In a joint development with South African distributor Emcom, Tait Custom Integration (TCI) developed a highly customised TM8200 radio with hand held control to meet the extremely specific requirements of the South African Railways.

The new TM8254 train radios operate on an MPT network infrastructure, conventional repeater network infrastructure (with intelligent scanning and voting) and simplex operation. In addition, a train monitoring system is used which sends data via a special modem board developed by Emcom.

The extensive railway network in South Africa is serviced by a nationwide MPT 1327 network infrastructure on all the main trunk lines and conventional radio repeater infrastructure is used on the rural trunk railway lines. In addition there are several large shunting yards where communication is established in simplex mode.

The TM8254 train requires to work in all above operating modes in a user friendly way. A division of South African Rail, Freight Rail, required some special features to be developed to meet their operational needs including:

• TNLS dialling scheme

• Scanning and voting

• Computer Controlled Data Interface (CCDI) commands

• Reflected Push To Talk

• Shunt reversion timer for shunting yard operation.