A CUMBRIAN company is providing lights for trains on the London Underground.
MARL International, a company based in Ulverston, is delivering their Innovate LED lights to the Bakerloo line rolling stock operated by Transport for London (TfL). The line's lighting will be fully upgraded by 2024.
TfL tasked MARL with designing, manufacturing and installing a complete retrofit LED lighting system for its 72TS Bakerloo line fleet. The company designed a brand-new LED lighting system that will be installed within the Bakerloo line's fleet of 36 trains and 252 carriages.
This amounts to 4,906 lighting units, 512 power supply units, a million LEDs and more than three million components designed by MARL. The company had to design and deliver these within six months.
The lights had to be fitted into limited space, have mechanical compatibility with existing lighting mounting points, maintain the appearance of the carriages, and supply enough light for passengers above and below ground.
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The lights use an energy storage system, so the lights can continue to run without power for three seconds across track gaps where no power is provided to the train. There are now only very minor intermittent interruptions on trains using this lighting system on the Bakerloo line due to some of the larger traction gaps.
The development phases started with a large and rigorous set of rail performance and safety design standards. Some 4,000 pages of standards formed the basis of MARL International's Verification and Validation design matrix.
Swapping the fluorescent tubes to the new LED lighting system achieve a 50 per cent energy saving, and substantial savings in energy and maintenance costs.
Adrian Rawlinson, managing director of MARL International, said: "We are proud to have delivered a major upgrade on time and on budget. London’s Underground network is an exceptionally demanding environment, and the LED lighting systems supplied by MARL met and exceeded the operating expectations of TfL.”
Previously, MARL International collaborated with bathroom-design firm Samuel Heath to produce an LED mirror in 2019. All the components were produced in Ulverston.
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