IRSTE Emerging Trends in Indian Railway Signalling Seminar Book

SESSION - IEMERGING TRENDS IN SIGNALLING ON INDIAN RAILWAYS by Shri K.K.BAJPAYEE Adviser (Signal), Railway Board Railway Signalling systems world over are provided not only to make optimum use of the existing line capacity , but also to provide safe train operation by reducing human dependence. Now in the 21st century , modern signalling systems provide an answer for a reliable, safe and viable train operations. Large scale induction of modern signalling systems for train control are expected to pave the way for higher levels of speed, safety and passenger comforts in train operations. It is expected that important routes on IR will be equipped with ATP system or its variants like ATC, ETCS etc during the next decade or so. These routes will be worked on automatic block signalling system with majority of the stations equipped with solid state interlockings. This paper briefly outlines various safety related signalling systems, which play a significant role in safe, speedier and efficient train operation. 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 Railways started in India with the first historical train journey between Bori Bunder and Thane in 1853. The railway network thereafter was gradually introduced in many other parts of the country. However, initially for about 40 years the trains were run on messages or candle light signals without any signalling and interlocking arrangements. The concept of signaling and interlocking was first introduced on 28 crossing stations between Lahore and Ghaziabad in the country in 1892. Colour light signaling was introduced on Indian Railways by GIP Railways in 1928 between Bombay VT and Byculla stations. The pace of modernization of signaling , however, picked up only after independence. Today, over 82% of total 6853 stations on Indian Railways are provided with some form of signalling and interlocking arrangements. Over 54% of total interlocked stations on Indian Railways are now provided with colour light signalling. Indian Railways have a multiple gauge network of 63,028 route kms., out of which about 16001 route kms. is electrified. With the rapid growth of passenger and goods traffic and its requirement for speedier and safe movement, the need for a modern railway signalling system has become imperative. Today signalling arrangements are required to provide, inter alia, the following :1 1.2 1.3 SESSION - I i) Safety enhancement and efficient and safe train control ii) Line capacity Enhancement iii) Real time train running information 1.4 With the increasing role of railway signalling in train operation and availability of modern technologies, the signalling arrangements are poised for a quantum jump in the next 20-25 years. Many a new device and system are being contemplated. In this paper, an attempt has been made to present glimpses of various modern signalling arrangements which are currently being considered/provided and which are likely to be introduced in a big way in signalling installations in next 20-25 years. 2. SAFETY ENHANCEMENT BY SIGNALLING 2.1 Today, Indian Railways (IR) have a multiple gauge network of 63028 route kms, of which 16001 route kms is electrified. The total investment in the system is Rs.633410 Millions ( about $ 1.32 Billion) . During the last 50 years, passenger traffic has increased by 350% and freight traffic has increased by 450% whereas the route length has increased by only 17%. This has been achieved by steady increase in productivity of assets wherein capacity enhancement measures, signalling and telecommunication has played an important role. It is a well known fact that application of modern signalling enhances safety by reducing human element in train operation. Signalling systems can be of great help in preventing accident at stations, level crossings and in block sections. The areas wherein Signalling can prevent accidents are as follows:i) Accident prevention at station. ii) Accident prevention in Block Station. iii) Accident Prevention at Level Crossing. 2.2 Analysis of accidents in the last 5 years shows that about 54 % of aacidents due to collisions, occur at stations. However many serious collisions have also taken place in block sections. Accidents at level crossing gates are other area of concern for Indian Railways. Signalling systems that can prevent these incidences are as below: (i) Components of Safety Systems at Stations: • Interlocking Systems - Panel/RouteRelay/Electronic • Track Circuiting (D.C as well as Audio Frequency T.C.) • Colour Light Signalling 2 SESSION - I • Cab Signalling • Axle Counters • Integrated Power Supply • Data Loggers • Auxiliary Warning System (Automatic Train Protection Systems) (ii) Components of Safety Systems at Block Sections • Conventional Block working systems • Continuous Track Circuiting in block sections (using D.C./A.F.T.C./Axle Counters) • Block Proving by Axle Counters (BPAC) • Automatic Block Signalling • Auxilliary Warning systems • Anti Collision Device (iii) Components of Safety Systems at L xing gates: • Interlocking • Telephones • Train Actuated Warning devices • Gate protection using AWS and ACD Over the past few years introduction of modern signaling systems have resulted into reduction in accidents specially collisions at stations and at L.C gates 3 SESSION - I TABLE below shows the progress made and action plan for next 5 years in respect of induction of modern signaling systems on IR 4 SESSION - I 2.3 Track Circuits: 2.3.1 Conventional Track Circuit: Track circuit is a device which detects presence or otherwise of a train on a portion of rail track. It consists of an insulated portion of track with rails forming a part of an electrical circuit. The presence or otherwise of a small current in the track is detected to determine whether or not the portion of the track is occupied. It is also helps in detection of rail/weld failures. Insulation joints Feed End Relay A typical D.C. track circuit Track circuit or a similar track detection device is an essential requirement for any modern signalling system. In the earlier days, in the absence of track circuits, the occupation or clearance of a track was physically checked before permitting a train to approach. Human error in ensuring occupation or otherwise of the track often led to accidents. REDUCTION IN COLLISIONS DUE TO TRACK CIRCUITING AT STATIONS 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Total T.C. locations (in '000) Collisions 19 80 19 82 19 84 19 86 19 88 19 90 19 92 19 94 19 96 19 98 19 99 20 00 20 01 20 02 20 03 5 SESSION - I After the tragic accident at Ferozabad station of Northern railway in 1995, a high priority has been given by Indian railways to provide track circuiting of station yards, prioritizing it route wise. The provision of track circuiting is being done through regular Works Programmes and also through a Special Railway Safety Funds created for this purpose. A brief position of progressive induction of track circuiting in station section is given below:- 1000 900 800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 1997-98 1998-99 1999-00 2000-01 2001-02 2002-03 FM-FM FM-BSL(st) FM-BSL(T/O) Home-FM Loop Line Total 2.3.2 Audio Frequency Track Circuit (AFTC) Maintenance of insulated joints of D.C. track circuits is a tedious and labour oriented job. The failure of insulated joints affects the reliability of DC track circuit considerably and experience shows that it is one of the main factors in DC track circuit failures. On advanced railway systems, joint-less track circuits are extensively used as they need less maintenance, equipments are centralized etc. On IR, AFTC started first as an alternative to axle counters for automatic signaling. First AFTC was introduced on Tambaram-Beach section of Southern railway for replacing 83 1/3 Hz AC track circuits in early nineties. Since then, 627 locations have been provided on all the railways except NER and NFR with AFTCs of various designs and makes, viz : Adtranz, Siemen's, US&S, Alsthom etc. 2.3.3 Axle counter: The maintenance of track circuit poses problems in station yards where track maintenance and drainage is poor. Besides provision of track circuit necessitates use of insulated sleepers. The length of conventional track circuit is also limited. To overcome these shortcomings, axle counters have been employed. A set of axle 6 SESSION - I counters placed at two ends of a portion of track count-in and count-out respectively the number of axles of a train. A zero resultant count indicates by inference that the portion of the track is clear. More than 3000 nos. axle counters for track circuiting and 220 nos. for block working (last vehicle proving) are installed on Indian Railways. These are based on analog technology and reliability is limited also their acceptability by the user is limited. Modern systems using digital technology and telegram transmission from track device to the evaluator, based on microprocessors are now available offering high immunity to interference and consequently very high reliability. In addition to imported version, a version developed by M/s. CEL in collaboration with IR has also been developed. Adoption of this new technology of digital axle counter on Indian railways have started picking up and 21 nos of systems have been installed for trials. In future it is expected that these intelligent digital axle counters will play a very important role in building up a modern and efficient railway signalling network. 2.4 COLOUR LIGHT SIGNALS: 2.4.1 Multiple aspect colour light signals are now provided as a standard in lieu of existing semaphore signals. The advantages of multiple aspect colour light signalling over semaphore signals are well known. In multiple aspect colour light signalling installations, each signal is pre-warned and its aspect is conveyed at signal in rear. This enhances safety and boosts confidence of the driver. Colour light signalling improves night visibility of signals and improves line capacity of a section. Besides, colour light signalling installations unlike semaphore signalling are much less prone tovandalism. On sections where electrification is carried out, colour light signals are invariably provided. The same is true for new signalling with replacement and Gauge conversion. 2.4.2 Surveys amongst loco drivers have suggested that provision of second distant signal not only improves line capacity, but gives a driver greater confidence in driving, as he is now able to get pre-warning about the signals ahead at 2 kms from home signal. Inter signal distances on most of the Railways (abroad) are based on SBD (Service Braking Distance). On Indian Railways, the Inter signal distance of 1 km is based on EBD (Emergency Braking Distance) leaving virtually no margin for error in train control by a driver. By the provision of 2nd distant signal a braking distance of 2 km is available between YY aspect of outer distant signal and R aspect of home signal. 7 SESSION - I Provision of Second Distant Signal New Delhi Sighting Board Distant Home ALD KGP Howrah 0.4 KM 1 KM Mumbai Wadi SC Nagpur (a) Existing signalling arrangement nd 2 Distant Distant Home Chennai 2nd Distant ‘A’ Route ‘B’ Route 2.4.3 Cab Signalling Over the years lot of aids have been provided to Station Master operating the signalling equipments for controlling train movement. However, no significant aid has been given to the driver to operate his train under adverse visibility conditions. Cab signalling is an aid by which signal aspects are displayed inside his cab indicating the speed at which the driver should drive his train. Cab signalling is the perfect answer to provide adequate safety and maintain efficient operation even under dense fog conditions as driver is not dependent on visibility of track side signals. Other safety features like auxilliary warning system and automatic train protection are other add on features with cab signalling to further improve safety. So far, Cab signaling is proposed only in metro system of Delhi & Kolkata. In future, Cab signaling shall become the norm for metros and high speed lines. 2.4.4 Signal Lamps: (a) Conventional filament type lamps: Currently in CLS system conventional filament lamps are used, they have got limited life and luminous intensity which also decreases with age. Biggest disadvantage with them is that they can fuse without any alarm pre-maturely. Earlier parallel filament lamps were in use. Now more reliable triple pole double filament lamps are being used in big way. However, still considerable efforts is required for their maintenance, replacement and visibility adjustments. The present life of signal lamps in use on IR is 1000 hrs., it is desirable that lamps with 10,000 hrs life, which will reduce maintenance efforts considerably, are developed. 8 SESSION - I (b) LED based signal lamps: Development of reliable and highly safe LED based signal lamps is in progress. LED lamps apart from better visibility, consume less power and have a very high reliability and life cycle. Life of a LED signal lamp is about 1 lac hours as compared to 1000 hrs for a conventional filament lamp. So far about 3000 signal aspects has been provided with LED based signals. Work is in progress at about 5000 signal aspects. Development of new source for supply of LED lamps is a prime need, if we are keen on taking full advantage of the LED lamps. 2.5 INTERLOCKING SYSTEMS 2.5.1 Conventional Interlocking and PI/RRI systems. There are a large number of orthodox mechanical signalling installations on Indian Railways. The signals and points at such installations are operated mechanically by means of wires and rods from cabins using lever frames. These installations suffer from frequent failures and are prone to miscreant activities. Besides, multiplicity of cabins at a station causes avoidable delay in train operation.. During mid-sixties, electromechanical relay based interlocking systems with colour light signals were introduced. In modern panel/route relay installations, operation of points and signals and interlocking thereof is achieved by electro-mechanical relays from a central locations. So far relay based interlocking system is available at 2698 stations, and is sanctioned for 1290 more stations. 2.5.2 Solid State Interlocking: Lately, with the development of electronic and solid state technology, the use of such devices in signal and interlocking installations has also been adopted. Presently, there are over 2698 stations, which are provided with panel/ route relay interlocking system. 23 stations have also been provided with electronic interlocking and another 500 or more electronic interlocking installations will be provided in the next decade or so. Solid State Interlocking also called electronic interlocking is an interlocking system which employs micro processors and software for interlocking functions. SSI has the advantage of smaller space, power, cabling and maintenance requirements besides fast software based upgradation facility and flexibility to meet the changes in the yard layouts. SSIs provide a high level of reliability, availability and fail safety. The system has built-in data logging facility for effective off line failure and operation analysis. The system also provides a highly sophisticated on line diagnostic facility. The high speed of operator data exchange permits SSIs to be compatible with other related systems like AWS,ATC, ETCS etc. 2.6 AUXILLIARY WARNING SYSTEMS (AWS): Sikri Committee in 1978 recommended provision of AWS on all trunk route with speed level of 100 kmph and above to cover all passenger and goods trains. Track magnet based AWS was tried on Howrah-Mugalsarai section of Eastern Railway. But, this system could not succeed due to large scale theft. However, AWS of this design 9 SESSION - I is currently working satisfactorily in suburban section of Central and Western Railways on 329 Route km, where high frequency of train services make the theft of track magnet very difficult. Since the last many years, IR had been searching for a suitable pilfer free automatic train control system. Railway Safety Review Committee headed by Justice H.R. Khanna, have also recommended the use of AWS system on IR. Ministry of Railway had in fact decided in the past , in principle, to adopt a radio based automatic warning system on IR. A pilot project of radio based automatic train control system (similar to ETCS level II) under the technical guidance of International Union of Railways (UIC) was also sanctioned for Mathura-Palwal section. However due to high cost the project has been kept on hold for the time being. In the mean time Indian Railways is further considering other proven AWS systems world over for its network. It is also being planned to provide AWS system along with the continuous track circuiting with ABS work , which has been sanctioned at 2000 route kms during the year. 2.7 SAFETY ENHANCEMENT SYSTEMS IN BLOCK SECTIONS 2.7.1 Conventional Single/Double line instrument: From one station to next station, the trains are controlled through block signaling on space interval system . In conventional system of train operations, this control is achieved through "absolute block system". In this system, control is exercised by station masters such that at a time only one train can be sent in a block section. 2.7.2 Block proving by Axle Counter (BPAC) At present at most of the stations on IR, verification of clearance of block section is done by station staff manually except under automatic block signalling system. With more and more emphasis on safety & increased traffic density, manual verification of last vehicle has become increasingly difficult. Block proving through axle counter is a system which provides automatic clearance of block section, by using axle counter to define and clear the block section. The in count of axles at advanced starter signal of the sending end station and out count at Home signal of receiving end station provides a check of complete arrival of a train and proves block clearance automatically. . It has been experienced that provision of block proving by axle counter not only enhances safety but also increases line capacity. Presently, 220 block sections on IR have been provided with BPAC and works are approved for about 1000 block sections more. 2.7.3 Anti-Collision Device (ACD) : An Anti-Collision Device (ACD) has been developed by Konkan Railway Coprn. to prevent collisions like situation, e.g. head-on collisions, side and rear-end collisions and those caused due to infringement by derailed vehicles on adjoining tracks. This device also helps in detecting train parting, and provides audible and visual warning at level crossing gates when trains approach. 10 SESSION - I First proto-type of ACD was demonstrated by KRCL in December,1999. After limited trials, the device was put on various tests and trials. ACD works on a satellite based Global Positioning System (GPS) and Angular Deviation Count principle for identification of track lay out. The ACD is an intelligent microprocessor based equipment. It consists of a central processing unit, a global positioning system and a digital modem for communication with other ACDs. When installed on locomotives, brakevans and at stations and level crossing gates, these ACDs network among themselves to prevent accident like conditions. ACD Radio Modem Antenna GPS Radio modem ABU Industrial PC Hardware 486 Industrial PC, Data Radio GPS Automatic braking Unit Software/function Operating system- DOS Radio protocol- CSMA/CD Latitude/ Longitude/speed/direction from true north Normal braking and emergency braking There are two types of ACD equipments viz. mobile ACDs for locomotives and brakevans and stationary ACDs for stations and level crossing gates. All the ACDs interact with each other and exchange information when they are within their radio zones upto 3 kms., and results of ACD interaction lead to a decision whether the loco ACD shall apply brakes or not. If yes, then whether to stop or to reduce its speed to a pre-determined value. While approaching a station, loco ACD gives station approach warning to the driver. In the event of not acknowledging this warning, the speed of the train is regulated automatically. While entering the station area, if loco ACD detects a train on the main line then also the speed is regulated. In the mid section, loco ACDs remain in look out position to detect the presence of other trains in a radius of 3 kms. In case, another train is approaching on the same track, the ACDs apply brakes in both the trains to bring them to a stop thereby reducing possibility of head-on collisions. When a train is approaching a level crossing gate, visual and audio warning is initiated by the ACD systems for the road users. Extended field trials started on Jalandhar-Amritsar section of Northern Railway w.e.f. 15-8-02. The trials have been completed on 19th January,2003 and the device have been found technically suitable for adoption after certain software and hardware modifications 11 SESSION - I To start with, provision of ACD on about 1800 Kms BG section of N.F. Railway has been taken up in hand. Simultaneously, GPS and route survey works in connection with provision of ACD on 849 RKms of non-electrified route of SC railway on Vasco-daGama-Madgaon-Londa-Hubli-Guntakal-Renigunta section and 792 RKms of electrified route of SC railway on Ernakulum-Shoranur-Palghat-Erode-Chennai & BangaloreJolarpettai-Chennai sections have also been sanctioned. Further works of provision of ACD on addl section of about 1750 RKms and ACD route survey on about 10,000 RKMs has also been sanctioned during the current year. 2.7 SAFETY ENHANCEMENT AT LEVEL CROSSING GATES: 2.7.1 Safety Systems at level crossing gates: Nearly 10% of the total accidents take place at level crossing gates. There are 16549 manned and 22389 unmanned level crossings on Indian Railways. Signalling provides cheap and safe solutions to contain accidents taking place at level crossings. Safety at level crossings gets enhanced by providing measures like manning of unmanned level crossings, interlocking of level crossings and provision of telephones at manned level crossings. Interlocking of level crossings and provision of telephone at level crossings are the thrust areas for enhancing safety at level crossings. Recently an action plan has been formulated for the safety enhancement at level crossings. Important components of this action plan are : i) ii) iii) Provision of interlocking Provision of telephones Provision of train actuated warning devices (TAWD) Reduction in Accidents at L.C.Gates 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 No. of interlocked gates(in '000) No. of L C gates with telephone Accidents 19 80 19 84 19 88 19 92 19 95 19 97 19 99 20 01 12 20 03 SESSION - I 2.7.2 TAWD Development of a reliable train actuated warning device (TAWD) for giving audio/ visual warning to road users about an approaching train is under process on I.R. to reduce accidents at level crossings. Field trials were carried out on a few Railways to identify suitable technologies, well proven for its reliability and fail safe feature apart from suitability in Indian condition as well as under miscreant prone environment. Based on these trials TAWD system of two makes viz. i) based on axle detector and ii) open track circuit has been shortlisted for further extended field trials at 100 LC gates before large scale induction on Indian Railways. 3.0 LINE CAPACITY ENHANCEMENT SYSTEMS: Many sections of Indian Railways have now reported to be saturated with line capacity utilization being over 100% of its chartered capacity. The system reliability of infrastructure and rolling stock may be affected due to less time given for maintenance, thus we need more cushion in chartered capacity to meet various speed restrictions and system break down eventualities. With growing demand for introduction of additional long distance and inter-city passenger services, and anticipated growth of freight traffic, the need to create the line capacity on high density routes is urgent. It is a well known fact that signalling improvement is the most economical way to increase the line capacity. Therefore under the present financial crunch on Indian Railways, it is essential to consider Signalling improvement for increasing line capacity instead of straightway investing in new infrastructure like third line. Important systems to improve line capacity are: Components of Line capacity Enhancement: • • • • • • 3.1 Continuous Track Circuiting with Automatic Block Signalling Automatic Train Control System Train Management System/Centralised Traffic Control System Moving Block Radio Block Radio Based AWS Continuous track circuiting with Automatic Block Signalling: In automatic block signalling, more than one train can be sent in a block section between two stations. The space intervals between trains are secured automatically by the use of train detection devices continuously. Automatic signals are provided at fixed interval, whose aspect change automatically by train movement ensuring safety and at the same time saving time on signal and block clearance, enabling closer spacing of trains, facilitating optimum utilisation of infrastructure. The system requires i) Continuous train detection device like track circuit or axle counter 13 SESSION - I ii) Protection by multiple aspect colour light signalling. Being the most effective tool world over for enhancing line capacity with minimal capital expenditure, this system is going to play a very important role in railways endeavor to augment its capacity at least cost. At present only 2.7% of total route km. (63028 RKms) of Indian Railways is provided with Automatic signalling as compared to over 84% in China, 67% in Japan, 90% in U.K. Thus the potential of capacity improvement with provision of Automatic Signalling on double line sections of Indian Railways is still largely untapped. On Indian Railways, essentiality and usefulness of automatic signalling for train operations in suburban section of metropolitan cities viz.Calcutta, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai etc. is well established. A headway of 3 minutes has already been achieved. Automatic signalling on entire 'A' route is feasible with an investment of only Rs. 15000 million. After the unfortunate accident of Rajdhani Express last year, work of providing continuous track circuiting with automatic block signaling has been sanctioned at about 2000 RKms, as a line capacity & safety enhancement measure. 3.2 ATC An automatic train control (ATC) system essentially consists of the following three subsystems : i) ii) iii) Automatic Train Protection (ATP) - safety sub-system. Automatic Train Operation (ATO) - Train driving sub-system. Automatic Train Supervision (ATS) - Supervision sub-system. ATP performs functions of train detection speed measurements, transmission of speed command from track to train, decoding of speed command and displaying in the cab (cab signalling), over speed protection, brake assurance etc. ATP is the watch dog of all sub-systems and ensures that there is no unsafe condition. It checks efficiency of service brake and keeps on monitoring at all times that the actual train speed does not exceed speed command picked up from the track. ATO performs the train driving function. This sub-system performs following functions viz. traction, service braking, automatic station stop, coasting. ATS supervises train running from a central location. The trains are identified by means of train numbers, linked numbers or rake numbers. Various time tables can be stored and chosen as required. The train runs automatically as per the time table. The controller however has the over riding control. Functioning of these sub systems require provision of track side equipment e.g. track circuits, train borne equipment and a communication network. So far no such system is in operation on Indian Railways. But keeping in view safety requirements and line capacity enhancement requirements, induction of such technologies seems to be in escapable in near future, around metro town and very busy trunk routes. 14 SESSION - I 3.3 Train Management System/ Centralised Traffic Control System: Modern signalling system have solution for providing efficient train traffic management system. A Train Management System is under installation on Churchgate-Virar (60 kms.) suburban section of Western Railway. The system on completion will enable the Railways to provide efficient rail services giving the commuters information on a real time basis about the status of train services. Under this project all train movements are displayed on a real video projection screen in the control room. Live signalling indications and train movements are also displayed in front of controllers of various departments enabling them to take prompt action in case of equipment breakdowns. All EMU trains are especially provided with mobile communication such that the train crew can communicate with controllers from any location on the section. The train running information of the next two trains arriving on each platform is displayed on the VDUs provided on the platforms. Further, all announcements at the stations are done automatically. Similar system is proposed on the Central Railway. It is very likely that improved version of Train Management System will be provided in the next 20-25 years on suburban sections serving other metropolitan towns like Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai. A work of providing improved version of TMS, also called Centralised Traffic Control System has also been planned for provision on Ghaziabad - Kanpur section under KFW funded modernization scheme. 