London St. Pancras Highspeed’s digital transformation: Embracing innovation with augmented reality

To start off, could you give us an overview of London St. Pancras Highspeed‘s digital transformation journey and what inspired the adoption of technologies like augmented reality (AR) for asset monitoring and maintenance?

London St. Pancras Highspeed aims to create a completely data-driven railway. As a privately owned railway, we believe that the best way for us to effectively run the railway is to innovate. Our digital vision, which has been in place since 2020, influences our day-to-day operations and our long-term strategic planning. Augmented reality plays a part in this vision, informing how we interact with our customers – our Train Operating Companies – as well as passengers and stakeholders.

In terms of our digital vision, we’re coming to the end of our first five-year regulatory period with this vision, during which we’ve made significant progress. We’ve completed numerous trials through our R&D portfolio to learn how to integrate AR into our systems and build the necessary infrastructure. As we start our next control period on 1 April 2025, we expect to see the results of these plans take shape.

At London St. Pancras Highspeed there are two core benefits for us in applying AR to our network. There’s a ‘back of house’ benefit and a ‘front of house’ benefit. The back of house refers to how we run our business, while the front of house is about interacting with our passengers to make it a more exciting journey experience.

We believe that AR represents the future of understanding railway condition in relation to asset monitoring and maintenance. Currently, engineers go out each night to inspect assets, taking photos and carrying out visual inspections without really having any data from the previous inspection. They usually record findings in paper form, which is time-consuming and inefficient in comparison to newer ways of working. With AR, engineers can access information from our asset management systems in real-time, giving them insights into the performance of an asset over time and helping them make more informed, objective decisions on-site.

It’s a gamechanger for more effective railway maintenance and inspection.

Credit: London St. Pancras Highspeed

Furthermore, AR serves as a really good way to train our staff. We’ve conducted trials where we’ve built 3D models of particular assets and provided engineers with headsets to virtually maintain and inspect them. This allows our team to become familiar with the equipment before working on the real thing, saving time and increasing efficiency. 

How do you foresee augmented reality evolving beyond defect detection to impact other aspects of asset life cycle management, and what role do you believe it will play in predictive and preventative maintenance strategies?

AR will have a significant and valuable impact across a number of areas, some of which are really high value.

Take for example our train stations. We’ve got four international train stations, with St Pancras International the busiest, handling around 50 million passengers a year. It serves people coming in from continental Europe, the regions of the UK, the Midlands and Kent, and it connects to the London Underground and Thameslink lines, making it a highly dynamic station with constant movement.

What’s exciting is how our customer service and station operations could be transformed by augmented reality. We’ve conducted small-scale trials in the past, but we believe that, AR could link railway performance and station operations to customer service assistance enabling more proactive management of stations and crowds.

Currently, when an event occurs, such as a significant train delay, cancellation or similar, it requires reactive responses from staff. With augmented reality, staff could better manage crowds and handle events, potentially by being able to see live train performance in AR and simultaneously receive insights on how to handle it using data from past events held in our digital twin for stations. For example, if a special event or someone famous was coming to play the piano in our station, AR could assist in managing the situation proactively.

c: London St. Pancras Highspeed

In implementing augmented reality across the London St. Pancras Highspeed system, what unique challenges have you encountered in integrating this technology with legacy systems and how did you address issues related to compatibility?

For successful AR deployment, new systems and data infrastructure are often needed, as older, proprietary and legacy systems may not have the necessary capability, or hold data in the right format for use, and therefore, much of the information is outdated.

AR relies on geographic and geometric context, but London St. Pancras Highspeed was built at a time when only 2D information was available. We therefore need to produce 3D models and develop the digital capability to contextualise information.

We’re overcoming these challenges by digitising our information and processes over time. Modern projects provide us with better data, but it’s a long-term investment to ensure everything is fully digitised and compatible with AR technology. We’re making steady progress and have identified the necessary building blocks.

As augmented reality continues to gain traction in rail infrastructure, what metrics or KPIs are you using to assess its impact on operational performance and how have these indicators informed your approach to future digital investments?

London St. Pancras Highspeed operates in a unique way with many of our partners running our stations and therefore they will have an important role in tracking the impact of AR. For example, in digital station operations, we could track our station insight data to measure customer satisfaction in times of delays or incidents. We might also monitor station occupancy and customer flow, seeing how that changes over time to gauge AR’s effectiveness in improving operations.

Rather than focusing on a specific metric or KPI, the real benefit for us lies in tracking how our plans and the feedback from our data changes over time. We are still at the early stages of implementing this technology and I expect that our tracking and measurement will evolve over time.

The adoption of AR often requires a cultural shift within maintenance teams. How has London St. Pancras Highspeed approached team training and adoption to ensure that AR becomes a valued part of day-to-day operations rather than just a technical overlay?

I believe this is the biggest area to get right, not just for augmented reality but for any digital change in the rail industry. Our maintenance teams are very proud of their current processes, so any proposed changes need to be explained clearly along with the benefits they will bring.

c: London St. Pancras Highspeed

During our early research and development trials, we worked closely with people who are experts in the technical delivery of AR. This collaboration allowed us to present the technology to our maintenance and inspection teams in a risk-free environment.

Our strategic partner, Network Rail High Speed, who deliver our maintenance and operations have just created a state-of-the-art training facility at their depot, allowing us to showcase new technologies like AR. This is where we introduce AR to engineers first, demonstrate its benefits and ensure they’re comfortable with it before deploying it on the railway.

How has augmented reality helped improve safety for your maintenance teams during harsh weather conditions, and what role do you see AR playing in enhancing safety protocols during extreme weather events, such as snow, heavy rain, or high winds?

If you combine augmented reality with remote condition monitoring and 3D asset mapping in extreme weather events, then AR can make a difference. It means that in cold weather, at night-time, with live railway zones, heavy rain, or extreme heat, maintenance can be done remotely from an office, depot, facility, or even a trackside vehicle because we have the information and geometric context of the asset.

You can see the benefit particularly when it’s unsafe for our teams to be on-site.

Finally, looking to the future, how do you envision London St. Pancras Highspeed‘s digital journey, in particular the role of augmented reality, shaping broader industry standards and influencing the next generation of high-speed rail projects globally?

Since our digital vision began in 2020, we’ve done extensive planning over the last five years. In April 2025, a new funding cycle will allow us to further expand and improve HS1’s operations. We’ve already seen how our R&D funding and projects have had a powerful impact on operations, and asset management.

The main goal of our R&D projects is to improve industry standards. For a project to influence standards, it must demonstrate that it’s significantly safer or more efficient than current practices.

Looking at global high-speed rail projects specifically, we can take lessons from “digitally native” companies – ie: those that were digital from the start.

There are benefits for high-speed rail projects adopting this approach to reduce the overall life-cycle cost. Typically, the CapEx (capital expenditure) to construct such projects is high, but in many cases, the ongoing OpEx (operational expenditure) eventually exceeds CapEx over the project’s lifespan.

For example, while HS1’s construction costs were high, the long-term operation and maintenance costs are even greater. We must invest in technologies such as augmented reality, remote condition monitoring and cloud technology that bring down operational costs and deliver long term efficiency

Many rail companies are still behind the digital transition, incorporating these technologies early is essential to achieving sustainable operations at a lower operating cost over time. The benefits for train companies, for passengers and ultimately to get more people using the railway are worth it.