First Great Western Chooses Apollo
Travellers on First Great Western trains from Penzance to
Paddington can sleep safely knowing that they are being protected
by world class fire detection technology from Apollo.
The sleeper service runs six days per week throughout the year,
so reliability is a critical factor. Every component on the train,
including the fire detectors, must withstand the rigours of
travelling more than 95,000 miles every year.
David Cooke, Depot Engineering Technician for First Great
Western, says: "Apollo fire detectors were first used on the
sleeper carriages in the late 1980s, so we have first-hand
experience of how reliable they are. When the interiors of the
Night Riviera carriages were being refreshed we also reviewed the
fire detection. The existing Apollo devices were still working well
and we could have replaced them gradually, but we ultimately
decided to change them in one go to coincide with the upgrade and
to ensure our passengers and rolling stock were getting the best
available protection."
The fire system upgrade involved the installation of 130 Apollo
Series 65 conventional smoke detectors as well as aspirating smoke
detection on all ten Night Riviera carriages.
Ionisation smoke detectors are fitted in every berth and in the
ducts, with optical smoke detectors providing protection in the
communal areas. Each carriage has its own control panel to record
fault and alarm signals, but the signals can also be conveyed from
carriage to carriage. An alarm condition triggers audible warnings
and a series of LED indicators.
Each fire panel clearly shows whether an alert has been
triggered by a fault or a potential hazard and whether the incident
has arisen in that particular carriage or in an adjacent carriage.
An alarm condition will also automatically close the two internal
fire doors within the carriage, enabling any genuine fire incident
to be contained and guiding passengers away from the source.
Andy Haynes of Apollo's Technical Sales team assisted with the
system design. He says: "It's certainly an unusual application but
all our products undergo rigorous in-house testing and meet all
major international standards, so we are confident that our fire
detectors will provide First Great Western and its passengers with
many years - and many miles - of reliable protection."
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