3.4 Moving Block The moving block is one of the modern block signalling systems for traffic management, in which block section is not fixed but varies with the movement of train/trains. In this system, the physical separation between two trains, running in a block section is not guided by track side signals or some other fixed structures but it depends on various dynamic para meters of train running like length of the train, braking distance, gradient, braking power, speed restrictions and braking curve of the train in question. M o v in g B lo c k B T rai n B A TR A I N 34 34 D ire ct io n o f T rav e l T rai n A A O cc u p a n c y b y T ra in B M o v e m e n t Au th o r ity as s ee n b y Tra in B O cc u p a n c y b y T ra in A S a fe ty M a rg in 15 SESSION - I Train integrity checking is continuously done by on board computers and this information is transmitted through radio to another train running on the same track and accordingly the safe distance is calculated and trains are controlled accordingly by on board computers. The moving block allows better use of line capacity with smaller headway. For moving block there is no need of providing track circuits for train detection as the train detection is a continuous feature of the system. For high speed lines/high density routes such type of systems are of immense help for maintaining headway of less than 2 minutes. Such systems have not been planned for IR so far. 3.5 Radio Block In low density lines, provision of full fledged signalling systems at stations and block sections are not remunerative. There may be difficult terrain also where provision of conventional block working systems and subsequent maintenance may not work reliably. Radio block provides answer to these problems as on the lines with low traffic density, headway is not critical. The system uses line sides signals and radio block communication for train operation. The system consists of a control center which gives movement authority to trains to be worked in a section and train is controlled by radio block. Speech communication is added to the system for further safety needs. 3.6 Radio Based AWS: Auxiliary warning system prevents accidents due to driver ignoring a red signal .In the past a number of parliamentary committees have recommended the provision of AWS on all trunk route with speed level of 100 kmph and above to cover all passenger and goods trains. Track magnet based AWS was tried on Howrah-Mugalsarai section of Eastern Railway in 1980s. But, this system could not succeed due to large scale thefts. However, AWS of this design is currently working satisfactorily in suburban sections of Central and Western Railways on 329 km, where high frequency of train services make the theft of track magnet difficult. For the last many years, IR had been searching for a suitable pilfer free automatic train control system. Earlier Ministry of Railway had decided, in principle, to adopt a radio based automatic warning system on IR. A pilot project of radio based automatic train control system (similar to ETCS level 2) under the technical guidance of International Union of Railways (UIC) was also sanctioned for Mathura-Palwal section. 16 SESSION - I Radio Based AWS GSM-R RBC INTERLOCKIN TRAIN BORNE BALISE Based on the success of this pilot project which includes trials and technical validation, its application on high density routes of Indian Railways was to be considered. With this state of art technology it was expected that not only very high levels of safety would be achieved on Indian Railways, but at the same time this system would help to provide an effective train traffic management system, which will make train operations more efficient, faster, safe and profitable. The system basically consists of (i) (ii) Automatic train protection and speed control Approach warning at level crossings. (iii) Approach warning to work men at site (iv) GSM-R based mobile train radio communication. (v) Temporary speed restriction enforcement As on date the pilot project has been kept on hold due to high cost. But it is felt that with large scale induction of such system in near future on developed railways, cost may come down and systems shall also become a proven system. At that stage the system can be considered for adoption on Indian Railways. 4.0 CONCLUSION AND VISION FOR FUTURE: Provision of modern Signaling systems and introduction of new technologies are playing a vital part in safe and speedier train operations. With more and more Signaling works getting implemented with state of art technologies and new systems under introduction, these systems are going to provide the most vital solutions for optimal Signaling n of railway assets besides improving efficiency in train operation with a high level of safety and passenger satisfaction within the next 20-25 years. It is expected that all stations on Indian Railways will be provided with complete track circuiting of passenger running lines and colour light or LED signals. All important routes especially the golden quadrilateral will be equipped with AWS or its variants like ATC, ETCS etc. Besides these routes will be worked on automatic block Signaling system & CTC. Majority of 17 SESSION - I the stations will be equipped with PI/RRI with SSI being used predominantly especially at way side stations. Large scale use of modern Signaling systems enumerated in this paper pave the way for higher levels of speed, safety and passenger comforts in train operations. Following major areas in the field of railway Signaling are likely to witness introduction of new techniques and technologies in a big way in the next 20-25 years 18 SESSION - I TELECOMMUNICATIONS ON IR – THE PRESENT STATUS & A VISION FOR THE FUTURE by R.C. Sharma Additional Member (Telecom.), Railway Board. A reliable telecommunication network is an operational necessity for a vast and geographically spread out organization like the Indian Railways. It provides an effective tool for planning, control and coordination of various functions and departments of the Railways and for the optimum utilization of their precious assets. For meeting the telecom. requirements IR, until early 60s, were largely dependent on Department of Telecommunication (DoT) but since then over the years, have built up their own nation wide telecom. network, basically consisting of multi-hop microwave in SHF band supported by UHF spurs, copper quad cables, optical fibre cables, overhead line wires, telephone exchanges and trunk systems. Mobile communication and Internet services on a limited scale have also been introduced in recent past and these are now on threshold of expansion. In late 90s, Indian Railways took a primer decision, on techno-economical considerations, to provide optical fibre cable system on RE sections for train control, operational and safety circuits. Owing to large-scale use of OFC worldwide and consequent reduction in costs of OFC based systems, Indian Railways have extended the use of OFC & Quad cables on busy non-electrified territories also. As a fraction of the available capacity of OFC system was only being utilized for Railways’ own needs & enough surplus capacity was available in the links already commissioned, in the year 2000, formation of a telecom. Corporation - the RailTel – was conceived of to build nation wide broad band & multimedia network with twin prime objectives of modernising the Railways’ communication systems & networks and earn revenues by marketing the surplus capacity. This paper presents glimpses of developments done in the arena of telecommunication on IR since its inception, provides a window for what the future holds - keeping in view the developmental trends, and paints a realistic vision of potent communication system (s) in different facets of Railways’ operations and maintenance, which should be available in near future on IR on demand for all concerned, at any time & any where. 19 SESSION - I 1. BACKGROUND 1.1 During the first 7 years, trains on Indian Railways were run only on hand signals. It was in 1860, when for the first time, communication equipment using Morse telegraphy were provided between stations on section ‘Mumbai-Thane’ for Block Working. With increase in traffic density and introduction of telephone system by the Post and Telegraph Department, voice communication was made possible in Railway Operations, through telephone instruments provided in conjunction with Block instruments, in 1910. In the year 1940, Anglis Appleton Committee was appointed to recommend the requirement for modernisation of Railways communication system. The Committee, inter-alia, recommended erection of Section and Deputy Control circuits and use of wireless communication between Zonal and Divisional Headquarters. As a result, HF links were for the first time set up on Southern Railway during 1943-44 for sending messages by wireless. Similarly, landline communication was constructed by Post and Telegraph Department for the Railways for the first time during 194546. In the beginning years, the requirements of control communication & long-haul communication for Indian Railways were met by leasing circuits from DOT. Gradually, the increase in traffic and expansion of Railway network necessitated efficient and reliable communication facilities. Department of Telecom was neither able to maintain the communication network to the standard and efficiency required by Railways nor was in a position to meet the Railways’ stringent requirements on demand basis. This necessitated Railways to develop captive Telecom network to suit their special operational needs. The Railway Reforms Committee of 1962 also strongly recommended a dedicated Telecommunication network for IR. Indian Telegraph Act, however, permitted only DOT as the sole provider of the Telecommunications in the country. An amendment in this Act, therefore, became necessary to pave the way for IR to build and maintain their own captive telecommunication network. After long and protracted discussions, this was permitted and in 1969, necessary provisions to this affect were made in Indian Telegraph Act as well as Indian Railway Act. In 1980s, German Consultants – M/s DETECON were appointed by IR to prepare a blue print for modernization of IR Communication Network. The Plan worked out by M/s DETECON basically envisaged provision of integrated long-haul 34 MB Digital Microwave system and Mobile Train Radio Communication (MTRC) on Golden Quadrilateral & Diagonals, supported by existing Analog Microwave & existing / redeployed short-haul Digital UHF / TDMA links on spur routes. This blue print did form an important constituent of the basic frame work for the planning of Telecommunication works on IR. 1.2 1.3 1.4 20 SESSION - I 1.5 The implementation of Five Year Plans by IR also did greatly help modernize the Railways Communication Network by introduction of new technologies such as Microwave communication, Digital Electronic Exchanges, Telecom Quad cables, Optical Fibre Cable (OFC), and wireless based control communication. 2.0 INTRODUCTION: 2.1 Communication, on Railways, is used for the following applications: (i) Control Circuits. (ii) Long Haul Administrative Circuits. (iii) Switching Network. (iv) Passenger Amenities. (v) Emergency Control Circuits. (vi) Train Radio Communication. (vii)Data Networking. 3.0 CONTROL AND EMERGENCY COMMUNICATION: 3.1 Station to Station and Station to Control communication is the backbone of Railway operations. Following are the types of systems which are presently available on Indian Railways for Control and Emergency communication: Control and Emergency Communication System on Non-Electrified sections: 3.2.1 In non-electrified Railway territories, most of the control communication systems are on overhead alignment and consist of omnibus telephone circuits for Section control, Deputy control and Block circuits. These circuits were, in the beginning, leased from DOT. In the late 60s, when DOT could not maintain these alignments to the desired efficiency and reliability, Railways started building their own Iron wire and ACSR alignments. Railways own overhead alignment grew from 5680 RKms at the end of 4th Plan to 26946 RKms by the end of 8th Plan. The growth of Railway owned overhead alignment and the decrease of DOT owned overhead alignment during the preceding decade is illustrated in Fig. ‘1’. 3.2.2 In case of emergencies, communication between the Driver/Guard of the train and the control is made possible by hooking the Portable Control Phones (PCP) available with them on to the overhead control wires. 3.2.3 On overhead alignment, number of control circuits are limited. Reliability of communication is also poor, owing to vagaries of nature. Indian Railways have, therefore - as a policy, now switched over to 6-Quad cable to provide control 3.2 21 SESSION - I and emergency circuits on busy routes, having line capacity utilization of 80% and above. 3.3 Control and Emergency Communication System on Electrified sections: 3.3.1 On Electrified territories, control communication is provided through underground cables. Control communication circuits working in RE territories include Section control, Deputy control, Traction Power control (TPC), Traction Loco control (TLC), Engineering control and Remote control circuits for traction switching. Initially paper quad cables to configuration 0+18+2, 0+12+2 and 0+6+2 were provided. These cables were aluminum sheathed to screen the effect of electromagnetic interference of 25 KV AC Electric Traction. In the beginning years, the RE telecom cables were laid and commissioned by DOT but subsequently, Railways gained the expertise and now have been laying these cables themselves along with the Electrification works. Instead of composite telecom cable, 4-Quad cable is now-a-days being used in conjunction with OFC for extending the control circuits from the control office to the stations and other locations in the section as well as connecting to the way side sockets (provided at every kilometer) for enabling emergency communication. The growth as well as decline in use of RE Quad cables provided by Railways and rented from DOT in the preceding decade is approprately represented in Fig. ‘2’. 3.3.2 In case of emergencies, the communication between the driver/guard of the train and the control is made possible by hooking the Portable Control Phones (PCP) and Portable Electronic Control Phone (PECP) available with them, to the Emergency Sockets provided at every kilometer along the route. Distinct marking with regard to location of nearest socket is displayed on OHE Masts. Train crew in this case, may have to walk a distance of about 500 m to plug his emergency control phone and to talk to the controller, should his train gets disabled in the section. This is a serious limitation as instant communication in case of emergencies is not available to the train crew. 3.4 Optical Fibre Cable (OFC) Communication System: 3.4.1 Railways for the first time introduced OFC communication system for station to station and station to control communication in lieu of conventional underground RE quad cable on 63 KMs of Churchgate -Virar section in 1988. This was followed by provision of OFC on Itarsi-Nagpur (297 RKms), ItarsiBhusawal (328 RKms) and Nagpur- Durg (265 RKms) sections of Central & South Eastern Railways in the year 1989. Initially, 8 fibre OFC was used on Indian Railways. In the year 1996, Railway Board issued directives for use of 18 fibre OFC which was later on standardized to 24 fibre in 1997. From a beginning of 63 Kms. in 1988, Indian Railways have laid OFC over 20,000 RKms by 30.04.03. About 12,000 Rkms of OFC out of total laid has been already lit. 22 SESSION - I The growth of OFC communication on Indian Railways in the preceding years is shown in Fig. ‘3’. Status of OFC network on Golden Quadrilateral & Diagonal routes connecting Metros, Mini Metros and other important stations is given in Fig. ‘4’. Route-wise summarized position is indicated in following Table 1’: N Routes connecting Metros & Mini Metros Delhi-Mumbai (CR) Delhi-Mumbai (WR) Total Length (Rkms.) 1,540 1,391 OFC Laid (Rkms.) 1,517 1,233 Balance Left (Rkms.) 23 158 Progress (%) 98.51% 88.64% 1. 2. Note: ‘Delhi-Mumbai’ connectivity is complete via ‘Bhopal-Bhusaval-Jalgaon-Surat’ section. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Delhi-Kolkata MumbaiChennai ChennaiKolkata DelhiChennai KolkataMumbai 1,526 1,281 1,669 2,209 2,183 1,379 1,182 1,669 1,762 2,183 755 500 193 12,373 147 99 447 874 90.37% 96.49% 100% 79.76% 100% 100% 100% 100% 93.40% Secunderabad- 755 Bangalore MumbaiAhemedabad MumbaiPune Total 500 193 13,247 TABLE ‘1’ 3.4.2 OFC network diagrams as planned in Phase-I by RailTel, depicting STM-1/4 and STM-16 long-haul links are shown in Fig. ‘5’ & ‘6’. This network is envisaged for commissioning by Nov., 2003 and when commissioned would provide connectivity between 4 Metros at Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai and 4 Mini Metros at Secunderabad, Bangalore, Ahemedabad and Pune. 3.4.3 In Phase-II, RailTel are planning to provide additional 2.5 Gbps OFC connectivity links, as shown in Fig. ‘7’. 3.5 Radio Control / Block Communication System: 3.5.1 In the mid-80s, when the train operations in Eastern Railway were crippled due to rampant theft of copper quad cables, a new system for station-to-station 23 SESSION - I communication based on 18 GHz Digital MW technology was introduced. The system was commissioned for the first time on rail road systems on Indian Railways on ‘Mughalsarai-Gaya’ section (150 RKm) in January, 1987. By the end of 8 th Plan, this system has been provided on 967 RKms covering ‘Mughalsarai-Howrah’ & Sealdah South sections of Eastern Railway. System provided caters for highly available and reliable control communication. Block circuits are worked through Radio adopting Radio Block interface. 3.5.2 Emergency communication is through VHF sets provided to driver & guard of the trains. These VHF sets get hooked to 25 Watt VHF system provided at stations which in turn are connected on dedicated channels to 18 GHz System. The driver of the train can talk to TLC, nearest station master or to the guard. 3.6 Other Systems for Emergency Communication: 3.6.1 Train Radio Communication: 3.6.1.1 Along with Railway Electrification works around Nagpur area on ‘ItarsiNagpur’, ‘Itarsi-Bhusaval’ and ‘Nagpur-Durg’ sections, OFC without copper quad cable was laid to provide control communication and a full duplex multichannel (4) mobile train radio system was installed to cater for emergency communication requirements. The system provided direct duplex communication between the driver and the Control office and through control to the stations. Additional channels were provided to facilitate communication between driver & guard. With this, instant communication became available even while the train was on the move. The system was based on Analog technology – working in 314-322 MHz band and had certain limitations on that account. Driver to Guard communication also could not function smoothly in the system due to the problems of frequency switching. The utilization of the system was also limited due to the fact that the equipment could not cover all the locos running / passing these routes. System, however, has proved its usefulness in cases of emergent situations like accidents, mid-section loco and C&W problems etc. Analysis of the data pertaining to system utilization does indicate that, on an average, 25-30 minutes of time per emergent situation could be saved on account of instant communication being available between the train crew & controller. 3.6.1.2 Train Radio provided on the above two sections, though, ushered an era of mobile communication on IR, in reality it was not so as the system was provided as an alternative to emergency communication. It was not a Mobile Train Radio Communication (MTRC) in its true sense. 3.6.1.3 The first mobile communication on Indian Railways in real sense was provided on ‘Delhi-Mughalsarai’ section of Northern Railway. The system caters for full duplex communication between driver/guard and controller. It operates in 314-322 MHz. Band and the backbone was initially provided in 24 SESSION - I 2.1-2.5 GHz., which has now been shifted to Digital Microwave in 7 GHz. Band. The system is similar to that provided on ‘Nagpur-Itarsi-Bhusaval’ section. The system, during its initial period of working played a vital role in giving advance information in a number of cases, contributing towards reduced train detentions & accidents but now is practically in dis-use due to non availability of loco equipment in all the locos passing through / running in the section. 3.6.1.4 At present, Analog Mobile Train Radio Communication system is available on a total of 1749 RKms on Indian Railways: SN 1. Railway CR RKms 599 Section Nagpur-Itarsi-Bhusawal Brief Details 4 Channel duplex system, operating in Frequency Band 310-330 MHz. 4 Channel duplex system, operating in Frequency Band 310-330 MHz. 4 Channel duplex system, operating in Frequency Band 310-330 MHz. 134-174 MHz. Trunked Radio, Protocols & Facilities based on MPT 1327 & MPT 1343 Standards. 2. CR 265 Nagpur-Durg 3. NR 780 New Delhi-Mughalsarai 4. SER 105 Rajkharaswan-Gua Total 1749 Table ‘2’ 3.6.2 Satellite Communication: 3.6.2.1 Satellite Communication is being used on Indian Railways to provide communication in cases of emergencies. Satellite phones - 2 on each Division and 2 in each Zonal Headquarter have been provided for establishing communication in case of emergencies. With this arrangement, it should be possible to deploy ‘8’ satellite phones at an accident site – 2 from the affected Division, 4 from two adjacent Divisions and 2 from the Zonal Headquarters. 3.6.3 VHF Communication: 3.6.3.1 5W VHF sets have been provided to Driver and Guard of all the trains and 25W VHF sets on stations of double line and multiple line BG sections. The system caters for enabling low mobility communication between Driver / Guard of a train and the nearest Station Master in case of emergency / out of course stoppages. These VHF sets provide for only simplex type of communication between connected parties. 3.6.3.2 The feedback about the utility of 5 W sets to driver & Guard and 25 W sets at stations has been very positive. Board are, therefore, considering extension 25 SESSION - I of this facility at all stations of BG, MG and mixed two line sections. A total of 2,381 stations will have to be additionally provided with 25 W VHF sets as per following details to cover the requirement stated above: SN Section Total Number of Stations 2,640 3 1,125 157 3,925 Number of Stations provided with 25 W 1,167 274 103 1,544 Number of Stations yet to be provided with 25 W VHF sets 1,473 3 851 54 2,381 1. 2. 3. 4. BG Single line MG Double line MG Single line Mixed Two line Total Table ‘3’ Approximate financial implication for provision of 25 W 2,381 VHF sets would be Rs. 8.33 Cr. 3.6.3.2 On ‘Mughalsarai- Howrah’ section of Eastern Railway, the 25 W sets at stations and 5 W sets of Driver / Guard are utilized in conjunction with the 18 GHz system. 3.6.4 Subsequent to the experiences of Analog based train radio communication and considering the deficiencies and high cost of the then available Analog systems, need for a low cost solution for providing emergency control communication for low traffic sections was felt. Accordingly, RDSO developed a Universal Emergency Communication (UEC) System in close collaboration with Bharat Electronics Ltd. (BEL), using a single VHF frequency for all the users namely the driver, guard and the Station Masers and working in Simplex mode. Another frequency was allotted for sending out an ‘SOS’ signal in case of an emergency or an accident. The system was designed to provide emergency communication between: i) Driver & Guard of a train. ii) Driver / Guard & station master of the nearest station. iii) Driver / Guard of a train to another Driver / Guard in vicinity of 5 Kms. iv) Driver / Guard of a train to section controller through manual switching at base station. v) SOS signal to all trains / stations equipped with mobile sets, in the vicinity of 5 Kms. of distress signal. 3.6.5 The UEC system consists of suitable VHF base with suitable mobile and handheld sets provided to Drivers & Guards respectively. Mode of 26 SESSION - I communication is simplex. The system operates in VHF frequency range i.e. 146.2-151.45 MHz. or 159.6-162.45 MHz. band with one channel for voice communication and one for SOS. The base station consists of 40 W VHF equipment along with omni-directional antenna fixed at a suitable height. Features for manual patching with control circuit have also been provided in the system. 3.6.6 Since such a system had not been used anywhere so far, it was decided to introduce the system initially on three pilot sections, namely ‘Chennai – Gudur’ on Southern Railway, ‘Mumbai – Vadodara – Ahmedabad’ on Western Railway and ‘Delhi – Ambala’ on Northern Railway, to ascertain its suitability and acceptability by the user departments, particularly Traffic, Safety, Mechanical and Electrical. The trials of the system have not been very encouraging. Limitations of the system primarily are on account of ‘Simplex’ mode of working and use of single frequency. Further extension of the communication to control office require patching at stations which is time consuming, cumbersome and is available only when the train is in the vicinity of a station. Users have felt that the system may not be suitable for medium to high traffic density routes but may work where traffic densities are low. 4.0 MOBILE TRAIN RADIO COMMUNICATION (MTRC): 4.1 Train Radio systems working on ‘Itarsi-Nagpur’, Itarsi-Bhusawal’ & ‘NagpurDurg’ sections of Central & South Eastern Railways are of Analog type as this was the technology available in mid 80s and early 90s. These systems have now become obsolete but nevertheless functioning to provide emergency communication on these routes. What Indian Railways need today is an integrated communication system, which could fulfill the existing requirements as well as emerging needs of mobile communication and Communication Based Signaling (CBS) applications. This need has now been fully recognized and its inescapable importance to provide a reliable and all time available communication system amongst train driver, guard, adjacent station masters, approaching trains and control office has been fully established. 4.2 Subject matter of MTRC has also been examined by the high power Railway Safety Review Committee (RSRC) of 1998. This Committee have, unambiguously, visualised the role of MTRC in train operation and in their Part-I report, submitted in 1999, recommended as under: “A reliable Train Radio Communication facility between driver, guard, ASM, level crossing gate and approaching trains should be provided as a first step within 3 years on ‘C’ and ‘A’ routes and in another 3 years on ‘B’ route. Once optical fibre backbone is in place, the communication facility should be extended to control office. The system should have in-built call override, broadcast and SOS facilities” 27 SESSION - I 4.2.1 RSRC, in their final Part-II report, submitted in February, 2001, have reiterated the earlier recommendation regarding provision of MTRC made in Part-I of their report, and assigned it a very high priority. The relevant extracts of the RSRC report (Part II) are reproduced below: “……….. Implementation of our Committee’s recommendation on Mobile Train Communication should he given a very high priority by IR and the usual reason of ‘non availability of funds’ should not apply to this device………..” 4.2.2 The importance assigned to the MTRC system by the Justice Khanna Committee can be appreciated from the fact that the Committee stressed that recommendation regarding MTRC be implemented by making available the funds needed for the purpose and ‘non-availability of funds’ should not be the reason to defer its implementation. 4.2.3 Committee, nominated by Railway Board, to identify works/projects to be executed against newly created Special Railway Safety Fund (SRSF), also recommended provision of MTRC on 15,225 Rkms on ‘A’, ‘B’, & ‘C’ routes, utilizing funds from this special fund. 4.2.4 Railway Board have accepted the recommendations of RSRC for implementation, subject to availability of funds. 4.3 The works for provision of MTRC are sanctioned on following sections: Railway CR ER NR NR NFR NFR Section Delhi-Jhansi Howrah-Mughalsarai Ludhiana-Pathankot-Jammu Tawi-Amritsar New Delhi- Ambala-Ludhiana New Jalpaiguri-Bongaigaon-Guwahati New Jalpaiguri-Barsoi-Malda Town-Katihar Km 340 666 410 311 425 263 Cost (Rs. in Cr.) 39.37 39.03* 30.89* 23.14* 29.97* 23.42* * Detailed Estimates sanctioned. Total 2415 185.82 TABLE ‘4’ 4.3.1 Section wise details of MTRC systems available on IR, as also those sanctioned for execution are shown in Fig. ‘8’. 4.4 In some quarters, there is a growing contention that Walkie-Talkie sets in conjunction with 25W VHF set at station is a replacement to the MTRC. This is factually not correct. In this connection, it is mentioned that: 28 SESSION - I i) While Walkie-Talkie is a Simplex communication i.e. only one party can talk at a time, keeping the talk switch pressed, the MTRC as envisaged is a Duplex communication, where both the parties can talk simultaneously. ii) Communication system built around VHF sets is not reliable as 5W VHF sets are not designed for safety systems requiring high level of reliability. Therefore, in such systems, there is no in-built redundancy. Contrary to this, MTRC duplex system is built on redundancy, designed specifically for Railway safety system and therefore, is highly reliable. MTRC also caters for secure communication. iii) In the case of Walkie-Talkie, the communication is limited between the Driver / Guard to the Station Master only and cannot be extended to the control office, while in MTRC the communication can be established with any functionary having a mobile phone. iv) MTRC can also be connected to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) or any other voice / data communication network and therefore, can be used by officials at accident sites to communicate with anyone. This cannot be done with Walkie-Talkie sets. 4.5 As could be seen from the above, provision of Walkie-Talkie to driver / guard and VHF sets at stations can at best be considered as an interim arrangement provided to give immediate relief and cannot, and should not, in any case, be considered a substitute for an established duplex, reliable and secure MTRC system. It is, therefore, essential that an state-of-art MTRC system is planned and provided on heavy traffic density ‘A’, ‘B’, & ‘C’ routes of Indian Railways. The existing systems built around VHF sets, thereafter, could be deployed on other low and medium traffic density routes. Implementation Strategy: 4.6.1 Works of MTRC should be planned in following three phases: Phase-I: Phase-II: Phase-III: sections, where OFC backbone connecting base stations is available. sections, where OFC works are sanctioned or are in progress. sections, where OFC works are also required to be sanctioned along with MTRC works. 