BR ATP

FGW HST ATP Notice

BR ATP (British Rail Automatic Train Protection) is a railway Safety System used on the Great Western Main Line and formally used on the Chiltern Main Line. It was developed after the Clapham Junction crash in 1986 and several other crashes as a last line of defence. BR ATP came from two manufactures which was SELCAB for the Chiltern Main Line and ACEC TBL for the Great Western Main Line.

Routes

ATP can be found on the Great Western Main Line between London Paddington and Bristol Temple Meads via Bath Spa, it could also found on the Chiltern Main Line between London Marylebone and Kings Sutton and the Aylesbury Branch expect for the Metropolitan Line between Amersham and Harrow-on-the-Hill.

Decommissioning

In 1994 Railtrack chose the safety system TPWS instead of BR ATP. This was chosen as part of the SPADRAM (Signal Passed at Danger Reduction and Mitigation) project this saw TPWS become required in 1999 and with all TPWS in complex area's fitted by 2004. TPWS could mitigate 70% of the ATP preventable crash's for massive cost reductions. With ETCS becoming the national standard BR ATP future is very bleak, as ETCS is a more standardised system and has more features than BR ATP.

Chiltern

In 2020 Chiltern Railways asked the ORR if they could decommission the obsolete SELCAB ATP equipment, due to the risk of it failing and be unfixable therefore making the Chiltern Railways service to unreliable. The ORR agreed that if a unit's ATP equipment was unrepairable then it had have TPWS Mk4 fitted, if not already fitted. The ORR said between 2023 and 2027 that the trackside ATP equipment could be switched off by Network Rail as all units had to be fitted with TPWS Mk4.

Great Western

At the time of writing the Great Western BR ATP is still in use. Due to the delay in the fitting of the Heathrow Express Class 387 with ETCS Great Western Railway commissioned a report into the vaule for money for fitting the 387s with ATP from the High Speed Train and found it wasn't Cost effective and so asked the ORR for an exception.

Rolling Stock

Here is a list of rolling stock which has been fitted with ATP.

• GWR & Scotrail HST's Only
• Class 165/0's Only
• Class 168/0's, 168/1's & 168/2's
• GWR Class 800's Only
• GWR Class 802's Only

Accidents with BR ATP

• Southall, in 1997 a First Great Western HST with disabled ATP passed a signal at Danger at crashed into a Freight train crossing from the Yard on the the Great Western Main Line Reliefs.
• Labroke Grove, in 1999 a Thames Trains class 165, 165117 passed a signal at Danger SN109 and crashed in a FGW HST.