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[email protected] · October 22nd 16, 11:41 PM posted to uk.transport.london

In article , (tim...)
wrote:

wrote in message
...
On Thu, 20 Oct 2016 18:56:06 -0500
wrote:
In article , d () wrote:

On Wed, 19 Oct 2016 18:39:46 -0500
wrote:
GTO electronics are seriously obsolete which could, I suspect, make
obtaining further sets quite hard. Note that some Networkers have had
their GTO controls replaced by Hitachi.

Surely if a manufacturer builds a train with a working life probably
exceeding at least 30 years then then should either guarantee a supply
of parts for that time period or suffer penalties such as swallowing
the cost of train upgrades if they can't? Even car manufacturers I
believe are by law required to be able to supply parts for their
vehicles for a minimum of 10 years in the USA & EU.

ROFL!

Well that was informative.

The problem with trying to guarantee replacement parts for electronic
components, is that your suppliers wont guarantee supply of their
devices for an extended length of time.

I recall once working on a project where one of the components that
had been selected for the product was obsoleted during the
development phase and the board had to be re-engineered with a newer
component.

You can usually expect to get guaranteed supply for 5-7 years out of
a supplier, but more than that and you are stuck having to make
alternative arrangements. You might stretch a repair stock to 10-12
years by buying in before an item becomes obsolete, but 30 years!

And with modern electronics, the timescales get shorter and shorter.

NRN radios were 1980s technology. We made lots of them when I worked at
Philips. By the end of the 1990s it wasn't even possible to manufacture the
radios any more because electronics as discrete components on circuit boards
were used any more. Replacement radio models hadn't been through the same
approval process necessary for safety assurance of railway control systems.

Yet radios manufactured back to the mid-80s are still today installed in
train cabs and used at least until recently. A substantial cottage industry
grew up finding and repairing such radios to keep the railway going. No
doubt the same sort of thing will have to happen with the successor GSM-R
technology.

--
Colin Rosenstiel