4.6 4.6.2 Funds requirements for the three phases enumerated above and covering ‘A’, ‘B’, & ‘C’ routes shall be to the tune of Rs. 742.32 Cr., Rs. 193.62 Cr., and Rs. 131.88 Cr. respectively. Railway wise details are indicated in Table ‘5’ below: 29 SESSION - I A. Golden Quadrilateral & Diagonal Routes: Railway ‘A’ Central Eastern Northern Southern South Central South Eastern Western Total 129.67 54.60 9.66 52.36 79.38 87.08 412.75 Cost of MTRC (in C’ . of Rs. - route wise) ‘B’ 66.44 44.94 47.60 48.09 53.62 260.69 Funds requirements (in Cr. of Rs.) 196.11 108.42 60.00 57.26 100.45 133.00 87.08 742.32 ’C’ 63.49 5.40 68.88 B. Important ‘B’ routes where OFC works are in progress: Railway Central Eastern Northern Western Southern Total Route Kms. 614 142 686 949 375 2,766 Cost of of (in Cr. of Rs.) 42.98 9.94 48.02 66.43 26.25 193.62 C. ‘B’ routes where OFC works are to be sanctioned along with MTRC works: Railway Eastern Northern Southern Total Route Kms. 305 318 633 1,256 Cost of of (in Cr. of Rs.) 32.03 33.39 66.46 131.88 Table ‘5’ 4.6.3 Works of MTRC should be sanctioned on contiguous sections, connecting terminal stations / junctions in one go to facilitate concurrent execution from the two ends. 4.7 Available Technologies: 4.7.1 While different types of Mobile Train Radio Communication Systems are available, 2 systems namely TETRA and GSM-R have been commonly utilised 30 SESSION - I on Railway systems. Both are based on digital technology. International Union of Railways (UIC), the Institute, which defines standards for Railway, has advocated the use of GSM-R standard for MTRC. GSM-R has following additional advantages: i) GSM-R (GSM for Railways) is proven technology in Railway environment and also supports control applications. MORANE and many European Railways, MORANE being the consortium of Railway Operators, GSM manufacturers and Research organizations have also validated it. TETRA is yet to be standardized for signalling control applications. ii) GSM-R has already been tried in Germany, Italy & France and trial results haven quite encouraging. iii) GSM-R is an extension of GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) standard GSM has been adopted by the industry as a standard for cellular telephone network. Even in India, most of the cellular operators have provided GSM Networks. Provisions of GSM-R for MTRC will, therefore, reduce the possibility of technological obsolescence and thereby premature replacement. GSM-R also has modular upgrade and migration path to GPRS & UMTS have been well defined. iv) European Train Control System (ETCS) which is the Radio version of Automatic Train Protection and Warning System uses GSM-R as the basic communication infrastructure for transmitting information. Provision of Automatic Train Protection and Warning System is also one of the recommendations of RSRC which has been accepted by Ministry of Railways and as and when the same is provided, GSM-R based MTRC communication infrastructure will be utilised as carrier of safety signals for ATP and AWS. v) GSM-R works in 900 MHz. Band, which is not sensitive to the sparks caused in the electrified sections. 4.7.2 IR have chosen GSM-R platform for installation of MTRC system on ‘A’, ‘B’, & ‘C’ routes and also as a carrier for pilot ETCS Project on ‘Delhi-Mathura’ section. The choice has been on some very robust considerations in favour of GSM-R, important ones having been listed in para 3.7.1 above. 4.7.3 For GSM-R, following 9 spot frequencies in 900 MHz. band have been allocated to the Railways: ‘907.8/952.8; 908.0/953.0; 908.2/953.2; 908.4/953.4; 908.6/953.6; 908.8/953.8; 909.0/954.0; 909.2/954.2; 909.4/954.4’ Though, these 9 pairs of frequencies would suffice the requirement of most linear networks, additional spots may be required for junction & other major stations 31 SESSION - I when several links around those locations are planned for implementation. Efforts to get the additional spots are, therefore, being made. 5. ACCIDENT RELIEF & DISASTER MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION: 5.1. Railways telecom network has been largely meeting the specialized communication requirements needed for rescue & restoration activities during the occurrences of un-usual incidences / accidents. However during recent times, the limitations in this respect have been increasingly felt in cases of serious accidents, as comprehensive information in respect of those involved and for rescue & restoration data has not been possible to be made available in real time from the disaster site. On the other hand, with advancement in the broadcasting technology and on-coming of private news channels, the information of the disaster from the site now becomes possible within the reach of the public through the media almost in real time. Railways in such situations having only distorted or limited information find themselves handicapped and become a target of severe criticism of the public. The real need is to set up audio-visual communication facilities from the disaster site in quickest possible time to ensure availability of comprehensive information in an online & real-time manner. 5.2. In the present set up, the first communication from the site of the disaster is established on control circuits. The set up is then augmented by establishing dedicated line(s) from the site of the accident to the control office through OFC or copper cable, where available and extending DOT/BSNL and Railway phone(s) to the site of accident. In areas where control circuits are on overhead alignment, a separate line cannot be established up to site due to limitation in the number of circuits available in overhead alignment. In addition, with the help of BSNL (earlier DOT), BSNL telephone lines through local exchanges are also extended to the site of accident, by laying cables temporarily. In the present set up, depending upon the gravity of the accident, the communication arrangement at disaster site include extension of 6-8 BSNL / Railway telephone lines. However, these lines are normally provided at a central point at the site, where passengers / railway personnel have to come to use the same. This provision is made possible in a time span of 2-3 hours or earlier, depending upon the location of the site. 5.3 The high level committee constituted to review the disaster management system over Indian Railways have, inter-alia, deliberated over the communication set up needed to tackle major accidents. Recommendations made by this committee are summarised below: (i) Walkie-Talkie & VHF sets – ARTs at Divisional Headquarters to be provided with 30 Walkie-Talkie sets and two 25 W VHF sets. (ii) WLL exchange having 50 lines capacity – ARTs at Divisional Headquarters to be provided with one WLL exchange having 50 lines capacity. 32 SESSION - I (iii) Video conferencing facilities from the site of accident – Railway Board & Zonal Railway Headquarters to be provided with video conferencing facility from the disaster site. (iv) PC & high speed satellite modem for Internet connectivity – Divisional ARTs to be provided with one PC along with high speed satellite modem for Internet connectivity at site through which the details of site including information about the passengers can be updated directly. Directives in this regard have been issued to the Railways. Recommendations, when implemented shall surely augment the communication arrangements to enable passing of needed data for effective decision making at the Central Control. Even the rescue and restoration operatio can then be monitored from a remote location. 6.0 RAILWAY’S INTRANET - THE RAILNET: 6.1 Indian Railways have established their own nation-wide Intranet, known as RAILNET. In phase-I of the project ‘RailNet’, Railway Board, Zonal Railway HQs, Production units, CORE - Allahabad, MTP - Kolkata, RDSO, Centralized and other major training institutes were to be covered. In addition, Railway Board had also decided to include Passenger Complaint Centres at 150 locations in this phase for providing dial-up access to Railnet. All locations envisaged in the scope of this work have since been covered and connected to RailNet. 6.2 At each location, 10 Mbps Ethernet Local Area Net work (LAN) of varying number of nodes and Server has been installed. These LANs are connected amongst each other on Wide Area Network (WAN) on 64 / 9.6 Kbps data circuits, using Routers of appropriate port capacities. In addition, Internet connectivity of 2 Mbps bandwidth has been provided at Railway Board, Mumbai (WR), Chennai (SR) and Kolkata (ER) for providing access to Internet to Railnet users connected either on LANs or through dial-up on selective basis. Firewall has been provided at all these 4 Servers to ensure access to Railnet from authorized users only. General arrangement of equipments at main server locations is shown in Fig. ‘9’. The connectivity diagram of Railnet System is shown in Fig. ‘10’. The main four servers of the Railnet at Railway Board, Mumbai, Chennai & Kolkata are presently connected through 64 Kbps circuits in mesh configuration to provide ‘route diversity’. 6.3 In phase-II of the project, Railnet has been extended to Divisional headquarters, using 64 Kbps / 9.6 kbps data links. The work of extension of Railnet to important railway workshops / stores depots on IR (including accounting system for Internet) has also been sanctioned. This work is in progress and targeted to be commissioned during the current year. 30 such locations have been identified to be provided with the RailNet connectivity. 33 SESSION - I 6.4 The architecture of the system has been broadly designed to serve the following objectives: i) Exchange of quick and efficient information updates amongst servers placed in Railway Board, Zonal HQs / Divisional HQs. and important activity centers in a hierarchical manner. ii) To provide high speed Internet access at 4 key locations i.e. Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai & Kolkata. iii) To monitor and Control usages of Railnet and Internet. 6.5 RailNet is a corporate wide Information highway, which can be used for running various applications by different departments. At present, only one server is installed at each hub, which is used as ‘Mail server’ as well as ‘Web server’. However, separate servers will have to be provided for various applications when number of users/applications increase. Presently, the RailNet is being used mainly for E-mailing and web page applications. In fact, exchange of electronic mails by Railnet users was one of the prime objectives of the Railnet system, when it was conceived of and to that extent, the purpose has been exceedingly served. 6.6 Of late, frequent failures of the Servers handling E-mail and the Railnet system both at Railway Board and Zonal levels have been reported. In addition, the Bandwidth crunch in the Railnet network to handle the traffic between the Zonal Railway headquarters and between Zones and Divisions has also been noticed, resulting in the unreliable and sluggish functioning of the Railnet. 6.6.1 So as to overcome these problems, the RailNet is being updated in respect of following: i) Improving the access & connectivity: a) Increase in Bandwidth of the link between the locations forming the RailNet backbone at Zonal/Divisional levels. b) Upgrading of the existing Routers. c) Provision / up-gradation of Remote Access Servers (RAS) and additional telephone lines in different Nodes so as to strengthen the dial up network. d) Provision of independent Web servers, wherever required. e) Augmentation of existing LANs. ii) Improving the security against against un-authorised access: a) Updating of Firewall, wherever external (Internet) access has been provided. b) Provision of Intrusion Detection System (IDS). 34 SESSION - I c) Provision of anti-virus solution both at server and client level. 7.0 CONVERGENCE OF NETWORKS ON IR: 7.1 Several transaction processing and management information systems have come up independently over a period of time on Indian Railways which have their own dedicated hardware / software and telecommunication infrastructure. These are Passenger Reservation System (PRS), Freight Operation & Information System (FOIS), Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS), National Train Enquiry System (NTES), Corporate Wide Information System (RailNet), and Management Information System (MIS). Board have recently sanctioned projects for computerization of Coaching Operation & information System (COIS), Crew Management System (CMS), and Control charting. Another project for providing electronic tags on wagons and coaches and their integration with FOIS & COIS is under consideration of the Board. In addition, work of computerization of Material Management & Inventory Control System is likely to be taken up in coming years. 7.2 PRS system has ‘5’ regional servers located at Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, and Secunderabad, which are connected to each other in a mesh topology using dual 2 Mbps / 64 Kbps data links. On an average, 200 PRS locations are connected to each of these ‘5’ Regional Computer Centres using 64 / 9.6 Kbps connectivity. To computerize Unreserved Ticketing segment, Indian Railways have already implemented a pilot project on Northern Railway with centralized accounting features on the lines of PRS and similar work has also been sanctioned on Eastern Railway, East Central Railway and North Eastern Railway. Indian Railways have also implemented NTES system for providing real time train running information to public. NTES system has already been deployed in all control offices of Indian Railways, for feeding train running data and this data is then disseminated through IVRS, Enquiry terminals at stations, passenger information boards and public announcement systems. 7.3 FOIS Phase-I has already been implemented at 234 locations. Servers for this application are centralized at CRIS, New-Delhi and remote locations have been connected through 64 Kbps links in mesh topology. Another 314 locations are to be added in Phase-II and Phase-III in next two years. 7.4 Scope of MIS project includes provision of WAN connectivity between field units & Divisional Headquarters and between Divisional & Zonal Headquarters, development of application modules for all the departments of Indian Railways and augmenting the existing LAN infrastructure in the Divisional & Zonal Headquarters. 7.5 On date, there are over 1500 end-to-end data channels in PRS network, over 600 data channels in FOIS network and another 500 data channels are in pipe lines for implementation of TMS module of FOIS. There are over 100 channels in RailNet and many more are in pipelines for UTS network, which should 35 SESSION - I ultimately grow to have more number of data channels than even existing PRS network. More than 50% of these channels are BSNL leased. 7.6 A large number of data channels already working on Indian Railways in an un-folded manner not only makes the data networks cumbersome and unmanageable but also a significant amount of revenue outflow takes place in the form of channel rentals. With the emergence of broadband OFC network of RailTel, it is the opportune time to integrate entire data transmission load of Indian Railways on OFC pipes on the network laid by Railways & RailTel. Integration of data links on OFC network is all the more required to meet with the rapidly rising demands of data channels for expansion of UTS, PRS, FOIS, COIS, CMS, Control Charting and other MIS applications. Integration of data channels on one network will, in addition, facilitate sharing of composite band width amongst various above referred IT driven services. 8.0 FUTURE SCENARIO : Future needs of IR can be broadly classified into the following categories: i) Operational circuits. ii) Administrative circuits. iii) MIS circuits. iv) Disaster Management circuits. 8.1 Operational Circuits : 8.1.1 Operational circuits include the Train Control Circuits, Block Circuits, Emergency Communication Circuits, and maintenance management circuits. The future trend is to cater for all these circuits through Optical Fibre and 4/6 Quad cables. Plans are to cover ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’ routes by OFC, which would not only meet the requirement of operational circuits but also to develop the links for commercial exploitation. For this purpose, Ministry of Railways have set up RailTel Corporation of India Ltd. to create a nation-wide broad band telecom and multi-media network by utilising Railways’ Optical Fibre Cable assets and Right of Way (ROW). The formation of RailTel has really accelerated the growth of optical fibre cable communication systems on Indian Railways. During last year, 9503 Rkms of OFC has been laid which is almost equal to 9,950 Rkms of OFC cable which was available on IR system on 31.03.2002. As on 30.04.2003, OFC has already been commissioned on 12,167 Rkms, works are in progress on 15,122 Rkms and future plans are to lay OFC on further 12,640 Rkms. This would make OFC availability on nearly 40,000 Rkms on Indian Railways. 8.1.2 24 fibre optical cable will only be laid and equipment will be of SDH technology. In the beginning, STM-1/4/16 equipment will be provided which may, perhaps, be needed to be up-graded to have DWDM end equipment in long run. At its 36 SESSION - I simplest, a Dense wavelength Division Multiplexed (DWDM) system can be viewed as a parallel set of optical channels, each using a slightly different light wavelength but all sharing a single transmission medium. DWDM will increase the capacity of existing networks without the need for expensive recabling and thus significantly reduce the cost of network upgrades. 8.1.3 Overhead alignments on important sections of ‘D Spl.’, ‘D’ and ‘E Spl.’ Routes, having line capacity utilisation of more than 80%, will be replaced by 4/6 Quad cables. 8.1.4 For emergency communication on ‘A’, ‘B’ & ‘C’ routes, primarily full duplex MTRC system may be provided. The work will include setting of radio base stations along the track and the base stations connected to each other through the backbone of OFC. On other routes (‘D’ & ‘E’), the emergency communication shall be through 5-W walkie-talkie sets with Driver / Guard, supported by 25W VHF sets at stations and emergency sockets along the track. 8.2 Administrative circuits : 8.2.1 Starting from sixties and until now, 7 GHz. Microwave links formed the main backbone for the long distance administrative circuits. This role is now gradually being taken over by OFC. It is, however, visualized that on critical sections of strategic importance, the MW links might have to be replaced on age-cum-condition basis to ensure a pilfer-proof, integrated and reliable communication system. 8.2.2 For meeting the ever increasing demand of long distance circuits and STD telephone facilities, the carrying capacity of backbone will have to be suitably augmented, which should be easily possible through links in broad band OFC network, being created by RailTel. 8.3 MIS circuits: 8.3.1 For the Management Information System (MIS), the main carrier of information and data will be the ‘RailNet’. 8.4 Networks for FOIS & PRS: 8.4.1 Networks of FOIS & PRS shall get required high speed connectivity through OFC network of RailTel. 8.4.2 FOIS/PRS locations where neither communication network of Railways has the requisite penetration nor the BSNL / MTNL network has the coverage, shall be connected through VSAT terminals with Shared / Captive Hub option, depending upon the number of such locations. It has, however, been estimated that the ‘Captive Hub’ option will be a preferred option for providing VSAT connectivity at or around 200 locations. 37 SESSION - I 8.5 PIS circuits: 8.5.1 For the Passenger Information System (PIS), an integrated approach will have to be developed so that all enquiries about status of reservations, train running etc. and also information about choice of the routes, concessions available etc. could be made available through IVRS or through INTERNET. Necessary and adequate security measures will have to be built in to safe guard vital information against attack by hackers. 8.6 Disaster Management Circuits: 8.6.1 A multi-layer approach for providing communication needs to manage major accidents is envisaged, as detailed in Para 5.3. 8.6 A Vision: 9.1 Operational Communication: 9.1.1 Future should witness the controllers becoming omni present and always approachable by any railway personnel working along the route / track or traveling in the train. The emergency sockets will virtually disappear as there will be no occasion for the driver / guard, physically moving to search the emergency socket and set up the communication with the controller. This emergency communication will not be on VHF walkie-talkie sets but shall be on regular duplex mobile phones. Most of our tracks will get covered with invisible web cells of mobile radio network, which could also be seamlessly connected to networks of other mobile service providers. 9.1.2 Communication on demand – any time, any where and by any body should become a reality, which means that it will be possible to provide communication facility any where in the railway area – be it station section or block section or for that matter any where within about 5 Kms. radius of rail track. 9.1.3 It will be possible to set up audio-visual communication including videoconferencing facilities at the disaster site in quickest possible time to broadcast comprehensive information to all concerned in an on-line and real time manner, which should facilitate monitoring of rescue & restoration operation from a remote location. 9.2 Administrative Communication: 9.2.1 Strowger exchanges will turn out as antiques for museums. All exchanges will be of digital type and shall also be equipped to handle VoIP traffic. The connectivity between the exchanges will be at least on 2 Mbps E1 stream. 9.2.2 On demand availability of STD lines and close numbering scheme having been already introduced at different levels will eliminate the trunk boards. STD on Railway network will be available on all India basis i.e. from anywhere 38 SESSION - I to anywhere. The codes will also be limited to Zonal Headquarter level and within a zone, each subscriber will have a unique number, perhaps, easily identifiable without the need of a directory through standard numbering plan. 9.2.3 Video phones will become a common communication facility with senior Managers. 9.3 The Backbone: 9.3.1 The backbone of communication network will be primarily OFC based, supported by Jelly filled Quad cables and Digital Microwave / UHF links. OFC backbone, presently being provided with STM-1 / STM-4 / STM-16 equipment will be needed to be upgraded to have DWDM end equipment on the long run. 9.3.2 RailTel will roll out India-wide robust & high speed OFC back bone network and will bring to the market high bandwidth availability through out the country. Its services for enterprises will include Bandwidth on demand, IP & VPN services. 9.4 Convergence of Networks : 9.4.1 Today Indian Railways have a number of discrete data networks. Future will see convergence of networks with a common backbone infrastructure. Future applications will require rich media having route diversity / protection rings, and low network delays. 10.0 CONCLUDING REMARK: 10.1.1 Telecommunication technology is, at present, a fastest changing technology. The basic components are becoming more complex with application specific chips, forming the nucleus of the equipment. Size of the components is reducing but their capabilities are becoming more potent. Voice is moving over the data links in packets and the data is flowing in the form of light. The prices per unit capacity / capability of the equipment are falling by day. Navigating in this fast current of telecommunication growth will not be easy for Indian Railways, where the gap between market trends and existing infrastructure is, rather, wide and financial demands to fill this gap are enormous, keeping in view the current financial crunch. A way, therefore, is required to be carved out to cope up with the changes occurring in this field and update our telecom. infrastructure to make it an effective one, which would enable Indian Railways to maintain its mark as an efficient, dynamic and vibrant organisation. 39 SESSION - I ACSR OVERHEAD ALIGNMENTS 40,000 35,000 30,000 25,000 RKM 20,000 15,000 10,000 Fig. ‘1’ 5, 000 198 198 198 198 198 198 198 198 198 198 199 199 199 199 199 199 199 199 199 199 20 00 20 01 20 02 Mar -80 Mar -85 Mar -90 Mar -95 Mar -96 Mar -97 Mar -98 Mar -99 Mar -00 Mar -01 Mar -02 Rly Owned DOT Rente d 10, 780 35, 000 13, 601 33, 000 17, 359 30, 914 14, 991 34, 157 14, 874 34, 938 16, 231 15, 032 26, 697 25, 762 15, 073 25, 593 14,855 27,805 14, 058 26, 913 14, 819 27, 467 YEAR RE QUAD T EL ECOM CABL ES 16, 000 14, 000 12, 000 10, 000 RK M 8, 000 6, 000 4, 000 2, 000 19 9 0 19 9 1 19 9 2 19 9 3 19 9 4 19 9 5 19 9 6 19 9 7 19 9 8 19 9 9 200 0 200 1 200 2 Fig. ‘2’ Mar -90 Rly Owned Rkm - 6, 440 DOT Rented Rkm - 6,551 2,750 Mar -95 8,949 1,986 Mar -96 9,547 1,793 Mar -97 9,983 1,612 Mar -98 9,983 1,612 Mar -99 11, 015 1,467 Mar -00 11, 803 1, 476 Mar -01 13, 692 801 Mar -02 13, 692 801 YEA R 40 SESSION - I OPT IC A L FIBRE C A BL E SYST EM ON INDIAN RA IL WAYS 1 4, 00 0 1 2, 00 0 1 0, 00 0 R KM 8 , 0 00 6 , 0 00 Fig. ‘3’ 4 , 0 00 2 , 0 00 19 9 0 19 9 1 19 9 2 19 9 3 19 9 4 19 9 5 19 9 6 19 9 7 19 9 8 19 9 9 2 00 0 2 00 1 2 00 2 2 00 3 M a r - 90 R km - 93 M a r - 95 9 53 M a r - 96 9 53 M a r - 97 1 ,0 1 6 M a r - 98 1 ,4 7 3 M a r - 99 1 ,7 3 0 M a r - 00 2 , 7 37 M a r - 01 4 ,4 8 7 M a r - 02 5 ,7 8 2 M a y- 03 1 2, 0 00 YEAR Chandigarh Saharanpur 45 RE Moradabad Ambala 81 193 197 RCIL 84 (83) Delhi 105 (102) RE/RCIL Tundl a310 31 (28) RE/RC IL 325 (324) Lucknow 72 PROGRESS OF OFC WORKS (Metros, Mini Metros & Other Important Routes) Patna Kanpur Varanasi 260 192 Agra Madhupur 15 212 RCIL 136 (24) 324 Allahabad 153 73 Ajmer 172 (11*) Mughal 216 Sitarampur Jhans i Kota Satna sarai 150 221 (11 / 78*) 189 (96) 266 (127) RCIL 491 (36) Bina Chakradharpur 63 Tatanagar Ratlam Jabalpur Ujjain . 