A train traveling through Colorado. Photo: Jerry Huddleston

[Via Satellite 06-03-2015] Norsat announced it has received orders in excess of $800,000 for its mobile, wayside and base station antennas for exclusive use in Positive Train Control (PTC) applications. The order brings total 2015 year to date commitments from customers to purchase approximately $1.3 million for the continued rollout of the government-mandated PTC initiative.

These new orders follow a lull in 2014 orders as the rail carriers and the U.S. government worked through a series of regulatory and financial hurdles. PTC is a system of functional requirements for monitoring and controlling train movements as an attempt to provide increased safety, including highly advanced technologies designed to automatically stop or slow a train before certain types of accidents occur. Specifically, the U.S. government mandates PTC to be designed to prevent train-to-train collisions, derailments caused by excessive speed, unauthorized incursions by trains onto sections of track where maintenance activities are taking place, and movement of a train through a track switch left in the wrong position.

“With the ramp up of orders placed by key suppliers to the program recently, and our expected order flow for our antenna as well as base and waystation technology, we are expecting PTC revenues of approximately $2 to $3 million in 2015 and likely each year beyond driven by the continued implementation of the Class 1 railroads, and the expanded deployment of PTC with urban and Class 2 rails over the next decade,” said Amiee Chan, CEO of Norsat.