Case Studies

Fieldwork Case Study

Station and Trackside Cable Tracing and Tagging - East London Line

The cabling systems for the existing station and trackside cable services for the East London Line had been accumulated over a period of time in an unstructured manner. Identification of cables on the ELL was required such that their precise location and nature was established to facilitate the East London Line Upgrade Works.

Fifth Dimension Associates assisted Mouchel Parkman Rail with identification of these cables by supplying the highly skilled Electrical Project Engineer and the Site Supervisor to establish sound system of work. We provided completed cable schedules and the supervision of the complete removal of redundant cables and assets.

The project required that preliminary works relating to all the existing cabling arrangements needed to be undertaken to ascertain which residual cables were to be retained and protected for return to service on completion of the upgrade works and which redundant cables were to be removed as scrap or recovered for use on other lines. This ranged from LV and HV power cables to Comms cables. All were traced and tagged accordingly and recorded on drawings or in the case of redundant cables they were recorded on a spreadsheet.

Fifth Dimension specialists had to be aware of, and adhere to, the strict Rules and Regulations as laid out by both Network Rail and London Underground. Our staff had to know what regulations corresponded to each area of the possible sites they were working in - whether they were NWR or LU regulations. Part of the work was done during Traffic Hours so staff had to be fully conversant with LU Live Working Standards and Regulations.


After the initial hand tracing and tagging in which the cables in the station were tagged every 5m while those in the tunnels were tagged every 25/50m, a full cable schedule report with photographs was produced detailing the results of the survey. As a result of correct tagging, the safe and accurate removal of redundant equipment and cables was carried out. The project was completed on time and within budget.

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