Die Länderbahn (DLB) had been awarded a contract to provide regional passenger transport services in the northwest of the Czech Republic in 2019. These services are provided with a fleet of nine RegioSprinter vehicles, which were taken over for this purpose from Vogtlandbahn. They regularly operate on the approximately 295 km network around the northern Bohemian town of Louny.
The Czech rail network is in some sections quite old and very inhomogeneously equipped with control and safety technology. “The safety of our passengers is our top priority” says railway director Jens Jäger. “That’s why we’ve invested in additional state-of-the-art safety technology for our rolling stock, which is a kind of fallback protection independent of all systems on the Czech Republic’s network.”
TrainCAS was originally developed at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) as technology transfer of a system used in aviation and then brought to market maturity via the DLR spin-off Intelligence on Wheels (IoW). It is in use in several EU countries, and now for the first time in the Czech Republic. “The special charm of the solution lies in the fact that the system consists exclusively of components that are installed in the vehicles” says Thomas Strang, managing director of IoW. “This means that existing safety systems are not replaced, but rather supplemented by TrainCAS to make rail traffic, most of which is already very safe, even safer.”
The system for Die Länderbahn was available with the start of transport services, but could only be installed and put into operation with a delay due to the pandemic – also because the vehicles maintained regular operations every day despite the pandemic.
On December 20, the system was put into operation on the last vehicle in the fleet and will from now on work in the background to serve the customers and employees of Die Länderbahn.