse-click can send a message to hundreds of end points - whilst not sending it to addresses where it doesn't apply. And those messages are logged. Hence the system is ideal to enable Control offices to input information into templates on their existing Tyrell2 systems, which then send the information to high brightness LCD screens located in the appropriate Drivers' rooms.

The screens themselves are specially configured for this task and are variants of the Nexus Alpha LCD2 display panels - essentially industrial quality computers and high bright LCD panels housed in our own extremely robust stainless and aluminium casings with polycarbonate screen protection. They use a special version of our latest generation display software.

New Tyrell2 templates cover such things as emergency speed restrictions, slippery railhead conditions, sandite application (or lack of it) and potentially overheating rails. Using software installed on their desks, the controllers are also able to see exactly what is on the displays at the remote locations - hence they can have complete confidence that the message they sent is being displayed correctly.

After a brief run-in and test period, South West Trains started using the system operationally in October and are now assessing it.

Does your TOC have unsupervised depots where this product would be of value? Please contact Nexus Alpha if you want to know more.

Alternatively does your TOC have a need to be able to display other information quickly at remote locations, such as commercial information relating to ticket offices closed, PERTIS machines not working etc.? Remember that by using Tyrell the same information can be input quickly once and then not only sent to the screens but also via pager, SMS, fax, e-mail etc. If you wish to discuss what could be done, again please contact .