139 Howrah 135 Bhopal 260 (247) 95 101 121 80 Ahmedabad 145 245 Bilaspur 91 In dore Kharagpur Vadodara Rourkela Bhusawal Itarsi 206 323 135 114 Jalgaon 101 301 Nagpur 297 Surat 307 184 Bhubhneshwar 264 34 Raipur Jharsuguda 73 315( 90) 203 98(42.5) Manmad 51 Nasik Durg 84 Vira r Igat pu ri Wardha 133 (80) Ballarshah 60 441 Kalyan 54 Churchgate 235 RCIL 139 Visakhapatnam Kazipet CSTM Pune Secunderabad Kurl a-Panvel RCIL 54 ( Pan vel - 60 From CS TM) 220 RCIL 415 (370) 351 RE/ RCIL Rewari 143 RCIL 225 Mathura Jaipur Fig. ‘4’ Wadi 920 195 RCIL 314 RCIL 228 RCIL Vijaywada 295 Legen d: Complete d Works : Guntkal 123 30 RCIL Gooty 280 RE/RCIL Mangalore 221 Dharmavaram Sakleshpur 146 (38) RCIL RCIL 86 107 161 (101) 140 RCIL Renigunta 67 68 Gudur 68 70 59 Works in Progress: Te n ders yet to be floated/un de r Finalisation : Note : Figures give n are Rkms. Figures in Bracke t show physi cal progress. Figu res in RED sh ow link as commissione d. 209 Tada Chennai Calicut Shoranur Mysore RE Bangalore Arakkonam 63 155 Ernakulam 300 (285) Trivandrum 180 Chengalpattu Tiruchchirapalli Madurai * OFC/HDPE pipe laid 41 SESSION - I PHASE - I OF BROADBAND LONG HAUL TELECOM NETWORK OF RAILTEL ( 11000 Kms) Delhi Kanpur Agra Ring 3 Patna Allahabad Mughalsarai Gwalior Jhansi Bhopal Itarsi Nagpur Kharagpur Raipur Titlagarh Sholapur Cuttak Fig. ‘5’ Jaipur Ajmer Ring 1 Vadodara Ahmedabad Surat Jalgoan Kalyan Ring 2 Howrah •11000 Kms Phase-I Backbone network of 2.5 GBPS, STM-16 equipments. •Total of 74 ADMs and upgradable regenerators and rest non-upgradable regenerators. •Will act as the backbone transport network for STM-1 access network , being provided at every station. •Connects about 90 LDCAs (Long Distance Charging Areas) Pune Secunderabad Vishakhapatnam Vizianagram Mumbai Ring 6 Wadi Ring 4 Guntakal Vijayawada Ring 7 Bangalore Ring 5 Chennai New Delhi Jaipur EDGE / ACCESS LAYER NETWORK OF RAILTEL FOR STM – 1 / 4 Fig. ‘6’ Secunderabad Guntur Vijayavada Igatpuri Vikarabad Wadi Vadodara Mumbai Kalya n Panvel Pune Sholapur Guntakal Gooty •3200 KM. Backbone network of 155/622 MBPS , STM-1/STM-4 equipments. •Total no. of stations: 411 •Will work as Edge / Access network and traffic from this layer to be aggregated to backbone network. Dhamavaram Renigunta Arkonam Gudur Chennai Bangalore 42 SESSION - I Jammu Tawi Ludhiana Amritsar Ambala Gorakhpur Bagha Moradabad Delhi Mathura Lucknow PHASE-II OF BROADBAND LONG HAUL TELECOM NETWORK OF RAILTEL ( 12000 Kms.) Muzzafarpur Samastipur Katihar Kiul Barauni Asansol Ranchi Bilaspur Adra Guwahati Kanpur Ajmer Ahmedabad Vadodara Rajkot Surat Kota Ratlam Howrah •Phase-II of Broadband system will be installed on 12000 Kms. with 86 ADMs & 150 Upgradable regenerators. to be provided. •At every 60-80 Kms ., ADM node to act as the backbone transport for STM-1, being deployed at every station. •Connects about 85 LDCAs (Long Distance Charging Areas). Legend : S TM-16 of Phase II Indore Rourkela Kharagpur Vizianagra m Titl agarh Raipur Mumbai Panvel Londa Vasco Hubli Mangalore Mysore Shoranur Guntakal Vishakhapa tnam Vijayawada Bangalore Chennai Erode Tiruchchirapalli Madurai Fig. ‘7’ Trivendrum S TM -4 of Phase II Jammu Ta wi 98 Pathankot 10 5 11 5 Amrits ar 85 52 Lu dhiana 11 4 Ambala 19 8 Delhi 57 Pal wal Jal landhar STATUS OF MTRC WORKS Legend : Completed Wo rks: Works in Progress: Tenders yet to be floated/ under Finalisatio n: Section fo r provision o f ETCS Note: 20 Ghazi a ba d 106 Fig ures given are Rkms. Figures in B racket show physical prog ress. Figures in RED show link as commissioned. Bongaig aon Ne w Jal paig uri 185 Katih ar 229 130 143 Ali garh 78 84 Ma thura 54 Tundl a Kanpur All ah aba d Barauni Patna 212 98 202 101 3 194 180 30 41 145 28 Ne w Ali purdu ar Guwah ati 324 216 153 Bars oi Kume dpur Mal da To wn Garhara 233 Mug hals arai Ko ta Jhansi 266 150 Ga ya 170 Go moh 88 As ans ol 135 212 121 Ratlam 260 Bina 139 Tatan agar 63 Ho wrah Bh opal 301 91 Vad od ara 135 Itars i 297 Kh aragp ur 101 Ch akrad h arpu r Bhus a wal 184 73 51 84 54 Su rat 203 Bilas pu r 114 206 101 Virar 60 Man mad Nas ik Ro u rkela Jharsu gud a 264 34 Ig atpu ri Kaly an Nag pur Raipu r Durg CCG Fig. ‘8’ CS TM 43 SESSION - I RAILNET: GENERAL ARRANGEMENT NODE HUB SERVER SWITCH ROUTER MODEM FIREWALL HUB HUB INTERNET ACCESS To WAN Fig. ‘9’ RAILNET CONNECTIVITY DLW RDSO IRIC EEN BB BSL BP L JHS JBP NGP SUR MAJOR TRG CENTRES IZN LJN MAJOR TRG CENTRES CORE NCR 4 X 64 KBPS NER ALD BKN DLI BSB SEE SP J IRIEEN DCW RCF MAJOR TRG CENTRES Railway Board NR M S H D AD M D L W A S N G H D H H NR S N T CR RSC BCT FZR JU LKO MB UMB CKP KGP NGP BSP ADA KUR WCR BRC AII RAK KTA RTM JP BVP ECoR WR ER NFR NWR CLW MAS SBC MYS T VC P GT MDU TP J SER KIR APDJ T SK WAT SBP MAJOR TRG CENTRES MAJOR TRG CENTRES MAJOR TRG CENT RES MAJOR TRG CENT RES LMG LEGEND : 9.6 kbps (Railway) 9.6 kbps (DOT) 64 Kbps(Rly ) 64 Kbps (DOT ) Dial up Connection LAN SANCTIONED LAN COM ISIONED SR WAP SCR MAJOR TRG CENTRES IRIM EE SC HYB GTL BZA UBL ICF IRIS ET MAJOR TRG CENTRES SWR Fig. ‘10’ 44 SESSION - I SAFE TRAVEL & IMPROVED CUSTOMER SATISFACTION By A.K.CHOPRA Managing Director RailTel Corporation of India Limited The rapid strides in Signaling & Telecom. world over are enabling the railway system to increase their earnings and also to ensure safe travel in the train journey. Indian Railways have yet to fully tap this vital input. In this paper the author brings out the new technologies where application can bring appreciable improvement in the earning and safety on Indian Railways. Indian Railways, in its 150th year, is still a vibrant and an efficient organization. Any organization, however, big or small, has got life cycle. Initial period of growth is due to the innovation, followed by a rapid growth, than sustained continued business. If the innovative inputs at the sustained business level are not made, the organization is sure to decay. First 100 years of the Indian Railways have seen the growth in network to almost 53,600 RKMs ( a period of growth). The past 50 years growth of railways network has although slowed down (63,000 RKMs), but various innovations like change from steam engine to diesel and to electric, new and comfortable coaches, induction of high speed trains, induction of high capacity wagons and also rapid strides in signaling and telecommunication, have kept the Indian Railways on the path of growth. In the past 50 years substantial inputs by way of improvement in the interlocking standards from Non Interlocked stations to Standard-III interlocked stations: from Semaphore Signalling to Colour Light Signalling; from overhead wires for communication to underground cable communication etc. have been made in Signaling & Telecommunication department as well. It has contributed significantly for the safe and efficient running of the Railway system. Today Signalling & Telecommunication is the lifeline of Indian Railways. Can we perceive running of trains from on station to next by obtaining line clear on a Morse telegraph system or have non-interlocked stations permitting train speed of 15 Km. per hour in station yards or run suburban trains in cities like Mumbai on Absolute block system or book a trunk call and wait for hours to do the conversation? The answer is no. Signalling and Telecom has become an integral part of the Railway system and it is its lifeline for safe and efficient working. 45 SESSION - I The rapid strides in Signaling & Telecom world over are enabling the railway systems to increase their earnings and also to ensure safe travel in the train journey. The Indian Railways have yet to tap this vital input although they have been inducted in a limited way in various sections. The manner in which the technology induction of modern Signaling & of modern Telecom, which can bring in a sea change for increasing earning and safe travel are discussed in the following paragraphs. A. SIGNALING It is generally perceived that the Signaling is only to permit reception and dispatch of the trains at the stations and to ensure movement of trains from one station to another. Signaling, however, has got many other features wherein it can increase the line capacity, reduction in human interaction to improve the train safety. Increase in line capacity enables management to increase their earnings. At present, in trunk routes, the number of trains being run on the absolute block system of working is about 2 to 2.8 trains each way per hour. Internationally, with the appropriate inputs from the signaling side, the line capacity of the order of 15 to 20 trains per hour is quite normal. In Channel Tunnel connecting UK and France, the best of the signaling system provided has enabled a capacity of 30 trains per hour each way. The achievement of a capacity of 15 to 20 trains per hour is practicable with the induction of Automatic signaling and Computerised Centralized Traffic Control system. With the rapid strides in the technology, the centralized traffic control system, which was earlier perceived to be ideal for single line sections only could now be very effectively used for double line sections as well. The Most ideal arrangement in any of the double line section would be to use both the lines as reversible double line with fully Automatic Signaling System provided with high speed turnouts at the stations. This can be controlled centrally from a centralized controlling system. The system of this type ensures that the trains with varying speed are allowed to run and the central computer decides, depending upon the current speed of the train, about the precedence for the following high-speed train. The moment the high-speed trains has overtaken the slow speed trains; the slow speed trains can immediately follow. This ensures least detention of any train. Induction of such technology on long routes can enable reducing the running time of the goods trains and even passenger trains. The coaching and wagon stock can thus be utilized for additional runs. The average speed of goods trains in the country has improved from 17.4 KMPH in 1990-91 to 24.1 KMPH in 2000-01. With the induction of the above technologies, it should be practicable to improve the speeds of such trains from 24.1 KMPH to 50 KMPH (107% improvement) and in case the wagons fit for 100 KMPH are inducted, this could be increased to 70 KMPH (190% 46 SESSION - I improvement). Obviously, the wagons would remain idle for least time and railways can manage with the less number of coaching and wagons fleet; or make additional runs to earn more revenue. Similarly the turnover of locomotives would also improve substantially. The system of computerized centralized traffic control and automatic signaling with high speed turnouts have been very effectively utilized in Sweden, wherein even with the 4 differential speeds of trains, the line capacity in the range of 15 to 20 trains have been generated. The speeds in Sweden are 100 KMPH for goods trains, 130 KMPH for passenger trains, 160 KMPH for inter-city trains and 200 KMPH for super fast trains. With a computerized centralized traffic control system, the road-side station staff are not normally required to operate the signaling systems and such staff, which is spared from operational duties, can be utilized for providing better commercial services, thus improving the railways image. The signaling system at stations, which was erstwhile provided with semaphore signals, has now been the upgraded with Colour Light signals with Panel Interlocking, route Relay Interlocking and Solid State Interlocking at more than 2300 stations where the entire yard is fully track circuited. Most of the future installations will be with solidstate interlocking, which of course, have yet to find a rapid growth. The installation of solid-state interlocking at stations with a combination of automatic signaling and centralized traffic control is the most ideal signaling system the Indian Railways should have. The present cost estimates of Computerised Centralised Traffic Control System and automatic signaling Control is less than Rs.50 crores for 100 Kms. An investment of only Rs.5000 crores for the golden quadrilateral and diagonals can generate sufficient capacity of 15-20 trains against 2-2.8 trains per hour on these so called congested trunk routes. Indian Railways, then would be in a position to carry all the offered traffic whether goods or passenger. Today during the busy season, the Railways are unable to carry the offered gods traffic due to non-availability of the stock and during the summer rush; the railways are unable to carry all the offered passenger traffic. The induction of the above technologies would definitely ensure a change to improve the railways’ earnings & safety and railways can have a visionary statement that ‘WE WILL CARRY ALL THE OFFERED TRAFFIC MAY BE FREIGHT OR MAY BE PASSENGER.’ To improve the safety of the trains and also to provide information to the passengers, the induction of our indigenous technology of Data Loggers has proved to be extremely effective. The Data Loggers costing nearly Rs.1.5 lakhs for each station, when networked centrally in the control office have ensured reduction of signaling incidences due to wrong 47 SESSION - I operation, detection of system deficiencies, improvement of maintenance of track circuits and points and crossings and also putting a deterrent check on the running staff as cases of signals passing at danger or over speeding can be noticed by the administration very conveniently. The system has already been installed at more than 600 stations and has enabled Indian Railways to improve the cases of signaling incidences and also improve the safety records. This technology has further been utilized in drawing of Automatic Control charts in the control office, thus relieving the Section controller of the arduous duty of manually drawing the train movement chart and continuously speaking with the Station Masters to check the train position. Since all the running lines at station are track circuited, the Data Logger enables the controller to know that the train is either at stations or in the block section. The Automatic Control charting has been successfully introduced in six-control office of Western Railways and South Central Railways. The induction of this technology has reduced considerably the pressure on the section controllers and also the station staff for reporting the train information telephonically. It has also made drivers more cautious, as over speeding and passing of signal at danger can be detected immediately, as it gives immediate alarm in the Control Office even if there is no accident. B. TELECOMMUNICATION The Railway system necessarily is 100% dependent on telecommunication system to enable the train to movement from station to station. Without this basic telecommunication, the trains cannot move from one station to the next. For more than 100 years it has remained dependent on the overhead wires, which were maintained by the Department of Telecommunications. The growing traffic and the need for efficient communication system forced Indian Railways to provide their own underground telecom cables and microwave system after mid 60s. All the important routes are now well equipped with efficient telecommunication system, but the demand for more and more communication has also continued from the various users in the Indian Railways. The Indian Railways were the first to provide Optic Fibre Cables, which was introduced on 3rd December 1988 between Churchgate to Virar of Western Railway. With the rapid strides in the Optic Fibre Cable technology, the Indian Railways decided in 1996 to provide Optic fibre Cable system as a part of Railway Electrification. The telecom capacity generated by this technology is quite high and is much more than what the Railways can use for themselves. The Indian railways have decided to set up a separate Corporation with a view to earn additional revenue after meeting its own demands of the train operations. The RailTel Corporation of India Limited has came into being on 26th September, 2000, 48 SESSION - I and is in the process of providing 40,000 RKMs of Optic Fibre Cabe throughout the country in the next 4 years. 20,000 Rkm’s of cable has already been laid. Although RailTel will commercially utilize the OFC for earning revenue, but the benefits, which Indian Railways will get from this new technology are only discussed further:For having station-to-station communication, the minimum size of electronics equipments available is of 155 Megabits, STM-1, which has to be installed at each station. The Railways requirement is between 2 to 10 Megabits only. Visualizing that in the next 3 to 4 years time almost 4000 stations, more than half of the 7000 stations of Indian Railways, on all important routes would be provided with such bandwidth, even at road side stations, the following new technologies need to be considered by the Indian Railways for improving their operations and providing better passenger amenities. The availability of bandwidth at each and every station can ensure provision better passenger information system at any station when connected to the mainframe computer. The Railways are handicapped today as the connectivity of the stations with the mainframe computer is available at only selected locations or they were dependant on Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited. Provision of Optic Fibre Cable at all stations will enable traveling public make reservations from the nearest place. In fact it should be possible to extend the Passenger Reservation System into the city rather than keeping it only at the station premises, so that this facility is available for the public at a walking distance from the place of their living. The system of card tickets for unreserved sectors has become fairly cumbersome. The tickets have to be printed, stocked and accounted for manually, the available bandwidth at the stations can enable provision of ‘Computerized Ticket Printing’ at stations. This can be networked with the mini computer in the divisional headquarters. This would ensure that the management at divisional headquarters and also at the zonal headquarter is able to monitor ‘Online Sale of Tickets’ at each and every station for every train, class and destination. With such a system, the management can also decide regulating the trains by increasing or reducing the coaches much more effectively and without any representations being given by the public. The passenger reservation system in the present form provides reservations up to 3 hours before the departure of the trains. Between 3 hours of the departure of the trains, till the actual departure and enroute, the cancellation of the reservations is not accounted for and the traveling public is solely at the mercy of the train conductors. The available bandwidth at the stations supported by wireless technology can change this seen altogether. The PNR number on the present ticket can be changed into Bar codes. The passenger 49 SESSION - I when he comes at stations either for boarding the train or cancellation of the booking or to get his reservation re-confirmed if he is on the waiting list, can be advised by the Commercial staff of their current status by scanning of the hand-held wireless Bar Code machines, which are linked to the mainframe computer by wireless. These hand-held bar coded machines will be linked through wireless to the nearest station (8-10 Kms. Apart) and from their through the OFC to the mainframe computer. The TTE’s even on the running trains can check the train as occupied by the passengers and the same information would get automatically update in the mainframe computer. The information of vacant berths can thus be conveyed to the next stop, where the station staff can allot these berths with the coach number and seat number without any difficulty. In regard to passenger information system, as mentioned in the signaling section, we have the Data Loggers and automatic train charting system. Once it is continuously available in a specified section, it will be possible to link the platform indicators and the public address system at each and every station. The train running data is collected from each station through Data Loggers and sent to the central control office. It is processed and then sent to each and every station in the section, wherein it can be linked to the platform indicators, which can specifically indicate the trains coming towards the station and display precisely that the train will arrive at the station in so many minutes. Similarly, this data can trigger automatically the prerecorded public announcement system at the stations to announce the arrival of the train at specified platform and the expected time. Another application of this growing technology can be for issuing of passes and PTO’s to the Railway staff and other complementary passes to public, freedom fighters, MP’s, MLA’s etc. Today, records are maintained in the various offices about such pass holders and also for issuing of duty passes to railway employees. Each such eligible pass holder can be given a Smart Card, which should contain all the information such as name, designation, service and eligibility. This information should remain stored in the mainframe passenger reservation computer. Any employee when he wishes to go on duty or otherwise will have to present this Smart Card at the booking Office anywhere in the country and after checking his eligibility an appropriate ticket gets issued. It is also accounted for in his account whether he is traveling on duty or on privilege in the main computer. An appropriate account for the system in this manner would ensure optimum utilization of the berths, reduce lot of clerical works in the offices, and eliminate misuse of this facility. RailTel is planning to provide Internet/STD/ISD Kiosks at all the platforms at all stations. It is perceived that 3 to 12 kiosks will be provided at each platform and similar number of kiosks in waiting halls and other public places to enable the public to make use of the communication revolution in sending messages or speaking for their business 50 SESSION - I or personal requirements. The Kiosks will be manned as well as unmanned. At least one manned kiosk will be available at each station for those who are not conversant with use of these facilities on their own. The Kiosks can also provide the facility for Internet Phone video conferencing and sending fax messages. In a 40,000 RKMs of OFC, it is proposed to provide 30,000 to 35,000 kiosks in the next 3 to 4 years. It is also proposed to provide similar kiosks on the running trains as well. A successful trial on tower wagon has already been done between Faridabad – Tughalkabad in April 2003. This scheme visualises connectivity from each and every manned coach in the train to the nearest station on wireless and link it with the OFC as back bone. In the airconditioned coaches, apart from unattended kiosks, it should be possible to provide connections for linking the personal Laptop computers from each seat for the traveling public by paying usual charges. This technology should enable the traveling in higher classes much more comfortable and enable public to remain in touch with the world. There are large numbers of trains running across out country for 12 to 80 hours continuously, where the traveling public has nothing to do except to read newspapers and magazines and talk to the co-passengers. This technology will enable connectivity for their business and personal requirements even when they are on the move. This would certainly attract more number of passengers on such trains. The RailTel is encouraging all the cellular operators in the various states to utilize the OFC bandwidth and also would facilitate in fixing and operating cellular transmitter equipments at the stations. This would ensure that the public when traveling on the trains would have continuous coverage on the cell phones in their journey. Another application for this technology would be for providing such cell telephones as a group for the railway supervisors and other staff, who are involved with the train operation. Many companies are offering the fixed charge per month for group telephone system, wherein all the supervisors/officers within the group can speak with each other for unlimited time and are able to receive incoming calls without any extra charge. Apart from the cellular telephones for supervisors and staff within the Railways, telephones can be extended to the staff concerned with the train operations in their offices and residences throughout the country. The railway can network their exchanges on the STD lines, so that they can communicate between each other without booking for the calls anywhere in the country. Another application for the communication revolution is for controlling the maximum demand for a Traction Substation. Many divisions are losing heavily when they exceed the maximum demand and railways are required to pay the penalty. In the proposed scheme being worked out by Railway Electrification, when a maximum demand in any TSS exceeds, the information will come to the traction power controller in the divisional headquarter through the dedicated channel on OFC. With the available information of train position from train charting with section Controller separately 51 SESSION - I available in the control office through Data Loggers, it would be possible for the TPC to know the various types of trains running in the jurisdiction of that TSS. Automatically a message can get generated and sent to the stations in the jurisdiction of that TSS and in that station it gets transmitted by wireless through the pager system to the driver of the least important train and directing him to go on coasting for about 30 seconds to one minute. Such trains normally would be the loaded goods trains and when they go on for such a short coasting and before they come to a halt, they can be put back to the supply. In this process the cycle for exceeding the maximum demand will be broken. After the cycle is broken, he can continue with the train running. This will ensure savings in the operational expenses by avoiding payment of excessive electricity bills due to exceeding the maximum demand limits. If appropriately implemented, reducing the maximum demand at various Traction Substations after gaining experience and confidence can do further optimization. One another application, which is being considered, is to have a Moving Display in each coach of the passenger trains. With the available data from Data Loggers, and train charting, the information of the train running can be passed to the respective stations and a wireless paged message can be given to each and every coach of various trains, wherein it is displayed to the passengers in the coaches. The conveyed information can be the ‘station where the train is passing at present’ and ‘how much late it is running’. It can also indicate the reasons for delayed running of the train. In between such information, advertisements can be displayed. In controlling the freight information system, a new concept needs to be developed. Electronic Wagon Identification Cards priced Rs.5,000 to Rs.7,000 are available. All the Indian Railways rolling stock (Wagons, Coaches, Locomotives) can be provided with these cards on both sides of the stock at a specified height from the track. These electronic wagon identification cards have a life of 8-10 years and have got long lasting sealed battery imbedded in them. Wagon readers at entry and exit point at each and every junction station can be linked with the OFC network and connected to the mainframe computer monitoring the movement of all the Rolling Stock. The automatic reading of the wagons will enable online tracking of each and every wagon, coach and locomotive in the whole system. This would enable much more effective use of the available stock of the railways and would enable management at various levels to decide their optimum utilization. If provided effectively it can bring in a dramatic change in the freight operations of the Indian Railways, wherein the earnings for each and every wagon and the locomotives and its average running per day would get available on line. The identification cards are priced between Rs.5,000 to Rs.7,000 and readers are priced at Rs.10,000 to Rs.12,000. For covering a fleet of 2,00,000 rolling stock and approximately 200 junction stations the entire scheme may cost about Rs.400 crores. The optimum utilization of the entire rolling stock will also provide much more savings then the investment. 52 SESSION - I The technologies mentioned above are only some of the ideas, where signaling and telecommunication can bring in the inputs into the railway system and bring in more innovations, which will ensure further growth of the Indian Railways. Delay in inducting such technologies will reduce the expansion and limit the earnings and can result in decay of the Indian Railway system. When the Indian Railways are at 150 years of age, it is necessary that a concerted effort be made to keep the Indian Railway system more vibrant, efficient and profitable and continuously keep it on innovation line of the life cycle and prevent its decay at any given time. 53 SESSION - II GLOBAL SYSTEM FOR MOBILE COMMUNICATION (GSM-R) for Railways by Nortel GSM-R has been developed as a communication system for railway networks utilizing GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) technologies and specific application for railway operations. This paper describes the present status of GSM-R and its various application on European Railways INTRODUCTION GSM-R stands for GSM for Railways, a communication system for railway networks utilising GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) technologies and specific applications for railway operations. GSM-R is the communication standard chosen by EIRENE (European Integrated Railway Radio Enhanced Network) to meet the evolving railway business challenges: • • • Interoperability with national and international railway networks' communications systems Improved operational performance to achieve higher efficiency, safety, reliability thus passengers satisfaction Differentiating value added services to increase customer loyalty and explore other revenue sources The following figure provides a view of various applications that GSM-R can provide for the Railways use among its functional groups. GSM-R End-to-End Communication for Railways Stationar Dispatch-Centers • • • and • • Control-Centers Trai n Protection and - an InformationServices • Resources Voice Broadcasts Emergenc Data ETC TicketMachines Time-Tables Diagnostic Logistic Mobile Cp y g h © o r i t 9 6 No t e n 1 9 r h r Individual Calls Group Calls Shunting Group Calls 55 SESSION - II DRIVERS FOR GSM-R Today, most railway telecommunications networks in Europe and other continents utilize different systems for various types of applications and users. These systems typically belong to an earlier generation of radio systems, utilizing analog technology and different frequency ranges with limited applications and performance. GSM-R - a Unified Network Current System Paging Track to Train Radio Shunting Radio Tunnel Radio Automatic Train Control Vehicle mounted Radio Operation and Maintenance Radio GSM-R System Paging Track to Train Radio Automatic Train Control Operation and Maintenance Radio GSM-R infrastructure BTS’s Shunting Radio Ot her EIRENE Netw orks Ot her EIRENE Netw orks Tunnel Radio Vehicle mounted radio To solve the inefficient use of radio frequencies, high operations & maintenance costs, limited interoperability between railway networks, the concept of GSM-R was introduced. The idea was to develop a pan-European radio system satisfying the mobile communications needs of the European railways, using state-of-the-art technology and an evolution path for future railway needs. The GSM-R system would encompass track to train and on-board voice and data communications, together with the ground-based mobile communications needs of track-side workers, station and depot staff and railway administrative and managerial personnel. Furthermore, this system would facilitate international interoperability between national railways utilizing the assigned 4 MHz bandwidth (876-880 MHz uplink / 921-925 MHz downlink), thus freeing up much of the previously occupied spectrum. The following figure provides a view of GSM-R spectrum allocations. GSM-R Frequencies • Manual / • Manual / automatic switch automatic switch - over to public network - back to GSM-R network R- E-GSM P-GSM R- E-GSM P-GSM 87 0 88 0 89 0 90 0 25 MHz 91 0 92 0 93 0 94 0 95 0 25 MHz 96 0 97 0 f/MHz 4 MHz 10 MHz 4 MHz 10 MHz Uplin k Downlin k terminals operate in full 900 GSM frequency range Users are Always Connected Users are Always Connected to the Network to the Network 56 SESSION - II GSM-R's enhanced infrastructure, features and wireless telephony applications would enable railway operators to enhance O&M and emergency procedures to improve the operational efficiency and safety of existing transport systems, and reduce the overall cost of operations. Network performance will also be improved with GSM-R bringing enhanced Quality of Service and reliability, and providing clear voice and data communications for high speed trains which travels at the current speed of around 340 Km per hour. GSM-R will also bring applications geared towards providing differentiating passenger services to increase passenger satisfaction and increase revenue potential by leveraging existing full set of GSM services. GSM-R was selected in 1993 as the standard for railways communication systems and ETSI was requested by UIC at end of 1993 to introduce specific features (ASCI) within the GSM Technical Specifications to help GSM cope with railway specific issues. EIRENE and MORANE projects are now, after a successful specification of GSM-R functionality, closed and the final GSM-R specifications are available to the public. Also today, after the closure of EIRENE/MORANE projects, GSM-R standards are evolving under the UIC ERTMS/GSM-R leadership. Nortel Networks is actively involved in these standardization groups as a key Industry Partner. GSM -R MOU AND CURRENT STATUS In June 1997 the following European Railways signed the EIRENE MoU . EIRENE MoU Members (32) VR Track RHK ZSR JBV NSB DSB BS Railtrack EUROTUNNEL NS SNCB DB AG CD SNCF CP RENFE TAV FS JZ ÖBB CFR BDZ PKP SJ BV MAV GySEV/ROeEE BLS SBB SZ HZ ZBH In June 2000 the EIRENE Agreement on Implementation (AoI) came into effect. The Railways who have signed this agreement have stated their intention to start planning the implementation no later than 2001 and to begin GSM- R implementation by 2003 at latest. 