Operating since 1972, Freightliner is a leading rail freight haulage provider offering high quality solutions for many diverse sectors across the UK and Continental Europe. Basford Hall Yard, located near the town of Crewe, Cheshire is one of the most important hubs of the West Coast Mainline, with the majority of freight trains on this line, passing through. The site also handles between 28,000 and 47,000 wagons each week making it one of the busiest yards in Europe.
The existing lighting throughout the yard offered inefficient illumination, poor visibility and was not fit for such a demanding logistics hub. The Kingfisher Team were invited to assess the site and design a lighting system to increase the opportunity for extended working hours and to ensure excellent efficiency without creating light pollution.
The Project
The Kingfisher High Mast Team focused on 3 key objectives when illuminating the Crewe depot:
- Creating an efficient, cost effective scheme
- Increasing opportunities for safe on-site operations
- Mitigating against light pollution
Utilising Existing Equipment
With pre-existing lattice towers onsite, the team saw the potential to utilise this equipment to save hardware and installation costs. After the initial site audit, the team identified a need for the towers to undergo structural evaluations as there was no access for lifting equipment. The structural assessment showed that the towers were signed off as suitable to manually raise engineers and equipment, so they could safely carry out the installation works.
Improving Safe On-Site Operations
The use of old technology not only emitted low lighting levels across the site but produced flicker in the dark conditions, which could potentially have caused safety issues due to the stroboscopic effects on machinery. This creates a distorted view for workers and can cause limitations and low productivity, as well as potentially dangerous occurrences.
With the installation of our high-performance, flicker free flood series AMNIS, we were able to successfully achieve a 40 lux average site-wide but guarantee uniformity, achieving 0.42 min/av in order to promote safe 24hr operations.
Light Pollution Mitigation
A focus on avoiding lighting pollution was pertinent to this system due to the size of the site and the surrounding environments. AMNIS’ minimal ULOR played a key role in mitigating against this, alongside a quality lighting design for the perfect placement.
The reflector-based system of the fixture produces a low glare distribution to ensure the alleviation of obtrusive light that could affect on-site operatives and road used passing through the local bypass, exceeding expectations laid out in the ILP Guidance Notes on Obtrusive Light.
Project Summary
Key Features
- 70 AMNIS Flood lights with NFT optical package
- Bespoke adaptive bracketry
- Minimised ULOR
- RIO expected within 2 years
