Nomad Digital to be part of freight train location tracking solution project

Incremental – supplier of data-driven solutions to the rail industry – is celebrating success as a winner in the government-backed funding competition, ‘First of a Kind’.

Incremental will now see its ground-breaking freight train location tracking solution, ‘TRACO’ (TRAnsition COnnectivity for trains and trucks), brought to fruition to facilitate the UK’s commitment to providing a more reliable, efficient, and greener railway.

Nomad Digital is excited to be one of the chosen partners for this project, which will bring a much-needed modal shift towards rail freight, helping to reduce road congestion and bring about a significant decrease in carbon emissions.

The ‘First of a Kind’ competition was launched in 2018 and is delivered by the ‘Small Business Research Initiative’, a collaboration between the Department for Transport (DfT) and Innovate UK. The partnership runs several competitions each year and is committed to providing tremendous financial support for innovative and ambitious projects it believes will modernise and transform the rail industry.

Mike Butler, Head of Technical Innovation at Nomad Digital, said: “We are pleased to be collaborating with Incremental on this exciting First of a Kind project. Nomad will supply robust and high-performance Road and Rail approved connectivity solutions that will support data transmission from the vehicles and provide a GNSS (GPS) feed for the TRACO platform. Nomad will also supply a tracking solution that can be used on wagons and freight containers to help deliver some of the project objectives.”

Nomad Digital, a wholly-owned Alstom company, will also be supporting Incremental with some of the engineering and deployment activities onto the various platforms.

‘TRACO’, designed to meet common challenges faced by UK rail freight operators, will use its sophisticated GPS system to provide intermodal tracking of freight across rail, road and at ports to provide the most accurate location information and intermodal freight tracking capabilities of its kind.

Due to the practice of freight trains spending idle time in depots and sidings, they are often situated in ‘blind spots on the network. This solution will be the first of its kind within the rail freight industry to track the unit anywhere, in real-time. This enables everyone in the logistical supply chain to be aware of its progress, respond to any delays or disruptions and predict the train’s arrival at its end destination. Additionally, by further tracking freight across onward modal transitions such as road haulage, end-to-end freight journeys can be tracked, and efficiencies optimised.

‘TRACO’ will provide real-time location monitoring of intermodal freight pathways down to a container level. This will give all parties involved reliable arrival prediction tools in order to facilitate optimised intermodal connectivity between road, rail and port. ‘TRACO’ will provide the integration of previously disparate data sets through accurate location information and real-time delay prediction algorithms, which will reduce transition times and create efficiencies and benefits for all.

Daniel Lee-Bursnall, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Incremental, said: “Our fantastic team has made us proud once again. Becoming one of the winners of this competition is further testament that we’re a company that conceives, designs and delivers innovative solutions that benefit the rail industry and the wider UK economy. ‘TRACO’ will give all parties in the supply chain access to essential and credible location data at any given time. This will reduce paper-based systems and provide the tools to better plan, monitor and deliver goods to customers around the UK, and we can’t wait to get started.”