57 SESSION - II Operation & Implementation Status VR RHK Abroad Europe North America BNSF test track China First test track in discussion Railtrack JBV NSB DSB NS SNCB DB AG SJ BV India Africa PKP CD CHZ MAV CFR WCML CTRL Australia Brazil SNCF RFF REFER RENFE SBB FS ÖBB SZ GSM-R in operation, implementation or tender process Planning / Study GIF TAV OSE All important Railways are implementing it GSM-R CHARACTERISTICS The design of GSM-R is tailored for railway operators to achieve the goals of Interoperability with other railway networks, increased operational efficiency and reduced operational cost. All railway communications needs including voice and data are to be supported within a complete and comprehensive GSM-R network as shown below: Railway Fixed Network Data Voice Other EIRENE Networks Other EIRENE Networks Co py rg i ht © 19 96 N o rh t er Te e lc om National GSM-R Network International trains Shunting communications Voice and data communications,eg: - driver - ERTMS/ETCS - other on-train users - passenger information Train communications Wide and local-area communications 58 SESSION - II GSM-R utilizes standard GSM technology and the additional features customized for railway operations. General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) is a major part of GSM-R for data transport supporting applications such as remote control, passenger services, e.g. ticketing, reservation, and cargo data services, e.g. freight tracking and tracing. The GSM-R users can be connected to the network via the base station subsystem of the public operator provided that a roaming agreement exists between the railway operator and the public operator(s). Within the roaming environment only the functionalities supported by the public operator are possible. Network Infrastructure Service Builder IN OSS OPTION SCP OMC-S VMS EIR SMS B B S S C C B B T S General Purpose Radio Operational Radio B T S S OMC-R LAN VLR GCR AUC HLR B B S S C C B B T S Data Server DMS-MSC B T T S B B T S S CAB RADIO Voice + Data Data Network Other EIRENE system ATC Centers Dispatcher Centers C p y i h ©1 9 6 No t e n T l c o m o g t r 9 h r r e e Telephone Network PSTN/ PLMN/ Data Network/ ISDN PABX 2 RAILWAY REQUIREMENTS Although GSM-R is entirely based on the GSM technology proven by many public GSM operators and subscribers, many railway specific applications still require much modification and enhancement to the existing GSM technology to support these additional features and maintain high Quality of Service (QoS) for train communications at high speed. Most importantly, the stringent reliability for railway operations and emergency situations requires the already reliable GSM network to include further measures in redundancy and network availability. Communication Requirements for Railway Operations Professional netw ork Professional netw ork • Dedicated Applications • Dedicated Applications • Continuous Data • Continuous Data • Operational Efficiency • Operational Efficiency • High Reliability • High Reliability • Emergency Situations (fast call setup ..) • Emergency Situations (fast call setup ..) • Dedicated Network ( infrastructure ,, dial • Dedicated Network ( infrastructure plan,.) plan,.) (shunting ,, ATC..) (shunting ATC..) Secured Operations Secured Operations People working in teams People working in teams • Group communications • Group communications • Smooth migration from existing railway • Smooth migration from existing railway com munication infrastructures com munication infrastructures Interoperability Interoperability • International railway communication • International railway communication networks networks • Public communication networks • Public communication networks 59 SESSION - II FUNCTIONS AND APPLICATIONS Railway communications networks require specific applications to support the safe and efficient operations of the railways. A set of ASCI features and functions supporting railway operation aspects are added on top of the standard GSM infrastructure to carry out all the railway voice and data applications. Network Features and Functions Controller-Driver Operational Communications Automatic Train Control Remote Control Shunting Trackside Maintenance Railway Applications Emergency Area Broadcast Train Support Communications Local Communications atStation and Depots Wide Area Communications Passenger Services Railway Operation Aspects Telecommunication Services - ASCI Presentation Location Separate Network, Functional of Functional Access Dependent separate Frequency Addressing Numbers Matrix Addressing range ( 4 MHz) eMLPP VBS GSM Infrastructure (phase 2) VGCS GSM-R services standardized within ETSI as part of GSM Phase 2+ are collectively called the Advanced Speech Call Items (ASCI). ASCI comprises of the following three services: • • • eMLPP (enhanced Multi-Level Precedence and Preemption) allows resource preemption for priority calls VBS (Voice Broadcast Services) allows groups of users to receive common information VGCS (Voice Group Call Service) allows groups of users to make calls within/ among the groups Functional Addressing allows a user or an application to be reached by means of a number which identifies the relevant function and not the physical terminal Presentation of Functional Numbers allows visual information about the call destination and origination to be presented Access Matrix validates access capability for communications among users and groups of users Location Dependent Addressing provides the routing of mobile originated calls to the correct controller e.g. relative to the geographic area. 60 The specific services for Railway Operation Aspects are: • • • • SESSION - II • Confirmation of high priority call provides a record of any event marked as high priority call RAILWAY SPECIFIC FUNCTIONS ASCI ASCI services are defined in the Phase 2+ ETSI GSM specifications with additional specifications refined by MORANE. Enhanced Multi-Level Precedence and Preemption (eMLPP) By subscribing to eMLPP service, a user can explicitly or by default select a priority value when originating a call. This priority value is used within the network to provide calls of higher priority values precedence to network resources during call setup. A high priority call may also pre-empt other ongoing calls of lower priority, in case of congestion. The priority value shall be presented to the called party during alerting. eMLPP shall be supported for the following call types: • Point-to-point calls • mobile-to-mobile calls • • • mobile-to-land calls land-to-mobile calls VBS/VGCS calls In addition, interworking with ISDN (ISUP and PRI) MLPP shall be supported. BROADCAST SERVICE (VBS) VBS is for speech teleservice calls only providing a user (service subscriber) the possibility to broadcast a speech call to a pre-defined set of destination subscribers in a pre-defined geographical Broadcast Area. The set of destination subscribers is identified by a Group Id. Mobile destination subscribers will only be involved in the call while they are located within the Broadcast Area, unless they have been marked as dispatchers. Fixed line destination subscribers and mobile subscribers marked as dispatchers may be located any where. The information about registered destination subscribers, dispatchers and Broadcast Area for Group Ids is stored in the Group Call Register (GCR). A VBS call can be established by either a service subscriber (calling subscriber) or by a dispatcher, while the call can be terminated by either the calling subscriber or any nominated dispatcher. Other service subscribers can not terminate a VBS call. Only the user who establishes the call can talk, the others have listening capabilities only. A standard full duplex channel is provided to the calling subscriber and dispatchers, while simplex down-link channels are allocated to all destination service subscribers, 61 SESSION - II with one common down-link per cell of the VBS Broadcast Area. Voice Group Call Service (VGCS) VGCS is for speech calls only and has been standardized on the basis of VBS. VGCS allows speech conversations between a pre-defined set of destination subscribers in a pre-defined geographical area (Group Call Area). The set of destination subscribers is identified by a Group Id. In general, mobile served subscribers will only be involved in the call while they are located within the Group Call Area. Fixed line destination subscribers and fixed line or mobile subscribers marked as dispatchers may be located within or outside the Group Call Area. The information about registered dispatchers, destination subscribers and Group Call Area for Group Ids is stored in the Group Call Register (GCR). A VGCS call can be established by either a service subscriber or by a dispatcher. The call can be terminated by either the calling subscriber or any nominated dispatcher, using an operator determined DTMF tone sequence or by detecting silence on the voice channel. A standard full duplex channel is provided to dispatchers and to the calling subscriber during the call setup. Simplex down-link channels are initially allocated to all destination service subscribers, with one common down-link per cell of the VGCS Group Call Area. Once the call has been setup, dispatchers (both mobile and fixed) will keep the 2-way speech connection. Mobile call originators may release their up-link to allow other mobile users to talk. Once the up-link has been released, the calling subscriber and other mobile users may talk only after requesting the up-link. Only one up-link is available for each group, regardless of group area size. Dispatchers are allowed to talk anytime, and their voice is broadcasted to all members. When call originators and mobile destination subscribers who are not dispatchers move out of the group area their call is dropped. Their call is resumed when they move back into the group area. The above features are included in the billing record and operational measurements for required accounting and operation and maintenance purposes. RAILWAY OPERATION ASPECTS The following railway specific services are supported by GSM-R for Railway Operation Aspects: Functional Addressing Functional Addressing is a service that will allow a call to be setup based on the function of the call terminator, instead of the MSISDN of the equipment that the user is currently using. Each user has to subscribe to the Functional Addressing service and register a Functional Number for the mobile equipment that he/she is using at the commencement of their functional task. A call originator dials a Functional Number of the call terminator, which is translated to the actual MSISDN in the network. 62 SESSION - II A call using Functional Addressing may be subject to access screening by the network to allow calls between certain Functional Number user types only. As train crosses international borders and roam into other railway networks, the functional addressing feature must be supported for all inter-railway networks. Access Matrix screening Calls can be subject to Access Matrix screening based on the Functional Number and the Functional Number Types of the call originator and the call terminator(s). The Access Matrix screening limits the connectivity between different users of the GSM-R system. The screening is based on the calling and called party's user types, which can be derived from their Functional Numbers. The Access Matrix screening logic is dependent on the customer's Functional Addressing dial plan and shall apply to speech calls, data calls, broadcast calls and group calls. The screening shall be performed during call setup, thus calls which have already been setup shall not be affected by changes in the Access Matrix table. Although this feature is not required for all GSM-R networks, some may find it beneficial to the railway operations. Location dependent addressing Location dependent addressing shall be provided to route calls for a given function to a destination address that is dependent upon the user's location. The location can be provided to the network in different ways. A minimum requirement is that the location shall be based on the cell from which the call is originated. This solution is referred to as Cell Specific Routing. Advanced solutions include location information provided by positioning systems external to the network. Confirmation of high priority call Confirmation of high priority call is used for post incident analysis. At the end of a high priority call, the mobile generates an acknowledgment message to the acknowledgment center connected to the MSC for storage and further analysis. Although this feature is not required for all GSM-R networks, some may find it beneficial to the railway operations. RAILWAY APPLICATIONS The following set of railway applications are defined to support and enhance railway operations for the trains, drivers, controllers, on-board and ground based staff, as well as passenger services. Controller-driver Communications Controller-driver communications provides communications between the controller(s) and driver to control and enhance the safety of train movements. 63 SESSION - II DMS-MSC DMS-MSC VOICE Data Network Supports voice communication flows from one controller to one or a group of drivers or, from one driver to one or more controllers (controller may change depending on position of the train). Controller driver communication also supports point to point data communication between drivers and controllers. Users include Primary train controller, Secondary train controller, Traffic controller, Electricity Power supply controller, Catering controller, Maintenance controller and Station controller. Automatic Train Control / ETCS Automatic Train Control is the process by which some movements of a train are influenced without any action by the driver. DMS-MSC DMS-MSC Data Network ATC centre Supports data communication for the sending of Position Information Messages from the Train to the Train Control Center and the sending of Movement Authority Messages from Train Control Center to Train (giving target speed, distance/time to travel,..) Remote Control Remote Control supports bi-directional data flow between fixed center and the train or other fixed location for management of on-board or ground based equipment. 64 SESSION - II DMS-MSC DMS-MSC Data Network ATC centre Supports data communication for remote management of equipment such as air conditioning, brake testing equipment, shunting locomotives, cranes and gantries, unmanned multiple locomotives by a single driver, fixed installations such as points or level crossing barriers Emergency Area Broadcast Emergency Area Broadcast is required to alert other railway staff in a specific area of an emergency situation. DMS-MSC DMS-MSC Supports voice communication only and Fast Call Setup, Area definition, Single emergency key stroke: Red button, Origination from controllers or other wireline subscribers, train driver, shunting, trackside worker or any other type of user at risk Shunting Provides radio communication for a shunting team or among different shunting teams. Shunting involves a locomotive pushing at the back of a train with the driver receiving 65 SESSION - II instructions from the head shunter who is at the front of the train. The objective of shunting is to align all the coaches of a train together. Co pyr g ih t© 19 96 N o rh t er n Tel ec om DMS-MSC DMS-MSC Supports voice communication for shunting preparation : • • • • low priority group call and shunting movement high priority group call link assurance signal possibility of emergency shunting call Trackside Maintenance Communication Trackside maintenance communication provides communication for Trackside Maintenance staff . Co py ri g ht © 19 96 N o rt h er n Te e lc om Supports voice communication only for voice group calls between workers at a site and wide area communication: workers at a site, distant workers or fixed network positions (e.g. controllers, stations and technical department). Train support Communications Train support communications provides communication for on board Staff to increase efficiency of operations. 66 SESSION - II Copyr i ht © 1996 N her nT l ecom g or t e Au tom at ic t icket ing O d er r r et ur n Ti cket : On- li ne r eser vat ion se rvi ce Copyr i ht © 1996 N her n g or t Tel eco m Copyr i ht © 1996 N her nT l ecom g or t e Supports voice and data communication for on board staff and passengers including customer support services such as public addresses by voice, seat reservation and timetables information. Local communications Local communications provides communication for a wide range of personnel at a single site e.g. at stations and depots. Co py g ih t© 19 96 N o rh t er Te ec om Copyr ght © 1996N or her n i t Train Station Copyr ght © 1996N or her n i t Copyr ght © 1996N or her i t n Supports voice communication for reporting train composition data and brake tests and communication between driver and station manager's office and other groups of users at the station or depot. Wide Area Communication. Wide Area Communication supports track side, non train-originated communication and railroad maintenance communication. DMS-MSC DMS-MSC PSTN Supports voice and data communication for Road vehicles, track inspectors, railway police and access to private network or PSTN. Passenger services communication. Passenger services communication provides services such as coin operated telephone or telefax communication and internet access for on board passengers. This service has 67 SESSION - II strong potential for revenue generation but may be subject to national regulation. Copyr i ht © 1996 g N or her Tel ec m t n o Copyr i ht © 1996 g N or her Tel ec m t n o Supports voice and data communication for on board passengers. 3. NORTEL NETWORKS' GSM-R SOLUTION Nortel Networks' Experiences As active member of MORANE, Nortel Networks was committed to defining and to continuously refining the GSM-R standards and specification through ETSI and MORANE. Since the closure of the MORANE project in 2000, Nortel Networks is actively involved in the successor specification projects under the UIC ERTMS/GSM-R group. Nortel Networks has been selected to supply all four of the MORANE/DIBMOF test lines in Germany, France and Italy with terminals and infrastructure for voice and EMC measurements and validation. Nortel Networks was also the first to demonstrate ASCI (Advanced Speech Call Items) features tests and is the only supplier to perform tests for high speed trains. Through these experience gained from test trials Nortel Networks has further enhanced current product and defined future product plans and equipment requirements. Today Nortel Networks is one of the GSM-R Industry Group members with the aim to support Railways with technical and economical information during feasibility studies and implementation phase and work together with ERIG (successor of EIRENE) to perfect the GSM-R standard. Full Turn Key Solution GSM-R is a standard defined technology supporting common interfaces between all network elements but a GSM-R network operator can save much time and cost if the right partner is chosen from the beginning. Nortel Networks has combined its skills and leadership in the telecommunications arena with strategic partners to form a business unit offering a complete end-to-end turnkey solution and a century or railway communications experience to the railway network operators. Our GSM-R solution is approved, fulfils EIRENE / MORANE and is in service or in implementation in different GSM-R projects, e.g. for German Railways, WCML/ UK, and Italy and covers more then 25,000 km track currently including the first GSM-R controlled and commercial operated high speed link between Cologne - Frankfurt. Nortel Networks provides a complete portfolio of equipment for the GSM-R infrastructure including BSS (Base Station Sub-system), NSS (Network Switching Subsystem), Operations and Maintenance Center (OMC) and Intelligent Network (IN) which 68 SESSION - II are based on the industry leading Nortel Networks' GSM system supporting advanced services for voice and data and the unique GSM-R terminals which are the first ones to be launched in the market and proven in all MORANE test trials. GSM-R End to End solution BSS portfolio S8000 BTS family BSC 12000 TCU NSS portfolio VMS SMS EIR OSS portfolio OMC-S DMS-MSC HLR PCUsn IN OMC-R OMC-D Handset Cab-Radio SGSN IWF Dispatcher GGSN Terminals portfolio Data portfolio Dispatcher portfolio GSMGSM-R compliant system delivered in 2001 and certified in 2002 The key advantage of Nortel Networks' full turnkey solution lies in the services which ensures the smooth integration of the GSM-R network with the existing networks through a set of standard procedures such as network design, interoperability tests, installation, commissioning and system verification. After the initial network implementation stage, network optimization and applications customization to support, training are all standard services provided by Nortel Networks. Railway customers are thus guaranteed unmatched communication quality to further improve the railway business and operations with seamless convergence with existing and other communications systems in the shortest turnaround time. GSM-R Terminals For railway operations and services the railways use different types of terminals. These various types of GSM-R terminals have to fulfil not only the GSM-R specific functions like ASCI, these terminals have to work in railway specific environment which requires high speed function, an extended temperature range, shock resistant housing, specific MMIs,. Following figure presents the three categories of terminals defined by EIRENE plus a fixed trackside MS solution: 69 SESSION - II 4. NORTEL NETWORKS REFERENCES Presently Nortel Networks is selected from different Railways to deploy GSM-R systems on about 25.000 track km with more than 3.000 BTS, which brings Nortel Networks in the leading position for this particular railway wireless technology. Our GSM-R "end to end" solution is in successful operation as well as on conventional lines or on high speed lines with speed beyond 300 km/h. Existing GSM-R contracts Deutsche Bahn (Germany) Nortel Networks has been selected as the GSM-R supplier for the national GSM-R network in Germany. This represents the largest and most significant project with this technology to date with a planned coverage of about 24.500 km. 2.700 Base Stations. Nortel Networks is working very closely together with DB Telematik, the System Integrator, to provide the complete fixed and wireless communication system. Delivery and implementation commenced in 2000 and will continue until 2004. To date all MSC, BSC and TCU have been installed and accepted and the program for BTS installation is underway with over on-air covering 9.446 km. On August 1st, 2002 the high-speed train route between Cologne and Frankfurt was officially put in service. On this 180 km long " InterCity Express " line with 30 tunnels runs 56 new high speed trains equipped with GSM-R cab radios with a standard speed beyond 300 km/h. This did represent a major milestone for GSMR by being the first line worldwide that operates solely on GSM-R technology. All required approvals by the railway regulatory body in Germany ("Eisenbahn Bundesamt") have been granted. West Coast Main Line (UK) On the WCML contract Nortel Networks is working together with Marconi Services who has taken the role of the System Integrator responsible for providing the complete fixed and wireless communication system. The contract deals with a complete GSM-R network for Railtrack West Coast Main Line as a part of the West Coast Route Modernization project. Nortel Networks is providing a complete GSMR system including BTS, BSC and MSC for voice and data transmission for the line with a total length of 700 km. Starting with the first BTS in March 2001 the complete equipment for the Test Track has already been installed and commissioned with the 1st call achieved in May 2001. Final acceptance of the network is targeted for 2003. The WCML network will form part of the nationwide GSM-R solution in the UK and is scheduled to go into live operation in 2005. Interim Voice Radio System (UK) This Interim Voice Radio System is an early implementation of the full WCRM TCS Communications Network. For coverage of the IVRS network in the North 70 SESSION - II Staffordshire area . The IVRS network has gone into live operation in November 2002. TAV (Italy) Nortel Networks and SIRTI have been awarded the TAV contract for the 218 km high speed line Rome-Naples running through a hilly Apennine area, very complex from the topographic point of view. The actual roll-out process has started for the 53 km pilot network. The core elements have already been installed and installation and commissioning of the remainder of the pilot network is well on it's way for the scheduled first GSM-R call in March 2003. The further planning on that project does foresee low speed train tests until May 2003, extensive various speed testing until September 2003 leading to final acceptance with high speed train by the end of 2003, unless delay on civil work along the track. Slovakian Railways Kapsch CarrierCom AG, the general contractor to supply the entire infrastructure, the terminals and the optical cable connections along the route, has selected Nortel Networks for the supply of GSM-R infrastructure equipment. The first stage of the project involves equipping sections in international corridor IV with GSM-R technology. 71 SESSION - II THE WINNING GSM-R SOLUTION by : Ola Bergman SIEMENS Agenda • • • • The GSM-R vision GSM-R - the market, the standard, Siemens position GSM-R - features, LDA, FA, VGCS, VBS GSM-R - infrastructure & applications • • GSM-R infrastructure - Siemens products and roadmap Siemens GSM-R infrastructure option ETCS concept - Siemens projects Value adding applications on the GSM-R platform Siemens support & service portfolio for GSM-R Siemens leading role in the GSM-R community Co-operation with UIC, ETSI and industry partners GSM-R interoperability (IOT), ETCS QoS, ASCI Late Entry • Siemens world-wide GSM-R references 73 SESSION - III “ADAPTATION AND CONSOLIDATION OF SSI TECHNOLOGY” Experience at Chakulia, Gidhni and Lotapahar stations of A Route of South Eastern railway by Sanjay Dungrakoti Dy.CSTE/KGP G. K. Bhadra ASTE/C/KGP. The pioneering work done by South Eastern railway in inducting Solid State Interlocking (SSI) technology on their network and steps taken thereof had been discussed in the IRSTE Seminar- 2001. Since then, SSIs have been installed at Chakulia, Gidhni and Lotapahar, all on A Route. The successful implementation of the project from concept to commissioning is an achievement worth mentioning in this forum. The various pre and post commissioning stages undergone over the year are – inspection, design, power supply arrangements, execution, feedback, software modification and protection from lightning and surges. This paper discusses the experiences gained by S.E. Railway and further challenges ahead. While discussing the experiences the data of CKU has been taken in particular, it being the first and most revealing experience. 