It was with great excitement, after many months of working from home and event cancellations that the GKD team got ready for Rail Live 2021. An opportunity to meet our customers and distribution partners and have a long overdue catch up! The weather could not have been better and in the sunshine our new branding and two of our new products were revealed.
As a show Rai Live is focused on the very latest in rail-related technology, our rated capacity indicators are the preferred system across the UK rail network, with over 1,000 systems currently installed worldwide. Road Rail Vehicles (RRVs) fitted with 3 RCi’s are achieving 98.6% reliability (UK Network Rail performance statistics).
The brand new Series 3 rated capacity indicator system was on display, showcasing its new multi-point virtual wall feature and the new tandem lift function.
Sean Layton, Senior Technical Engineer at GKD Technologies, explains the enhancements to the Series 3 product range. “The new version of the Series 3 has the new ‘Wireless Tandem Lift system’ inbuilt. We worked closely with our installer and distribution partner, G.O.S Tool & Engineering to develop this system, which will revolutionise tandem lift operations on UK Rail Networks. The Wireless Tandem Lift is currently available on an exclusive basis through G.O.S. Tool & Engineering for installation on new G.O.S. machines or as an upgrade to G.O.S. machines in the field running a GKD version 9 System. GKD is in parallel going through Network Rail certification for the Wireless Tandem Lift System on a standalone basis and is expected to be approved and ready for UK-wide distribution with our other partners in July / August 2021.
Sean adds, “The current standards say that when you go into tandem mode you have to derate the machines lift capacity by a third – but with the GKD tandem system you don’t have to reduce the lifting capacity of the machine, which also means that you don’t have to use two machines of the same size – you can use a bigger machine and a smaller machine. This means that the most efficient, cost-effective machine for the job can be selected.”
