Re 420 rail shoe?

[Flying Pig]

There's an object below the body of an Re 420 that looks like a shoe that is meant to contact the rail when lowered. It's easier to see in photos of models, but where I can see it in prototype photos it seems to be raised clear of the track.

 

Can someone tell me whether this is in fact a shoe of some sort and what its purpose is? I can think of several possibilities of varying degrees of likelihood.

[chb2488]

Do you mean the Integra-Signum equipment? It‘s best explained here:

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integra-Signum

[Flying Pig]

1 hour ago, chb2488 said:

Do you mean the Integra-Signum equipment? It‘s best explained here:

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integra-Signum

 

Thanks, it seems I do indeed.  Signalling/safety system receiver was one of the possibilities I had considered, but I had never noticed anything like an inductor alongside the rails in any of the cabrides I've watched.  Presumably that is because of the changeover to ETCS level 1?  The yellow "Eurobalises" between the rails are very obvious in association with fixed signals.

[icn]

On 26/01/2023 at 16:31, Flying Pig said:

 

Thanks, it seems I do indeed.  Signalling/safety system receiver was one of the possibilities I had considered, but I had never noticed anything like an inductor alongside the rails in any of the cabrides I've watched.  Presumably that is because of the changeover to ETCS level 1?  The yellow "Eurobalises" between the rails are very obvious in association with fixed signals.

It is related to ETCS, but... it's complicated. Magnet based Signum was replaced with "Euro-Signum" which relies on Eurobalises to transmit equivalent information. It's not ETCS because (at least initially) the balise transmitted an "empty" ETCS message which contained Signum data in the attachment. And on the loco side, there is a receiver which extracts this attachment and feeds it into the existing Signum circuitry.

 

Later on, these same Balises were upgraded to also transmit ETCS information. Trains running on the network can either use ETCS L1 or Euro-Signum, depending on how they're equipped. Many older trains for example have no ETCS installation, and some have ETCS software that is using an older baseline - both of these will rely on the Euro-Signum functionality because they cannot handle the ETCS L1 part of the message from the Balise. Other trains have newer software, and (if running in ETCS mode) will use the ETCS part of the message from the Balise, and ignore the Euro-Signum part. In fact all new trains are being delivered without Signum and therefore have to use ETCS all over the network - I don't know if any trains exist that both support ETCS L1 and also have Euro-Signum installed.

Edited January 28, 2023 by icn