1. INTRODUCTION: The Chakulia station of Kharagpur Station has been selected for commissioning of first SSI of SE Railway. This was an ideal station having all sorts of Signalling Gagdets to test the new technology under extreme circumstances. It is a double line station on electrified HWH-Bombay trunk route, having IBS on both sides, Point zone, loop line and IBH axle counters, Digital Axle counter for LVCD, LC gate in the yard, siding point etc. The outdoor signaling and building construction works were completed in early 2001. The major activities are listed below; 75 SESSION - III LOA issued on Inspection of Cards Completion of Design at Bangalore System Level Insp and testing Material Received at site Installation completed Testing consisting of simulation and other test for Panel and VDU with both the system completed Commissioning 2. INSPECTION Dir/Signal/RDSO and Dy. CSTE/KGP carried out the card level inspection and study of documentation for Microlok-II. At that time CENELEC Validation for the MicrolokII was going on and papers regarding that were seen. Since then CENELEC Validation for the system has been obtained by the firm. 3. DESIGN The design of circuits was done as per SE Railway practice. The design was categorized into Indoor and Outdoor circuits. The indoor design comprises of Application logic consisting of interlocking and hot standby logic and also interface design. And Outdoor design consist of point control circuit, signal control circuit and axle counter circuit etc. To prepare these designs, typical circuits were issued to the firm. Following are the salient feature of design: a) b) c) d) e) f) g) Application logic for Interlocking and hot standby Interface Design Route setting type panel operation IBH through SGE block instrument/Axle counter Provision for Block proving axle counter ECRs for lamp circuits 24v Point contactor unit for Point Operation May,2001 October 2001 January 2002 January 2002 Mid Feb 2002 7th March 2002 14th March 2002 20th March The block diagram of the system is shown in Fig 1. 76 SM's ROOM M M C OM1 C OM2 CONTROL CUM INDICATION PANEL I2 I2 OPERATOR PC (STANDBY TO PANEL) MICROLOK II ROOM TERMINATION RACK (T1) I2 N VL PC (A) D -CON N EC TOR BOX N VL MP(A ) N VL PC (B) I2 N VL MP(B ) 10 S P4 1 3 P5 P1 P2 D M M P5 P2 5 17 05 D -CON N EC TOR BOX M P1 D P3 P4 P3 S S S 16 10 16 INTERLOCKING MICROLOK II A1 I1 I1 C OM2 C OM1 M - INTERLOCKING MICROLOK II B1 5 17 05 MAINTENANCE PC 20 20 IVSL (A) IVSL (B) 2n S P4 P2 4 P5 P3 P1 D 2 P5 D 5 17 06 P3 P1 S P2 2n D IA GN OSTIC L IN K SESSION - III Fig. 1 I/O GATHERER MICROLOK II B2 P4 77 RELAY RACK (R1) RELAY RACK (R2) C.T. RACK1 C.T. RACK2 TO / FROM FIELD I/O GATHERER MICROLOK II A2 NOTE: SYSTEM A - A1, A2 SYSTEM B - B1, B2 Xn 5 17 06 VITAL SERIAL LINK (VSL) ADDRESS [n - NUMBER OF ADDRESSES AS MAY BE NECESSARY] Xn NON-VITAL SERIAL LINK (NVL) ADDRESS [n - NUMBER OF ADDRESSES AS MAY BE NECESSARY] X I1 CARDFILE NUMBER ISOLATOR (RS-232) TYPE TO BE ANNOUNCED I2 ISOLATOR (RS-485) SERIAL COMMUNICATION LINK PARALLEL WIRING M S D MASTER PORT SLAVE PORT DEBUG PORT SESSION - III 4. CIRCUIT DESIGN : The drawings for Chakulia were submitted by the firm on Aug 2001. The Railway approved the circuits in the same month. Then firm started detailed design for Chakulia and it was submitted on Nov 2001, which was approved immediately. The system for CKU was installed at Bangalore and application logic for CKU uploaded in the month of January for testing by Railways at Bangalore. The program was checked, corrected and approved for final testing at site. The circuits are written in the Boolean Logic in the text file format. The application Boolean logic has been developed similar to the conventional relay circuits with commonly used relay name assigned to the bits in the Microlok. The Boolean Logic file can be converted to the drawings in the form of Conventional relay circuits with the aid of software in AutoCAD. This conversion is done before submitting the circuit to Railways for approval, as railway designers are more familiar with conventional form of circuits. After the circuits are approved, the Boolean Logic file is compiled using the specific compiler before loading it to Microlok CPU Card. The uploading is done using laptop computer connected through a COM port to Microlok. For loading the file special protections have been included in the system. This include both hardware as well as software protections such as specific jumper setting for loading the file on the CPU Card, ID nos, Password Protection etc. After uploading the program, the first level of the testing was done at firm’s premises itself by railways team with the help of simulation panel; and corrections in the circuits and VDU display design were carried out. 5. MAN-MACHINE INTERFACE DESIGN The system is capable of interfacing with both PC based VDU Display as well as Conventional Indication cum operating Panel. But the system can be operated by one means at a time, which is selected by using a key on the panel and transferring the control from one mode to other using a password. There is a difference in the mode of connection for both the device. The PC based VDU can be interfaced through a COM port without the need of any additional hardware and is operated through user-friendly mouse driven menu. The Conventional panel requires additional hardware, almost as much as required for interlocking purpose. The VDU Display Design was finalized as per the prevailing practice of the railway for conventional panel and all the functions except counters are available. The operating menus are very simple and user-friendly but cater for all operational requirements. Counters provided on the panel are common for both Panel and VDU as it is not appropriate to provide separate counters for the same function. The Panel Room is more than 50 m away from the relay room, which is more than specified distance for COM port communication. This was overcome by providing Modem cum Isolator. The power to VDU was given from IPS using separate inverter for PC. A 19” Compaq Monitor was used for the display which was sufficient to display entire yard lay out and IBH portions on both the sides of CKU. The panel is interfaced using non-vital cards. In CKU a separate Microlok rack encompassing two card files (Two each for both the systems A & B) containing non-vital 78 SESSION - III cards along with CPU card and Power supply card have been provided. The indoor cable has been drawn from panel to Microlok. Panel used is standard domino type panel. However on both sides of the panel, Axle counter block panel is integrated at an angle making it a novel design. The axle counter block will be commissioned as a next phase of work. The interlocking logic has been incorporated in the SSI system and has been disabled for the time being. At present SGE block instrument is being used for DLBI working which is interfaced with SSI. Except three-position relay all the relays have been eliminated and has been incorporated inside SSI. 6. OUTDOOR GEAR INTERFACE AND CONTROL The points are being operated from end goomties where group relays are kept. The point controlling relays are repeated from SSI to end goomties. The detection relays at central relay room are directly fed from point machine detection contacts. For signal circuits final relays (HR/DR) are picked up from SSI at central relay room and repeated to respective location to extend supply to the signal. The 110V AC for signal circuits is coming from central location proving HR/DR and then proving contacts of repeat relay HPR/DPR at the location for lighting the signal. For Axle Counter the final relay ACPR (Axle counter proving relay) is fed to Microlok for further interlocking. For reset circuit output (ACRSR) from Microlok is taken to reset the axle counter. Before resetting zone verification relay is fed to Microlok. For IBH output from Microlok taken to control IBH signal which were taken to IBH through quad cable. 7. HOT STANDBY SYSTEM DESIGN: SSI at Chakulia has been commissioned with hot standby system so as to make both system available on-line at all time. The system configuration is shown in fig. 1. The input from Panel/PC is received by both the system at a time and compared for mismatch. Similar comparison is done for vital input also. With the same executive software and identical interlocking software, both A and B Microlok II systems are operated in a Hot standby mode. Both of the system will be running in parallel and “online” during normal operation. All vital input and output bits status within a system are compared with the input and output bits status of the other system. If any one of the vital input bit does not correspond, then the system that reads “1” state “picked up” will be disabled as this will take care of false feed eventualities but the other system will continue to be “online” performing the interlocking application as intended except for that particular input bit “0” state (not picked up). Outputs are also crosschecked before delivering the final output. If there is a mismatch than NO output will be delivered for that particular bit. And locally picking up of any output relay will disable both the system to take care of the interlocking of any sabotage. In case of non-vital inputs intermediate stage bit (processed internal bit; one level higher after the receipt of non vital bit either from panel and pc) is compared to detect the mismatches. If any mismatch is found than that particular command is neglected in 79 SESSION - III both the system. Any such failure condition in the vital input, vital output and the non vital input will generate the audible warning along with visual indication to alert the operator for the notification of the maintainer’s immediate action to diagnose the cause and remedial measures to fix the problem (There could be a input mismatch due to loose connection or wire cut or false feed etc). After the problem is fixed a “manual reset” is to be applied to the disabled system. After it passes through its own internal diagnostic routines, the status of interlocking functions from the “online” system will be mapped to this system to ensure that the interlocking status in both systems is synchronized. Initially at Chakulia on introduction of mismatch at panel input level, it is observed that non-vital input mismatch being generated often leading to one system shut down. The system needs to reset manually to bring it online back. It is identified that the non-vital input comparison for mismatch was ineffective as the non-vital inputs are available only for few seconds. Therefore at next station Gidni, the non-vital inputs are compared at their stick level instead of comparing at the push button level. This prevented the shut down due to non-vital mismatch. The comparison is now done at the route initiation stage. This is shown in the drawing below (Fig 2). 8. POWER SUPPLY ARRANGEMENTS: Integrated Power supply arrangement has been selected with SMPS based charger. The scheme for the IPS has been designed and approved based on the basic requirement of the installation. The IPS has following features: a. b. c. 4 SMPS chargers of 20 Amps capacity with N+1 spare. DC-DC converter of 10 Amps capacity each with current sharing arrangement for all 24 and 12 volt supply including block. Inverter of 1.5 KVA capacity for signal circuit. Initially the capacity planned was 1 KVA but it was giving frequent tripping problem after commissioning so capacity was increased to 1.5KVA. Inverter of 1KVA for Operator and Maintainer PC. CVT of 3.5 KVA as stand by for AC supply to signal and circuits. DC-DC converter of 10 Amp capacity for Point control and External relay Circuit. Two sets of batteries of 120AH capacity connected in parallel. d. e. f. g. 80 SESSION - III GIDNI HOT STANDBY SYSTEM SYSTEM - A MAINTENANCE PC SYSTEM - B PANEL/PC YES NON-VITAL OUTPUT NON-VITAL INPUT NON-VITAL INPUT NON-VITAL OUTPUT MISMATCH # NO VITAL OUTPUT INTERNAL PROCESS INTERNAL PROCESS VITAL OUTPUT NO MISMATCH YES YES NO MISMATCH VITAL INPUT FROM FIELD VITAL INPUT FCOR FCOR COMPARISON LINK FAILURE SYSOK MISMATCH RESET KILL SYSOK MISMATCH A1-A2 COMM. LINK FAILURE B1-B2 COMM. LINK FAILURE FINAL OUTPUT TO O/P RELAYS NOTE: NON-VITAL INPUTS ARE ANDED AT THEIR STICK STAGE. # MISMATCH COMPARISON IS DONE AT STICK STAGE OF NON-VITAL INPUT. NON-VITAL OUTPUT WILL BE DELIVERED BY ONLY ONE SYSTEM AT ANY TIME. * Fig 2 81 SESSION - III 9. EXECUTION The pre wired racks were sent to site in Feb and installation completed in the same month. The simulation testing was conducted from Panel and VDU for each system separately and then testing was done with combined system. The NI started on 15.3.02 and station was commissioned on 20.3.02. The NI was taken for slightly higher duration to test and observe the system after connecting with ground gears as this was the first installation. It is clear that the installation time required as compared to PI is less. As is evident from Chakulia that the entire process from installing the racks in the relay room to testing and commissioning took just one month. However it requires completion of design and testing prior to it. Being the first station, utmost care was taken in design and checking. This process will have to be further optimized as we gain experience. As compared to PI the time taken in wiring and testing of wiring can be reduced by 75%. Manpower required for testing is also reduced. Similarly time required for circuit modification is almost negligible. Some of the other advantages, which were experienced during commissioning, are a) b) c) d) e) f) g) All the testing was logged, so it was easy to analyze any anomaly. Chances of short-circuiting due to wrong wiring as experienced in PI are not there during testing. Failures on account of relay contacts are minimal and not experienced so far. Circuit energisation time as compared to PI is very less during testing. All the yard indications are given in maintenance VDU hence easier to maintain. Indoor maintenance is less. Adopting the shortcut method is prevented in the relay room to a large extent. Any tempering on output side is totally eliminated due to feed back of output relay to the Microlok. 10. VITAL STATISTICS: 10.1 Statistics of the station: Chakulia station is a four-line station having one common loop. The station comprises of following signalling gadget for interlocking purpose. 1. 2. No. of points No. of signal : i) Main ii) Shunt iii) Calling On 13 13 08 02 82 SESSION - III 3. No. of Signalled routes 4. No. of Axle counters: i)Analog for point zone and IBH ii) Digital for LVCD 02 5. No. of track circuits 6. IBS-Both sides of station 7. Block control—DLBI with both end block section 8. No. of LC gate 9. No. of siding point 10. No. of crank handle group 11. Length of cable laid(in km. approx.) 12. Source of power supply— Up AT, Dn. AT & Local 13. Power Supply—Integrated Power Supply 10.2 Statistics of the component of SSI SSI system at CKU consists of the following components 35 11 20 01 02 03 40 1. No. of Microlok Rack 2. No. of card files each including one CPU & Power Supply Card 3. No. of non-vital cards 4. No. of vital cards 5. No. of relay provided (double coiled relay in single base) 6. No. of non-vital rack 7. No. of vital rack 11. PERFORMANCE: 02 04 11+11 15+15 235 01 01 The system has performed well and no failure on unsafe side has occurred since its commissioning on 20.3.02. There has been 3 cases of failures due to heavy lightening during monsoon, protection for which has been taken as mentioned in the para below. There has been few cases of system shutdown due to mismatch at input level. The actions for eliminating these problems have been discussed in the para dealing with hot standby in brief. There are 7 failures at CKU since 20.3.02 and 5 failures at GII since 16.9.02. 12. PRECAUTIONS: 12.1 Cross talk-minimization : Connection to external equipment have been separated 83 SESSION - III as much as possible from the wires carrying electronic data signal to minimize cross-talk. 12.2 Noise elimination: a. b. Length of wires and cables has been made short and twisted wires have been used to minimize noise. Wires carrying power for various circuits have been made short and kept isolated from all wires connected to MicrolokII to minimize noise. 12.3 Surge Protection: To protect Microlok from external induced voltages and surge, various precautions are taken as detailed below. a. Kharagpur-Tata section is a lighting prone area, hence five no. of earth around the building with ring made arrangement has been provided to prevent equipment damage due to lightening. b. Protection has been taken by connecting opto-isolator between the serial port of PC and MLK to avoid any chance of surge passing through the ground of PC COM port to MLK COM port. c. Surge protection devices has been added to the different circuits to save the equipment from the lighting surge. SPDs have been provided at the input point for the 12v DC power supply for MLK Card file, 24v DC for indication and 220v AC for PC. d. GD tubes have been connected at the input and the output for all the wires coming from panel to SSI Non-Vital Card wherever the equipment room and panel room are not in the same building i.e. indoor wiring is not possible. e. Repeater Relays have been used to connect external circuits like track, point, axle counter, IBH etc to isolate the Microlok equipment from external induced voltages and surges. 10. CONCLUSION: S. E. Railway has made pioneering efforts in finalizing contracts for supply and installation of SSI systems to RDSO standards meeting international safety norms. Railway is now making intensive efforts with RDSO’s support to commission these systems paving the way for bright and safe future. Success of this project on S. E. Railway will provide an effective way of clearing the backlog of replacement works specially in the backdrop of stiff time frame of 5 years and one time grant of funds, which is now likely to be available. This will in turn – a) b) Enhance safety levels of train operation. Improve reliability of signalling system. 84 SESSION - III c) d) e) Provide date for analysis and investigation. Create infrastructure for yard remodeling. Provide capability for CTC. Commissioning of Chakulia is the first step in this regard. Many more stations will be commissioned this year. The process of evolving, correcting and perfecting the technology to suit the local conditions and needs, will go on with every station and will culminate into a reliable and state of the art digital system, ready to meet the technical challenges of tomorrow. ACKNOWLEDGMENT: We are indebted to Sri S.C.Gupta, Ex CSTE and Sri V.Shankar, CSTE/SE Railway for their valuable guidance and encouragement. We acknowledge the direction and support given by Sri Arun Saxena, CSTE/Proj, Sri M. Alam, CSTE/Plg and Sri A.K. Haldhar, CSTE/Con at SE Railway. We acknowledge the cooperation of the other officer and staff of S&T dept. of Kharagpur division who gave valuable suggestions. We also like to mention M/s Union Switch & Signal, who worked tirelessly along with the railway team, for their help in this endeavour. 85 SESSION - III SAFETY CERTIFICATION OF RAILWAY SIGNALING PRODUCTS TO CENELEC STANDARDS by Chinnarao Mokkapati, Vice President, Quality & Systems Assurance Union Switch & Signal Inc. Pittsburgh, PA 15219, USA This paper first presents a practical approach to obtaining safety certification of railway signaling products to known international standards. One set of such standards is the CENELEC standards prEN50126 [1], prEN50128 [2], and ENV50129 [3]. Then, lessons learned from first-hand experience of the author at Union Switch & Signal Inc. on the Copenhagen Metro project are presented for the benefit of procuring Railways and Metros (customers), as well as prospective suppliers. INTRODUCTION Modern safety-critical signaling products that use microprocessor-based architectures can become very complex as a result of increasing levels of functionality demanded of them. The safety performance of these products should be carefully and thoroughly assessed for the obvious reason that the safe movement of people and goods, as controlled by these products, can not be compromised. Also, the reputation, survival and profitability of a Railway or a Metro are directly affected by the safety record of the products used on the Railway/Metro. Suppliers of safety-critical products take their responsibility for safety (in design, manufacturing, and installation) seriously. However, safety assessment and certification by a competent, independent third party provides an additional level of confidence in the product’s safety performance. Also, when the assessment of competing products is carried out in accordance with well-known international standards, it brings a certain level of uniformity in compliance, provides a level playing field for all suppliers, and many customers can benefit from a single assessment. Union Switch & Signal Inc., a world-wide supplier of signaling control products and systems has recently obtained safety certification from an Independent Safety Assessor (ISA), of its Automatic Train Control (ATC) system and the key safety-critical platforms used in that system as furnished to the Copenhagen Metro. The author shares his experience from this project, which uses fully-automated driver-less trains and has just started 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week revenue service. Based on this experience, a practical approach to obtaining independent third-party safety certification of signaling products is presented. It is hoped that the Indian Railways adopt this approach for their current and future procurement of safety-critical products. 87 SESSION - III A PRACTICAL APPROACH TO SAFETY CERTIFICATION A systematic Life Cycle approach should be followed for the development of the product. Typically, the life cycle shown in Figure 1, taken from prEN50126 [1] is found to be suitable for safety-critical products. Table 1 that follows Figure 1 indicates the phases in the above life cycle. The principal development and V&V activities are summarized, and the main input and output documents related to each phase are listed. The table includes the documents that are typically submitted for assessment by the Independent Safety Assessor. Other documentation such as design standards and manufacturing process descriptions are generally proprietary property of the supplier and need not be submitted to the Assessor. Note that the exit criterion for each phase is the acceptance of the phase-related documents. This is also the entrance criterion for the next phase. Also note that document groups such as hardware and software detailed design descriptions, test specifications and reports, etc. contain many sub-documents, usually at the printed circuit board and software module levels. 1 Concept 2 System Definition and Application Conditions 3 Risk Analysis 4 System Requirements 5 Apportionment of System Requirements 6 Design and Implementation 7 Manufacture 8 Installation 9 System Validation (including Safety Acceptance and Commissioning) 10 System Acceptance 12 Performance Monitoring 11 Operation and Maintenance 14 Decommissioning and Disposal Modification and Retrofit Re-apply Life cycle (See note) 13 Note: The phase at which a modification enters the life cycl e will be dependent upon both the sy stem being modified and the s pecific modification under c onsideration Figure 1: Product/System Life Cycle (from prEN50126) 88 SESSION - III 89 SESSION - III 90 SESSION - III ORGANIZATION/RESOURCE ALLOCATION FOR SAFETY CERTIFICATION PROJECT An organization of the type shown in Figure 2 below has been found to be suitable for completing the design, verification & validation, safety analysis, and independent safety assessment of a safety-critical product. Note that the Independent Safety Assessor, either a third party or a government agency, effectively works for the procuring Railway or Metro, just like the Supplier working on a contract from the Railway or Metro. The Assessor is completely independent of the Supplier, both financially and contractually. The project is handled by project managers in the Supplier and Assessor organizations. Both of these project managers are accountable to the Customer. All communications and submittals flow through them. They are also responsible for the planning, scheduling and cost control activities on the project. Customer (Procuring Railway or Metro) Project Manager Supplier (Product Desgin, V&V, Safety Responsibility) Project Manager Planner/Scheduler Cost Controller Independent Verification & Validation Team Hardware V&V Software V&V Systems Assurance Team (Safety, R&M, EMC Analyses) Design Team Technical Team Leader Hardware Design Team Software Design Team Quality Assurance Configuration Control Independent Safety Assessor Project Manager Planner/Scheduler Cost Controller Assessment Team At the Supplier organization, the design is handled by a technical manager or team leader with the help of hardware and software engineers. Note that the verification and 91 Figure 2. Typical Safety Certification Organization SESSION - III validation activities and the safety assurance activities are handled by teams independent of the design team. LESSONS LEARNED The Copenhagen Metro project is perhaps the first project in the world where the emerging CENELEC Standards (1997 versions) were applied rigorously for safety certification of the ATC System and associated vital products used on that Metro. Many lessons were learned on this project: • • • • • The suppliers must follow a structured process of documenting the requirements, design, verification & validation, and safety analysis of the products and system. Clear forward and backward traceability must exist between requirements, design, V&V and safety analysis. A Hazard Log that shows clear evidence of how each and every hazard associated with the products/system is eliminated/controlled should be maintained. All credible failure modes of both Class I and Class II hardware should be analyzed and tested, following the guidelines in [3]. Undetected failure modes shall be analyzed in combinations of up to three or until it can be shown mathematically that the wrong-side failure rate is well below the target hazardous failure rate. The supplier must have a strong quality management system and a safety management process to ensure that the systematic failure integrity targets (representing specification, design, manufacturing, installation and maintenance errors) are met. The Independent Safety Assessor must have the right competencies and resources, and must be willing to use some engineering judgement in the assessment process while maintaining complete independence from the supplier. The procuring Railway/Metro must recognize that safety certification adds substantial cost to the procurement process and must make cost-benefit decisions. • • • The Author hopes that the Indian Railways and the associated agencies will be benefitted from our experinces of safety certification of Railway Signalling product to CENELEC standard from the Copenhagen Metro Project. REFERENCES 1. 2. 3. prEN 50126: September 1999- Railway Applications - The Specification and Demonstration of Reliability, Availability, Maintainability and Safety (RAMS). prEN 50128: March 2001-Railway Applications - Software for Railway Control and Protection Systems ENV 50129: May 1998 - Railway Applications - Safety Related Electronic Systems for Signalling 92 SESSION - III WESTRACE NETWORK COMMUNICATIONS ADVANCED INTERLOCKING TECHNOLOGY By Charles R Page, Director of Marketing & Sales Wayne McDonald, Manager Technology & Training Invensys Rail Systems Australia-Westinghouse Signals Australia division New WESTRACE Solid State Interlocking systems utilize powerful, industry-standard, Information Technology networks for most of its vital and non-vital communications. Standard protocols, through off the shelf communications hardware, provide unprecedented flexibility in designing large, complex, interconnected vital interlocking systems. Serial communications paths, previously the most vulnerable parts of a system can be integrated into a simple, redundant network. These networked connections open up new possibilities for hierarchical interlocking systems while simultaneously giving flexible control powerful diagnostics. This paper overviews the basic WESTRACE solid state interlocking and explains how railways can benefit from transferring the vital data over networked communications to provide the maximum total system availability. 1. INTRODUCTION The world’s leading railways are almost universally turning to solid state interlocking for new and renewal signalling projects. Their flexibility, ease of modification and advanced control and diagnostic features make them ideally suited to meet the business needs of the modern railways. WESTRACE is one of the solid state interlocking available from the Invensys Rail Systems group. It is our most popular model and is well suited a wide range of small to large installations. The world’s first revenue service WESTRACE was installed on a passenger and freight line at Dry Creek in South Australia in 1990. WESTRACE has continually evolved to increase logic capacity, enhance its functionality and add new features. The latest enhancement, the WESTRACE Network Communications (WNC) model, was released in mid 2002, with 10 installations being commissioned in Europe as of mid 2003 and many more in the design phase. This paper describes the WESTRACE WNC system and highlights how this modular interlocking solution helps deliver safe, flexible and reliable signalling services to the railway. 93 SESSION - III This paper will use the term WESTRACE rather than WESTRACE WNC for convenience. 