When you want to improve railway infrastructure, it is not enough to make heavy investments in new signaling and other communication systems. You need to make sure that you protect the sensitive trackside equipment through the proper sealing of shelters, cabinets, and enclosures.
The traditional cable glands for entries into shelters, cabinets, and equipment may respond to some of the requirements, but they require too much space, too much labor, too many holes, and more. They don’t compare with the new type of sealing solutions when it comes to meeting practical cost-efficiency challenges such as standardization for quick and repeatable work within design, engineering, installation, and upgrades.
The new seals have changed the way the railway industry looks at efficient cabinet sealing. The seals enable routing and sealing of many pre-terminated cables through each opening. This reduces the number of potential leak paths, simplifying and speeding up an installation in factories and retrofits in the field.
Before providing shelters and housings for the crucial signaling equipment, lead engineers would make sure they use modern sealing technology that provides full protection and is easy and efficient to work with and maintain. The selected sealing solutions should also be easily attainable from local sources and come with design, engineering, and onsite installation support anywhere in the USA or Canada.
The new seals contribute to the safe and timely transportation of people and goods all over North America.
For example, they secure power supply, prevent water from damaging equipment and minimize danger in case of fire in the Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project in Washington, D.C. They seal around fiberglass conduits, power cables, and shielded cables of different sizes in the new stations and substations as well as on passenger platforms and aerial decks. The seals offer built-in spare capacity and simplify adding and removing cables in the future. You just loosen up a few bolts and take them apart in a secure way.
“The products work very well for us, as they can accommodate various sizes of cable. It makes it easy to do the design work and to handle changes in the field”, says Senior Traction Power Engineer Rich Farland of Dulles Transit Partners.