About Sam Bemment Dr Sam Bemment is Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Universal Signalling. With more than 18 years of experience in engineering, operations, consulting, and railway innovation, Sam brings a deep understanding of both the technical and commercial challenges of rail. He holds a degree in Aeronautical Engineering and a PhD in Railway Systems Engineering, is a Chartered Engineer, and has worked across the client-supplier interface with operators, infrastructure owners, universities, SMEs, and major rail organisations. At Universal Signalling, he focuses on turning client pain points into faster, more affordable solutions. About Universal Signalling Universal Signalling is a UK-based railtech company founded in 2022 with the goal of making digital railway signalling products faster to fit, simpler, and more affordable. Its core philosophy is “Signalling in Days, Not Decades”, with the stated goal of offering clients benefits now, not in a decade’s time. The company develops low-cost, rapid-deployment technologies, initially for regional, rural, and lower-density railways. Its U-Cross product uses trackside beacons and onboard reader units to provide more accurate train location information, helping improve safety and operational efficiency at user-worked crossings and on lines where traditional signalling upgrades are difficult to justify. https://www.universalsignalling.com/ Key Takeaways ETCS is a the European signalling interoperability standard. It was originally specified in the mid 1990s, and due to complexity/cost is often difficult to justify on lower-density regional and secondary lines.Regional railways are essential for the wider network, often providing the first and last mile for freight customers and basic mobility for rural passengers.Many rural lines operate under tight budgets, and large signalling upgrade programmes can take longer than a typical 4–5 year political or funding cycle.In signalling projects, the biggest cost is usually not the equipment. Sam explains that in UK signalling projects, around 83% of project cost can be labour and project delivery, while only around 17% is equipment.A single Eurobalise may cost around £2,000–3,000 as hardware, but once design, installation, testing, and verification labour are included, the installed cost can rise to around £25,000.Universal Signalling’s beacons cost around £20–30 per unit including installation, and test labour, roughly 1000 times cheaper than a Eurobalise.Instead of installing one expensive balise every kilometre, Universal Signalling can deploy many low-cost beacons, for example every 20 metres. This gives radically better train positioning and enables fault tolerance.The company’s U-Cross trial in Wales covered around 18 kilometres, or 11 miles, of track and was installed in just 2.5 overnight shifts, without any prior design work. This will only get faster as the team get more experience.U-Cross helps at user-worked crossings, where crossing users may currently have to wait up to 40–45 minutes because signallers do not know exactly where the train is within long rural block sections.Universal Signalling’s long-term vision is “Signalling in Days, Not Decades”, reducing deployment times from years to days or weeks and making digital signalling viable for regional railways in the UK, Europe, and potentially a large share of the global rail network. Sebastian Sperker sebastian@railup.club www.railup.club