2. WESTRACE OVERVIEW WESTRACE is a modular solid state interlocking that provides all the standard features expected of such a system, as well as several unusually advanced features. It takes vital parallel inputs from local track equipment (point detection, track circuits, relays, etc), vital inputs from nearby interlocking (e.g. block circuits) and non vital controls and logically manipulates this according to safe application data designed by Signal Engineers to generate vital parallel outputs (e.g. to signals and point contactors, relays), vital serial output (e.g. block circuits) and non vital indications. Unusually, WESTRACE is complemented with fully integrated, non-vital logic processing, diagnostics and communications. The huge non-vital logic capacity frees the vital logic of all but essential vital tasks and is typically used for route setting, route availability checking, panel processing and sometimes alarm monitoring. Additional features and logic constructs that cannot be executed in vital logic ease the design. Any logic state can be transferred between the vital and non vital logic. Comprehensive diagnostics timestamp and record every vital and non-vital change of logic state. All WESTRACE vital, non vital and diagnostic communications are by default routed using industry standard UDP/IP (a subset of TCP/IP) over an industry standard 10 BaseT Ethernet port. Serial links can also be used where Ethernet is not practical. These features are described in more detail later in this paper. WESTRACE’s inherent power and flexibility has allowed it to be applied in several related applications. The WESTECT 94 SESSION - III Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system uses the standard WESTRACE platform as its heart. A trackside Encoder that transmits data to the train informing it of signal states is simply a WESTRACE with an additional module. The WESTECT ATP On Board Computer is also WESTRACE based. WESTRACE’s inherent vital telemetery has been used without the associated logic to safely communicate relay states over both radio and PCM channels, including as a vital Token Block interface system. Some railways, such as in the UK, have particularly complex requirements of level crossing control. WESTRACE has been configured as a flexible level crossing controller, with many standard crossing configurations built in. WESTRACE forms a key part of Invensys Rail’s pilot line ERTMS systems. 3. WIDELY ACCEPTED AND PROVEN IN SERVICE WESTRACE has become one of the worlds most popular solid state interlocking since its introduction in 1990. Over 1,000 installations are now in operation including several very large installations with multiple WESTRACEs. It has been applied to almost every conceivable type of railway; • Australia • Indonesia • Malaysia • Norway • Portugal • Spain • United Kingdom. on mainline and subway systems, in freight and passenger service as well as in both dc and ac (up to 25 kVac) electrified territory. It has gained safety approval, and is in use, in the following countries; Each and every railway feels the need to conduct its own safety assurance of the system. Some of these have been extremely rigorous and onerous. Independent safety assurance consultants, recognised industry safety experts and railway staff have audited and reviewed the thorough in-house safety assurance program that has always been integrated throughout each phase of the development lifecycle. WESTRACE safety architecture is based on • • • appropriate development environment appropriate development processes and tools comprehensive diversity (and where possible, diversity between hardware and software) • Germany • Ireland • New Zealand • Philippines • Romania • Thailand 95 SESSION - III • • demonstrable fault negation (and anti-de-nega-tion) systems comprehensive testing of memory, hardware and stored data WESTRACE either uses inherently vital hardware or at least two diverse processes to ensure the system integrity. Different software programs using diverse code independently evaluate the logic and compare the result. All system data is both stored and communicated in diverse forms—all the way from the input modules, through processing, to the output modules and the results are compared at each phase. All vital modules continually check themselves, cross check each other and the VLM (including the correct operation of the processors) to ensure error free and totally safe operation. It is particularly interesting to note that WESTRACE has passed some of the most demanding safety approval processes in the world, such as those of BR-RailTrackNetwork Rail, London Underground and the EBA in Germany. It has been assessed as compliant with RIA23, CENELEC EN50128, EN5029 and other recognised safety standards. Invensys Rail member company Westinghouse Rail Systems of the UK has just been awarded a £850M contract for the resignalling of approximately two thirds of the whole of the London Underground network using WESTRACE. London Underground is one of the world’s busiest metro systems. They already have extensive experience of this system as it is in use on the Central and Jubilee Lines and is currently the only solid state interlocking of its type approved by London Underground. WESTRACE also fully complies with the RDSO standard for solid state interlocking for use on Indian Railways WESTRACE continues to undergo continual improvement and evolution since its introduction to increase its capacity, do more and be easier to use. This evolution rather then revolution approach maintains the basic system architecture and therefore the maximum backward compatibility to preserve a railway’s investment in the large installed base. The evolution includes • • • • • • major increases in logic capacity specialist input and output modules to interface with coded track circuits, WESTECT, etc enhanced diagnostics addition of non vital logic processing communications, especially the IP based network communications design, testing and maintenance tools Unchanged modules can continue to be used with the new modules. A relevant case occurred in mid 2002 when the first ever WESTRACE, installed at Dry Creek in South Australia in 1990, was significantly expanded to meet new operational requirements. In the process, the size of the installation approximately doubled. All the existing input and output modules from the original installation were re-used in the new application. 96 SESSION - III We were also able to transfer the original application logic for use as the starting point for the upgraded system. 4. THE MODULAR INTERLOCKING WESTRACE is a modular interlocking. Every installation requires the Vital Logic Module (VLM) and the non-vital logic, communication and diagnostic module (NCDM), as well as a power supply module. Other modules are added as necessary to provide the required quantity and type of inputs or outputs. Most systems need only one type of input module and one or two types of output module. The Vital Parallel Input Module (VPIM) is the general purpose input module. It detects the presence of 50 Vdc from external detection circuits or existing relays (eg track relays). Twelve fully isolated input circuits are provided per VPIM module. Two inputs may be combined in antiparallel to detect polarised inputs. The Vital Relay Output Module (VROM) is the general purpose output module, sourcing 50 Vdc outputs to drive point contactors, Q relays or similar. Eight isolated outputs are provided per VROM module. They can be wired in anti-parallel to drive polar circuits. Signals may be directly driven by the Vital Lamp Output Module (VLOM). This module can directly drive 110 Vac LED or transformer coupled incandescent signals (including those with filament changeover relays). The module has an integral steady or flashing aspect control with all flashing outputs from an interlocking synchronised. The VLOM incorporates both hot filament proving and cold filament checking. This enables it to check lamp circuits, re-gardless of whether the aspect is currently energised. The cold filament checking pulse is so short that it won’t produce a visible output from a de-energised aspect. The VROM and VLOM outputs incorporate a Graceful Degradation feature. If a fault is detected in an output circuit it is safely disabled but the remainder of the interlocking continues operating normally. A fault bit is cleared and this may be used in the logic. Graceful degradation limits the impact of any failure to the directly affected area—most of the railway continues operation until the fault is repaired. Each WESTRACE uses between one and four, 6RU high 19 inch housings that are normally installed into a 19 inch rack. The VLM and NCDM must be installed at the right side of the top housing but other modules can be installed anywhere. Only the number of housings required to contain the modules required for an installation need be provided. The WESTRACE design has paid particular attention to immunity to both conducted and induced electromagnetic interference. The housing itself is fully shielded and all circuits entering or leaving the enclosure pass through carefully designed isolation filters. High immunity to interference is not just a matter of shielding and filtering. It is a system issue that involves many disciplines. Therefore the WESTRACE system documentation includes the appropriate recommendations on primary protection, earthing and cabling that ensure it is always applied in ways that maintain this high inherent immunity. 97 SESSION - III WESTRACE is successfully operating in many areas of extremely high incidence of lightning, such as central Java in Indonesia and Northern Queensland in Australia. These installations demonstrate the extremely reliable operation of a correctly installed system. Recently there have been several cases where lightning has struck near a location where a WESTRACE has been installed alongside other solid state interlocking technologies. The high immunity of the WESTRACE was then impressively demonstrated as it was the only unit to continue operation unaffected. The system has been designed for use over an extended temperature range of up to 70 °C ambient. Air conditioning of the equipment room or location case is not a requirement. For example, in Indonesia and Malaysia we have successfully provided a total of 123 WESTRACE installations and none of the equipment is in an air-conditioned environment. Overall, this extensive in service experience has resulted in an exceptionally reliable design. For example, as of the date of this paper all of the 600WESTRACE systems installed in Malaysia have been continuously operated for over 18 months without a single failure of WESTRACE equipment of any kind. 5. WESTRACE SYSTEM CAPACITY A common question is, “How powerful is WESTRACE, how much railway can it control?”. That is often a difficult question to answer because it depends on a local signalling practice. For example, it depends upon the complexity of the signalling principles of the railway and whether the tracks are bi-directional. However, a general sense of its capacity can be gained from the following vital statistics. A single VLM can handle; • • • 3,357 Internal Vital Latches (relay equivalents) 300 Internal Vital Timers around 1,800-2,600 rungs of vital logic, with up to 50 relay equivalent ‘contacts’ in each rung. The non-vital logic has about 10 times this capacity. This is typically sufficient processing capacity for 175-200 Routes. Processing capacity is only part of the answer and there is a physical limitation in the 4 available housings for input and output modules. Up to 28 input and output modules can be used across 4 housings. Larger systems may use multiple racks of WESTRACE, often with all the processing executing in a single VLM. This keeps all the interlocking logic in one processor and eliminates the ‘cross-boundary’ issues that would complicate the design if the logic were distributed across several processors. It simplifies design and maintenance, and minimises response time. It may also be used, as described later, to segment the railway for availability. 98 SESSION - III WESTRACE has features that makes it particularly simple to link multiple systems together. To understand how this is done we will now describe some of the wide range of available interlocking configurations. 6. INTERLOCKING CONFIGURATIONS Many of the interlocking configurations rely on the effective network communication architecture that allows multiple vital and non-vital, high capacity, communication sessions to be established between in-terlockings and the associated control and diagnostic systems. A subset of the configurations is possible using serial point to point or point to multi-point communications although these are mostly retained for interface to legacy or hard wired systems. 6.1 Communication Network WESTRACE uses the network to exchange most of the vital and non-vital data in the system. This is a powerful and flexible feature that opens up many possibilities and some of these are discussed below. The network is based on the industry standard UDP/IP protocol (a subset of TCP/ IP selected used to comply with safety restrictions), over 10 BaseT Ethernet with a RJ45 connection. All data is coded and fully protected against all forms of corruption, delay or transformation during transmission. The vital data messages containing the true and complement data and CRCs are assembled and checked in the VLM and simply encapsulated in an IP packet by the NCDM for transport. Non vital data and diagnostic IP packets are assembled in the NCDM. All data can transferred over industry standard networks using industry standard IT hardware. Good network design will usually include network segmentation and redundant routing paths and can utilise existing infrastructure. High bandwidth links is generally not required outside a local area and typically a 64 kb/s circuit is adequate for multiple interlockings along a railway. Proper separation should be maintained for vital data and we recommend physically restricting the access from an organisation’s general network. Some data may be made more widely available via an appropriately safety rated firewall that can also prevent network congestion from external sources. Each WESTRACE can simultaneously run 16 vital and 16 non vital communication sessions. 6.2 Stand-alone interlockings The most basic WESTRACE configuration is a stand-alone interlocking as shown in Figure 2 : 99 SESSION - III Remote or local controls and indications are exchanged over a serial link with external non-vital I/O to interface a push button local panel (not shown) or over the network with a PC based control panel or a remote (CTC) control centre. Logic can be configured in the NCDM to handle all local and remote control, so that control authority can be passed between the systems as required or under fault conditions. Indications are sent to all control points but the logic ensures that control is only accepted from one. The network is used to interface local and remote diagnostic systems. Vital data (eg block information) may be exchanged with adjacent interlockings over the network. VLM6 NCDM VPIMs VPIMs VROMs VROMs VLOMs VLOMs WESTRACE Railway Signalling Equipment VLM6 NCDM VPIMs VPIMs VROMs VROMs VLOMs VLOMs WESTRACE Railway Signalling Equipment Adjacent WESTRACE (via WAN) Adjacent WESTRACE (via WAN) (via WAN) (via WAN). 6.3 Linked WESTRACE systems The vital communications over the network become particularly powerful, yet simple, where multiple WESTRACEs need to be connected for capacity or distributed input and output purposes. The most common application is within a single station area to link a master WESTRACE containing interlocking logic to one or more ‘dumb’ WESTRACEs that don’t contain active logic. These are then called Object Controllers and only the central WESTRACE with the logic is referred to as an Interlocking. There may also be links to adjacent interlockings for block working. Figure 3:shows an example of a master WESTRACE and 4 object controllers. Only the prime sources of control and diagnosis are not shown for simplicity. 100 SESSION - III This technique may be used to expand input and output capacity but it is a powerful cost saving feature as well. The central WESTRACE can now be located conveniently, perhaps in existing accommodation or where maintenance access is best. The Object Controllers can be in the same place. However, they can also be fitted closer to the equipment under control, such as in trackside location cases or other conveniently located accommodation. By putting the Object Controllers close to the relevant equipment, considerable savings can be realised by reducing cabling and the associated trenching costs. As the interlocking logic is all located centrally, this approach doesn’t increase the complexity of the logic design. Although other solid state interlocking technologies can appear to approximate to this approach, the flexibility of WESTRACE makes it so much easier. The unusually large processing capacity ensures that the central WESTRACE can handle more Object Controllers before having to resort to splitting the logic across additional interlockings and introducing boundaries. The networked architecture permits a particularly simple single point interconnection approach over industry standard media rather than using multiple, proprietary, point to point links with associated line interfaces. This Object controller approach can also be combined with another outstanding WESTRACE feature to provide an even more cost effective solution as described below. 6.4 WESTRACE Hot standby Systems Hot standby is an integral feature of WESTRACE. It is not an application engineered feature and no location specific logic design is required. The Hot Standby option only needs to be selected in the configuration and the configuration logic prepared as normal. Hot Standby, as an integral feature, has been subjected to the same rigorous design and safety approval process as the rest of the design. This is important as bolt-on hot standby can introduce a safety risks. The WESTRACE hot standby system 101 SESSION - III connects two separate, identical, standard WESTRACE systems by high speed fibre optic links. The VLM and NCDM each have separate fibre optic connections. The off-line system is completely updated with an identical image of every internal logic state once every processing cycle. Even the software version in use and the interlocking unique address is checked during the update. There is no possibility of the two available systems being out of correspondence at any time. There is no possibility of both interlockings have safe but different logic states due to slight differences in timing for reading inputs (this situation that could give an unsafe result on changeover cannot occur with WESTRACE) Figure 4: Hot Standby Connection One system is biased on-line at start up by system configuration. A switch is normally installed that allows a technician to permit automatic changeover, inhibit changeover or request changeover. Each system monitors the other and will effect a changeo-ver if the on-line system fails or if requested and the off-line system is available. A system changeover will take between one and two processor cycles with the off-line system taking over with identical outputs to the former on-line system— true hot standby. The off-line system receives all the same inputs as the on-line system and is fully operational, complete with its internal diagnostics. If the off-line system develops a fault this is flagged to the diagnostic system in the same way as the on-line unit. The off-line system can read inputs but its outputs are disabled and cannot drive loads. Many installations also use relay contact isolation between the main and stand-by systems to permit independent testing of the off line system and additional isolation of between the two systems from potential dangerous transients in the field. The expense of hot-stand-by is hardly justified if both systems are likely to fail from the same electrical disturbance. The off-line system can be powered down for maintenance 102 SESSION - III or upgrade. If it is just for maintenance, then the repaired system can powered up again and seam-lessly brought back into standby. The on-line system need never be interrupted and the railway operates non-stop. If a logic change or I/O modification has been made, to the off-line system, then the same change must then be made to the on-line system before they can work as a hotstand-by pair. However, this approach still allows upgrade work to be undertaken more quickly with the absolute minimum of system down time. No additional hardware is required to link two standard WESTRACEs as a hot-standby pair apart from the optional relays, the manual control switch, the associated wiring and the fibre optic update cable. Standard network techniques are used to provide separate and isolated network connections to each WESTRACE. There are different options of implementing hot stand-by for an installation comprises a central WESTRACE interlocking and one or more Object Controllers. • • • The Interlocking WESTRACE could be a hot-stand-by unit with no local input and output and the Object Controllers could be single units (non hot-stand-by). Critical inputs and outputs could be driven directly from the hot-stand-by interlocking with the remainder driven from non hot stand-by object controllers. Some or all of the Object Controllers themselves could be hot-stand-by units. Any combination is possible. As much or as little hot-stand-by input and outputs justified can be provided. This flexibility can be very cost effective. One approach is to only provide hot-stand-by inputs and outputs for the main lines through a multitrack station, either directly from a hot-stand-by interlocking or via a hot-stand-by Object Controller. The loops could be controlled by a separate, non hot-standby, Object Controller. This can save costs on the loop lines whilst providing the highest possible availability to the more important main lines. Alternatively, the Object Controllers could be judiciously connected each to a separated part of the trackside so that a failure of a single Object Controller would not prevent running trains through the controlled area. 7. DIAGNOSTIC TOOLS Users can select basic and enhanced diagnostic features. A WESTRACE NCDM stores the most recent 2.5 Lakh events in a circular buffer. This information can be accessed by a text based program using a Laptop PC over a local serial port or the network. The same computer can set local parameters, clear buffers and request communication status. A dial up connection allows password protected access to diagnostic information from standard telephone lines or even from a mobile phone. A remote maintainer could investigate a fault beforehand, confirm its nature and arrive equipped with any necessary spares or tools. It also allows WESTRACE to call a fault centre when a fault occurs or periodically to report faults. 103 SESSION - III Users can obtain more information in an easily used format with a separate Windows based tool called MoviolaW. Moviola is Spanish for ‘Replay’. A PC is used at each site to log the data from one or more WESTRACEs, via the network (or one of the serial ports.) Each interlocking change of state is stored as it is received. A new file is created every few days (user configured). Files older that 30 days are deleted or separately archived. Users can configure the PC displays to show: • • • • • • • track diagrams with signal, point and track occupancy status shown by colour and shape; state of any nominated latches or inputs in the system in a separate window status of selected (DOS wildcards are supported) mnemonics (eg all points) in a separate window all or selected mnemonic changes of state on a cycle by cycle basis in a separate window Reports on selected mnemonics (eg the number of changes for a set of points) in the logged period A diagram of the housing showing each of the modules—the module will be shown in red if it is faulty. english text messages describing any configured, external failures (eg, lamp fail, loss of detection) MoviolaW can also execute logic to generate alarms. Presenting the data in the form of a graphical track plan is extremely powerful, especially when combined with the report generation facility. It assists the maintainer to quickly 104 SESSION - III and accurately understand what is going on. This is particularly useful when some faults may be external to the interlocking, such as those caused by lost points detection or bobbing track circuits. With the track plan view, the maintainer can clearly see the relationships between what is happening in the field and the interlocking’s response. MoviolaW normally displays current (real time) data but can also be requested to display and replay any of the stored data (while continuing to log real time data). The user has a ‘VCR’ type control to select a start time to examine and then replay forward or backwards at fast, normal or slow speed. The underlying database is in standard Microsoft Access format and can be separately analysed if required. The graphical view coupled with the advanced logging and replay features has made MoviolaW a useful tool for investigating incidents such as Driver passes a signal at Danger. The relationship between the track circuit and the signal aspect can be clearly seen and understood by all. Even the simple exercise of showing this to just a few drivers can create a noticeable improvement in driving practices and culture across the whole fleet. MoviolaW can be accessed remotely via the network, dedicated serial port or dial in to view or replay and has become a very important diagnostic tool. Logged data may be extracted over this connection for local replay 8. DESIGN & TEST TOOLS WESTRACE has been developed so that signal engineers, who are competent to design relay based circuits, can apply the system with the minimum of additional training. Our customers have confirmed that typically only 5 days of system design training is required for such staff. Additional training is only required to fully use some of the more advanced productivity and test tools. However the standard system design training is entirely sufficient for a signal engineer to design and test a WESTRACE interlocking. Figure 6: overviews the design and test tools available and the design and test process. 105 SESSION - III 8.1 Graphical Configuration Sub-System (GCSS) GCSS is the primary design tool. It is a Windows based PC program that allows the signal engineer to. • • • • • select and place modules define each input or output for a module define the data carried over any of the serial links or network sessions and to define the sessions Design the signalling logic Manage the design through input, check, test, approve and maintenance phases It uses relay equivalent design concepts including a graphical drag and drag approach from a palette of standard icons. This is equivalent to drawing relay circuits using the familiar relay contact notation. PLC style ladder logic notation is also available, the user can switch freely between the two. Figure 7: is an example of familiar signalling logic. Figure 7: GCSS Logic Design Screen GCSS also performs consistency checks to ensure that syntactical and semantic errors such as unused or duplicated mnemonics and configuration rule violation are detected. Full version control ensures changes are properly authorised and controlled. Difference lists can be automatically produced to highlight or verify any changes undertaken during a modification cycle. Wide usage of cut and paste and find and replace can save on design time. It prints a graphical module layouts in the rack, link settings and terminal allocations to assist in the construction, test and maintenance of the relevant racks. A template tool allows the user to construct a library of standard circuits functional elements. These can then be pasted into the design and used repeatedly. Design 106 SESSION - III aids are included to automate some of the renaming and renumbering commonly required when designs are reused eg when points #13 become points #15 all the contact mnemonics will require changing from 13XXX to 15XXX and the tool assists this process. The same GCSS tool is used in a similar way to design the integrated non-vital logic. 8.2 Installation Check Sub System (ICS) It is vitally important that the right version of the correct data is installed error free in the intended system. WESTRACE inherently checks the version and ICS confirms what is actually in the target WESTRACE by uploading, decompiling and validating against the source data. 8.3 Graphical Simulator (GSIM) WESTRACE interlockings can be tested in the traditional manner, using the control panel a custom switch panel to simulate field equipment. MoviolaW must be used to view the internal states and assists by giving a railway view of the testing. However, this approach requires the actual interlocking, completed control panel (or even CTC) and expensive, custom made field simulation. It is relatively inconvenient and time consuming. GSIM is a windows based software tool that provides • • • • • a control centre mimic diagram for controlling the simulated railway a track based mimic diagram and underlying logic to simulate field equipment (points, signals, etc) one or many instances of the same logic evaluation engine as is used in WESTRACE optional interfaces to a WESTCAD control system and a MoviolaW system to enable all components to be tested together logging and script generation (for repeated test setups) facilities. Figure 8: GSIM relationships 107 SESSION - III A signal engineer can fully functionally test an interlocking or a set of interconnected interlockings through the windowed environment. The engineer always has full visibility of the control, the track outputs, the internal states and the field detection. The engineer can even initiate failures of field equipments to ensure safe interlocking response. Please refer to Figure 8:. All test inputs, internal states and outputs are continuously logged. Test sequences can be recorded and run as a script. A library of standard tests can be constructed making the majority of testing and test record keeping automated. GSIM is suitable for safety proof testing of the interlocking when used as specified. Once tested, only correspondence (or connectivity) testing, is required on site. The combination of GCSS and GSIM means that the required construction and testing time on site is very short and new installations can be commissioned in a matter of hours. Similarly stage-works can be introduced quickly and smoothly. Modifications to an interlocking can be executed with minimum down time because the modification can be fully tested in the office. Apart from potential cost savings, this also helps maintain safety. This is because all the time the interlocking is unavailable during a commissioning or stage-works the railway is likely to continue to operate using emergency procedures. This can introduce many safety risks as the railway is not enjoying the full protection of the signalling. Keeping this time as short as possible reduces the risk of related safety incidents to a minimum. 8.4 Training, Manuals & Support WESTRACE is supported by a comprehensive set of user documentation that is sufficient for the design and maintenance of the system. The main documents include; • • • • • WESTRACE System overview manual WESTRACE Application manual Graphical Configuration Sub-System manual Installation Check Sub-System manual First line maintenance manual and are supplemented by manuals for GSIM and MoviolaW Figure 9: Documentation 108 SESSION - III Overview and competency based training courses available (often delivered to site staff) include • • • • • • Appreciation Course (half day) First Line Maintenance Course (5 days) System Design Course (5-7 days) Set to Work Course Graphical Simulator Design MoviolaW Design Design and maintenance courses are competency based with a significant hands-on component. The training materials are of a high quality and professional training specialists are used to deliver the courses. A ‘Train Your Trainer’ service is also available so that customers can subsequently deliver training courses to their own staff independently. Invensys Rail recommends a 1 day refresher version of the maintenance courses is because the system is so reliable that staff do not have the need to practice their skills. The whole aim of the tools, training and support model is to enable customers to competently implement WESTRACE based systems without direct support from the supplier. Of course, such support is available if required but the customer can have a high degree of independence if desired. Part of the support available includes the provision of maintenance services, and module repairs as a minimum. A wide range of services can be made available as required; • • • • • • • 9. Repair or Exchange—From a local base Spares on Consignment Guaranteed stock holdings Extended Warranties Long term pricing agreements Full on-site maintenance services Any combination of the above SUMMARY The interlocking is the heart of the railway. Its performance and safety are critical to the performance and safety of the railway as a whole. The modern railway is also a business and requires cost effectiveness in everything. 109 SESSION - III ATP TECHNOLOGY FOR INDIAN RAILWAYS by CHANDRIKA PRASAD FORMER ADL. MEMBER (SIGNAL) INDIAN RAILWAY BOARD IRSTE SEMINAR 2003 NEW DELHI INFRASTRUCTURE SCENARIO IR & RAIL WORLD Aspects IR Rail World D/L Services 65 trains/way over 130 trains/way Automatic Signali 2.7% network 90% UK, 84% China 67% Japan Speed 130Kmph over 300 Kmph ATP on M/L nil commonly adopted "our trains do not collide, we have systems to prevent that" "99.9999% safety will never be acceptable to us" 111 SESSION - III ATP IN EUROPE – THE PAST COUNTRY AUSTRIA BELGIUM DENMARK FINLAND FRANCE GERMANY HUNGARY ITALY NETHERLANDS NORWAY PORTUGAL SPAIN SWEDEN SWITZERLAND UK ATP SYSTEM LZB TBL ZUB EBICAB KVB, TVM LZB EVM BACC/SCMT ATB EBICAB EBICAB ASFA EBICAB ZUB AWS/TPWD 15 DIFFERENT ATP SYSTEMS FROM PAST RESULT • EUROSTAR – CAB 6 DIFF. ATP UNITS FOUR CAPITALS – CAB 8 DIFF. ATP UNITS VENDOR MONOPOLY MAINTENANCE? RELIABILITY? MISSION -BY 2020 ALL HIGH SPEED LINES AND MOST CONVENTIONAL LINES IN EUROPE WILL BE OPERATIONAL USING ETCS • 112 SESSION - III ETCS TECHNOLOGY GSM-R ETCS Level 1 ETCS Level 2 ETCS IN EUROPE – PRESENT & FUTURE TO INCREASE SAFETY OF EXISING LINES CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE & LUXEMBOURG ARE PRESENTLY ADOPTING ETCS LEVEL 1 . Silistr a Kos hav a Vi din Lom Dimovo Brusartsi Oreshet s Boi chinovtsi Yasen Montanu T CHERVEN BRI AG Or ya hov o Ch er kvitsa RUSE Kar da m Ivanovo Bele ne Or es h Svish tov Dve mogil i Ra zgr ad Sam u l i Do br c h i Byala Pl even L EVSKI Borovo Pol ski Trambesh Popovo Shum en St razhi tsa Targovisht e Pre slav No vi Paz ar Kaspichan Belo slav Berkovitsa Vrat sa M EZD RA Pavlikeni Roman Z latn a Pane ga Velik o T ar no vo Han Krum Provadiya Dalgopol Kom unari GO RNA ORI AHO VIT SA VARNA Povelyanovo Si ndel Slav yan tsi Kal otina Svoge Dragom an Al domirovtsi T ro yan Bols hev ik Sof ia-N. T sar ev a Liv ada Ga br ovo Elen a Sta ro Or yah ov o Zlat it sa Ban kya PERNI K Pod ue ne M usa che vo Kop rivs htit sa Tvarditsa KAR LO VO SOFIAIskar Ch uku ro vo Pi rdop Sl iven St raldzha Kal ofer Kazanlak Dabovo Tulovo Nova Zagora Ha n Asp ar uch KAR NOBA T Ayt os Kl isura Radomir Bob ov Dol Vakarel Pom o rie Pan ag yur isht e Hisa r Kerm en Z IM NIT SA STARA ZAGORA Kost enet s DUPNI CA PAZ ARDZ HI K SEPT EMVRI Var va ra M an ole Yam bol Vlad imir Pa vlov BURGAS Kyu ste ndil Gy ue she vo Bel ozem Cherna Gora Svo bod a Mi haylovo Chirpan Si meonovgrad Ha skov o Elho vo Or izo vo St amboli ski Pes hte ra BL AG OEVGR AD PLOVDIV Ase nov gr ad DIM IT RO VGRA D Do br n ish te i SVIL ENG RAD Kar dz hali To be i nstal led b y BDZ PH ARE Proj ect Exi sti ng Pod kov a Sandanski Ge ne ra l T od oro v Pet rich Kul ata SOFIA–BURGAS 113 SESSION - III SOFIA–BURGAS ATHENS SURBURB VIENNA–HUNGARY CZECH PENDOLINOS SLOVAKIA–SLOVENIA LEVEL 1 IN COMMERCIAL SERVICE LEVEL 1 (TRAIN BORN & TRACK SIDE MAY 2004) LEVEL 1 DEC 2001 LEVEL 1 & 2 (TRAIN BORN MAY 2005) LEVEL 1 PROGECTS (COMING) ETCS IN EUROPE – PRESENT & FUTURE COUNTRY ITALY ETCS STATUS ROME-NAPLES (HIGH SPEED) BY 2004 END BOLOGNA-FLORENCE MILAN-BOLOGNA TURIN-MILAN (WORK IN ADVANCE STAGE OF PROGRESS) - MADRID-LLEIDA (HIGH SPEED) TO BE IN OPERATION 2003 LEVEL 2 AS MAIN (LEVEL) 1 & EXISTING ATP AS BACK UP) - ZARAGOZA-HUESCA LEVEL 1; IN 2003 - LEVEL 2 ON DENSER TRAFFIC LINES 40% OF ROUTE K.M. ON OTHER LINES LEVEL 1 WITH “LIMITED SUPERVISION” MOST ROLLING STOCK TO BE EQUIPPED WITH LEVEL 2 TO OPERATE ANYWHERE BY 2017 - WEST COAST MAIN LINE -  EPT RECOMMENDATIONS LEVEL 2 FOR MAIN LINES, LINE SIDE SIGNALS TO BE REMOVED IN LONGER TERM - FITTING OF TRAINS WILL BE PRIORITISED. ……………………… SPAIN SWITZERLAND UK 114 SESSION - III OLTEN-LUCERNE ETCS LEVEL 2 SYSTEM OVERVIEW Dispatcher MM I Siemens Bombardie r Maintenance Driver Driver MMI 4000 150200 2000 100 300 1000 500 400 4000 150 2000 0 500 200 100 103 300 1000 0 5 500 50 400 0 500 0 103 Shnt Supr Data Test Shnt Misc Supr Mesg Data Spec Test Part Misc 5 Mesg Spec Part Service MMI Traffic Manageme nt System 50 ServiceServicePC PC Bombardie Bombardie r r Siemens Radio Block Center Interlocking Alcatel Control Control ETCS+GSM ETCS+GSM ETCS DEVELOPMENT WORLD WIDE • USA Amtrak activates ITC on Chicago- Detroit line, PTC project in progress on ChicagoSt. Luis line. • CHINA In UIC & CR Seminar held at Beijing Dec 2002 Chinese Railways announced taking up projects of ETCS – 0 ETCS – 1 ETCS – 2 ETCS – 3 and named this technology CTCS = Chinese Train Control System. 115 SESSION - III ETCS DEVELOPMENT WORLD WIDE……..CONTD. After a Decade of Development • • • • ETCS technology is a Reality Commercial use has already begun UIC has made ETCS an open specification It is manufactured by Multi Vendors (Six-UNISIG) to same specification • • • interchangeable price competitiveness Indigenous production ?……Possible! WHAT ETCS SIGNALING CAN DO ON IR Application of ETCS Technology on IR will make a major breakthrough in the following areas • • • • • SAFETY ENHANCEMENT CAPACITY INCREASE OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY IMPROVEMENT MAINTENACE EFFICIENCY IMPROVEMENT REAL TIME TRAIN INFORMATION TO PUBLIC SAFETY IMPROVEMENT GSM-R OFC OCC INTELLIGENT TRAIN o PI/SSI 0 0 Accidents Prevention- by Full ATP protection, Mobile Train radio communication, Approach warning to road users at L- xings... . • SPAD driver passing signal at Danger 116 SESSION - III • • Collisions L-Xings accidents , Work site accidents... CAPACITY INCREASE ETCS TRAIN LOMA ETCS TRAIN LOMA CONVENTIONAL TRAIN VIRTUAL SIGNAL I-0 I-0 • • • • • Driver’s MMI shows LOMA-Distance to Go,Target speed Full ATP Protection & Continuous Speed Control Uses actual braking characteristic of the train Maintains Fixed ATC Block seperation (ETCS level 2) Mobile Radio Communication - driver & control Full Track Speed potential utilization Result : Line Capacity Increase S&T INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT ON IR SANCTIONED PROJECTS ON IR OFC – 35000 RK.m GSMR – 2415 K.m ABS – 2000 RK.m ETCS (Level2) – 82 K.ms ATP – 60 RKm. ACD – 3500 RKm. DELHI Metro ATC&ATO- 62 Km 117 SESSION - III Kolkata CONCLUDING IDEAS THERE IS NO NEED TO REINVENT THE WHEEL. ATC TECHNOLOGY SUITABLE FOR IR IS ALREADY DEVELOPED . IT IS ECONOMICAL & SPEEDIER TO ADOPT IT (AND NAME IT ITCS- INDIAN TRAIN CONTROL SYSTEM) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. FIRST STEP IS TO FIT ITCS LEVEL 1 TRACK SIDE EQUPTS AT VULNERABLE LOCATIONS ON GOLDEN QUADRILATRAL COMMENCE FITTING ITCS CAB EQUPTS ON PRIORITY “VIRTUAL SIGNALS” WITH ETCS LEVEL 2 WILL INCREASE CAPACITY WITHOUT PHYSICAL AUTOMATIC SIGNALS IN BLOCK SECTION SO TO ENHANCE SAFETY & INCREASE THE CAPACITY BY 50% ON GOLDEN QUADRILATERAL IN NEXT 5 YRS – ITCS LEVEL2 IS THE ANSWER . DRAW CONSOLIDATED ACTION PLAN TO PROVIDE GSM-R,TC/ AxC,OFC,SSI,ETCS ENTER JOINT VENTURE TO MANUFACTURE ETCS IN INDIA 118 SESSION - III CAB SIGNALLING FOR DELHI METRO RAILWAY by RAJ KUMAR Chief Signal & Telecom Engineer/DMRC VIJAY KUMAR Dy. Chief Signal & Telecom Engineer/DMRC Delhi Metro Railway is designed for headway of 120 seconds for rail corridor and 90 Seconds for metro corridor. The train control & Signalling system consists of ATP, ATO, ATS & CBI and provides Cab Signals to Train drivers. This paper describes the state of art Train Control & Signalling systems being adopted for Delhi Metro and the experiences during its design and implementation. 1. INTRODUCTION The first phase of Delhi MRTS consists of two corridors, the underground corridor called the Metro corridor (Approx I I Km) and, the surface & elevated corridor called the Rail corridor (Approx 22 Km). 1.1 Headway (a) The design headway of Rail corridor is 120 seconds for a sustained operating headway of 180 seconds. (b) The design headway of Metro Corridor is 120 seconds for a sustained operating headway of 120 seconds. 1.2 Train Control & S ignalling System overview for Delhi Metro: Delhi Metro railway system consists of 18 stations on Rail corridor and 10 stations on Metro Corridor with two Depots, one for Rail Corridor at Shastri park and the other at Khyber Pass for Metro Corridor. The principal sub system for the Train Control & Signalling system for Delhi MRTS are: • • • Automatic Train Protection System(ATP) with Cab Signalling. The Track to train communication is through Coded Audio frequency Track Circuits. Automatic Train Operation System (ATO)(Only for Metro Corridor) Automatic Train Supervision System (ATS)with Automatic Route Setting and Automatic train Regulation. 119 SESSION - III • 1.3 Computer based Interlocking (CBl)both on the Main Line and Depot The main function of the ATP system is to ensure safe train separation and safe train movement. The ATP system’s intelligence and safety decision making process is placed mainly on the on board ATP equipment. . Safety information is provided by the Solid State Interlocking for track circuit occupancy and by the wayside ATP equipment which performs the ATP block function using the status of the track circuits Position of the point and the track profile e.g curves, gradients, permanent & temporary speed restriction etc. The main function of the Automatic Train operation system (ATO) is to run the trains in between stations automatically without the intervention of Train driver. The ATO system generates speed generates speed control to the traction and braking system of the train with respect to the computed speed profile. The ATO system ensures that the train achieves timely, accurate and smooth station stops or stopping ahead of a restrictive point. The ATO system also controls the train doors during station stops under the supervision of the ATP system without the intervention of the train driver. The main function of the Automatic Train Supervision system (ATS) is automatic management of train movement with due interfacing with the ATP/ATO/SSI system for Automatic Route setting and Automatic Train regulation. The ATS system supervises the train movement continuously and optimizes the train movements in case of abnormalities. This is achieved by assigning train identification (TID) numbers, monitoring the operation of each train, modifying dwell times at each station if required, modifying train operation to optimize headways, power consumption, or run time and also provide outputs to the Passenger Information Display System (PIDS) units at each station. 1.4 1.5 2. SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE The Signalling system planned to be used for Delhi MRTS project are based on fail safe computers and safety critical software. The Train Control Signalling system is configured with the WAN as the backbone of transmission of both vital and non vital information between CBl’s and Trackside ATP. The Trackside Systems are connected to the Central ATS system at the operation control system through the fibre optic network for performing the function of supervision and regulation of traffic on the line. The following figures illustrates the overall architecture of the Signalling system and the configuration of Main line and Depot. 120 SESSION - III 121 SESSION - III 122 SESSION - III 3. SAFETY STANDARDS 3.1 Safety is the primary consideration in the design and performance requirement for the system. To meet these requirements, all safety critical equipment are designed to fail safe principles conforming to CENELEC standard EN50126 for Reliability, Availability, Maintainability and Safety. The system shall conform to SIL4 in accordance with CENELEC standard EN50129 for safety related electronics system for Signalling and CENELEC standard EN50128 for software for railway control and protection system. All safety critical equipment shall be designed, manufactured and validated to Safety Integrity level 4 as defined in the CENELEC standard EN50126,EN50128, and EN 50129 123 3.2 3.3 SESSION - III 4. AUTOMATIC TRAIN PROTECTION SYSTEM The ATP system for DMRC is a Distance to GO” system. 4.1 Overall Schematic of Automatic Train Protection System of DMRC SYS1 The characteristics of the line i.e curves, gradients and the description of the track with respect to the track circuits, points, signals etc is stored in the backside ATP computer while the Rolling stock characteristics is stored in the trainborne ATP computer. The CBI transmits to the backside computer the status of the route, trackcircuits, points and signals which is then transmitted by the backside ATP computer to the train through the Track circuits. The Signal is received by the train through a pair of pickup coil mounted on both sides of the first bogie of the driving car and processed by on board ATP system. The train also has an antenna for transmitting and receiving messages to the Trackside ATP computer. The ATS system at the operation control center sends the request for route setting 124 SESSION - III automatically to the interlockings distributed in the line as required by the timetable and mission defined in the timetable. The trains are identified on the ATS system on the ATS workstations and the Mimic panel by a 4 digit Train ID, which is assigned automatically by the ATS system in accordance with the timetable. The ATS system also sends the regulation messages to the train through the backside ATP for regulating the train to the defined headway and to adhere to the timetable. 5.1 PRINCIPLE OF AUTOMATIC TRAIN PROTECTION SYSTEM The basic principle used is to transfer to the train the responsibility for train movement definition and monitoring. The train borne equipment will act as a driver does. It will receive simple information from which it deduces orders such as ‘stop at this point’ or ‘reduce the speed to this level at this point’ and will calculate the speed versus location profile, which must be respected to obey these orders. To be able to do that, static description of the track in which all the locations of the critical points are indicated is necessary. This description can be named the Route map”. Data contained in the route map are the Track circuits, points, signal etc. The transmission between the train and the Wayside equipment consists of the three type of transmission a) b) c) Continuous Track to Train Transmission through AFTC Spot Track to Train transmission through Beacons Train to Track transmission through the Down link receptors The train must be able to know at all times where it is located. To do that, an odometer function calculates the train displacement. Absolute positions in the route map are defined by the location of beacons. When the train passes over these beacons, it is capable of relocating itself as the corresponding beacon possesses an unique identifier which can be read by the train. This is required to correct any distance measurement error of the train during its run along the line at specified locations. The status of track circuit, route, signals and overlaps are transmitted to the train from the wayside. The data transmitted to the train also contains the status of the stopping points (stop or not), and the status (normal or reversed) of each set of points. From this data, the train can deduce the orders it has to obey, and can follow its movement along the route map. This dynamic data are called variable data. The train transmits alarms and messages to the backside ATP computer for logging the anomalies. The train to track communication is also used to transmit the positive train identification to the ATS system. The train on reception of the messages from the backside ATP computer calculates the speed versus distance profile, which it must follow for safe movement of the train. The diagram below illustrates the relative movement of two trains under ATP system with the protection of the rear train through emergency brakes with respect to the target 125 SESSION - III point which takes into consideration the safety margin from the next track circuit boundary. 4.3 FIXED BLOCK ATP OPERATION The ATP system for DMRC works on the fixed block operation system where each track circuit is considered as a block for train movement monitoring. The fixed block system is fitted with a continuous track-to-train transmission allowing the backside ATP computer to continuously send to the train the track occupancy configuration. Consequently, the intelligent ATP train borne computer continuously calculates its next point to protect: in this case the beginning of next occupied track-circuit. 126 SESSION - III 5 MODES FOR TRAIN OPERATION Operational Modes 5.1 ATO Mode The normal mode of operation for the Metro Corridor is ATO Mode. in this mode the trains shall operate automatically between stations while remaining within the safety envelope calculated and enforced by the ATP and open its doors at the next station. 5.2 ATP Mode The normal mode of operation for the Rail Corridor is ATP Mode. This mode will also be used on the Metro Corridor if the ATO equipment fails. In this mode the train driver will operate the train manually. Indications shall be provided in the cab of the train with onboard displays for Maximum Safe Speed (MSS) current speed, target distance/speed as deduced from the most restricting ATP condition, signalling mode etc. and routes established though interlocking. The braking curve is to be computed continuously along the line, so as to enable a minimum safety distance to be maintained. 127 SESSION - III This computation is based on line characteristics as well as the parameters of the train with dynamic monitoring and enforcement of the change of target distance and speed. The maximum speed shown in the cab shall be enforced by the ATP equipment. The ATP equipment shall also indicate which side doors may be opened when a train enters a station. The ATP equipment shall not allow the doors to be opened on the wrong side, unless an emergency override control is activated. 5.3 Cut-Out Mode The Cut-Out Mode will be used when the on-board ATP equipment on the Rail Corridor fails or both the on-board ATO and the on-board ATP equipment on the Metro Corridor fails. In cut out mode lineside signals will be used to provide information to the train driver that the route is clear to the next interlocking or to enter the depot connecting track. Accordingly the train driver will operate from interlocking to interlocking following the aspects of the lineside signals. In this mode the train driver will operate the train at a maximum of 25 km/hr and this speed limit enforcement will be ensured by onboard rolling stock equipment. 5.4 RM Mode RM Mode is used to drive the trains in the absence of any cab signal input. in this position, the train will operate without any cab signal input, but the speed shall be limited to 25 km/hr by the on board ATP equipment. 6. SUMMARY OF FUNCTIONS OF ATP Reception of Messages from the Trackside ATP computers, Track-related Speed Profile Generation, To monitor and enforce the change in target distance and speed, Maintaining the safety distance between trains: Train separation shall be maintained by ATP system. The movement authority to a train must only be given when relevant track section and a safe distance beyond it is free, Continuous supervision of maximum permitted speed on the line & maximum permissible train speed, Enforcement of Temporary speed restriction, Continuous monitoring of a braking curve with respect to a defined target point, Stopping point monitoring, Monitoring direction of travel and backward rolling, Releasing doors on the correct side at stations when the train has come to a stop, To ensure that no movement of train is possible until all train doors are closed and Outputting basic data for the cab display. 7. SPECIFIC FUNCTIONS OF ATP FOR DMRC IN ACCORDANCE WITH ETCS a) Use of Full service brake as a first level of intervention by ATP before Emergency brakes are applied: The use of service brake application to control the train before emergency brakes are applied by the ATC system is normally associated with the ATO system. DMRC faced a specific design issue of unnecessary application of emergency brakes each time there is either a overspending by the driver from the permissible speed 128 SESSION - III permitted by ATP system as the Rail corridor does not have ATO. DMRC designed the use of service brake application as a first level of intervention before the emergency brakes are applied in accordance with the FRS and SRS of ETCS. The design solution adopted by DMRC is as below: “ If the actual speed exceeds the permitted speed, a warning must be given to the driver to enable him to react and avoid intervention from train borne ATC equipment at least 2 sec. before the intervention of the full service brake until the actual speed does not exceed permitted speed, then the driver must be capable of selecting release of full service braking. The warning will continue until actual speed does not exceed permitted speed” b) Station stopping monitoring : The station stopping monitoring is also a function associated with ATO. The ATP only protects the train from a hazard ahead of the train. If the track ahead of the station is not occupied then the ATP will only protect against the boundary of the occupied track circuit ahead. This problem for Rail corridor was also obviated by DMRC in accordance with the FRS and SRS of ETCS by the use of station stopping monitoring with the use of advisory curve being presented to the driver along with the intervention of Full service brake if the driver tries to pass the station stopping point. A typical example is illustrated below: 129 SESSION - III 8. MAN MACHINE INTERFACE OF ATP & ATO FOR THE TRAIN DRIVER The Man machine interface for the driver has been designed with the same ergonomic consideration as that of ETCS. Interface with the driver is ensured in the cab with the following means: • • • • Key switches and mode selector, Push-buttons, LCD screen Loudspeaker 130 SESSION - III The information provided to the driver includes the following Actual speed, Target speed, Target distance, Operating mode, Brake details like service brake, application or emergency brake application, warnings for overspeeding, advisory speed, state of localization, station stop, departure, dwell time, alarms, and messages . 9. INTERFACE WITH ROLLING STOCK The most vital interface of the ATP system to function properly is with rolling stock. The interface with Rolling stock includes the following a) Electrical interface: This is the interface with the vehicle control circuit and includes the interface with the emergency brake circuit, service brake circuit, door control circuit etc. Mechanical interface: This interface is with respect to the fixing and mounting of the coded odometer used for speed and distance measurement. The other interfaces are the beacon antenna and the pickup coil used to receive the ATP messages from the rail. Interface with the TIMS ( Train integrated management system) of Rolling stock: This interface is used for logging the alarms and events of the on board ATP system on the TIMS. Interface with On board Announcement system of Rolling Stock: This interface is to provide the trigger signal from the ATP system for announcement of the arrival of next station and the position of the platform. Rolling stock characteristics: This interface is the basic ingredient for designing the ATP blocks for a particular headway. This includes the length, mass of train, the acceleration) and braking characteristics etc. b) c) d) e) 10. CONCLUSION: The installation and testing of ATP system is in progress for the section from Shahdara to Trinagar and is likely to be completed by September 2003 . The design adopted by DMRC will be the trendsetter of all ATP system in India with its operational and safety features for safe journey of passengers on the DMRC network. 131 SESSION - IV CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT IN INDIAN RAILWAYS By Dr. P.K. Goel DRM/Danapur. The CRM technology is the state-of-the-art technology for customer facilitation and inproving the bottomline of the companies and broading customer base. Indian Railways have developed their own versin of CRM packages which are very effective in the context and for the customer base in which the Inidan Railways operate. The key platforms for Indian Railways systems are PRS, FOIs and Railnet respectively for passenger business freight business and for management process. Thisj paper brings out broad overview about various items which are either fully developed or in the process of development. There are certain missing links which needs to be plugged and the need of the hour is to coilate and integra all systems and process so that in the entire organization all systems and process are IT enabled and which will bring about qualitative improvement in the customer services and give long term dividends of Indian railways. 133 SESSION - IV TELECOM REGULATIONS & POLICIES —BENEFITING THE CONSUMER by S.N.Gupta, Advisor, TRAI Manoj Arora, Jt.Advisor, TRAI By TRAI Act 1997 amended in the year 2000, TRAI was allocated with unambiguous power to decide on tariffs, interconnection terms and arrangement, interconnection revenue sharing, quality of service, ensuring licensing terms & conditions, ensuring universal services obligation etc. It is mandatory to seek recommendations of TRAI before introducing any new service. This paper brings out an insight in the working of TRAI and their contribution in speeding up telecom revolution in India. BACKGROUND: Unlike other sectors, Telecom Sector in past was characterized as a monopoly of a state organisation in India. Despite of all the efforts of the Government, telecommunication was known as a service with poor quality, delayed provisioning and involving primitive technologies. The penetration of telephones was much lower compared to other developing countries also. To bring the industry to an acceptable state of affairs, heavy investments were required particularly as telecom is a capital-intensive industry. In WTO India has committed to establish an independent telecom regulator, who will facilitate opening up of the sector for private competition to improve the service provision, availability & technical upgradation in the overall interests of consumers. Regulator role was important since the investors need confidence about expeditious clearances and stability of “rules of game” & market supporting policies. In India, Liberalization in Telecom Sector was started in 1994 by inviting private players in cellular, paging and basic services. As a result two operators were introduced in cellular services in each of the circle while, private basic operators were allotted licenses in 6 circles. Since then telecom liberalization have gone long way to have 4 cellular players in each circle & unlimited competition in Basic, National Long Distance & International Long Distance & Internet. 135 SESSION - IV OBJECTIVE OF REGULATION Telecom service markets in the initial stages are generally characterized with monopoly where prices are not necessarily based on the cost, supply governs the demand, supernatural profits by the service provider, poor quality of service etc. Even after introduction of some new players in the market, the new entrant remains dependent on the incumbent for interconnection and resources to extend their services since incumbent controls a big subscriber base, network and resources. The incumbent player does not easily give away its market dominance by adopting anti competition behaviour like hindering timely interconnection, charging more than cost based interconnection fee, influencing licensor, etc. The scenario becomes more complex when the policy maker and incumbent operator are part of the same organisation. This situation justifies the introduction of Regulator, who as a neutral party can control the affairs and curb the anti-competitive practices adopted by the incumbent. The pertinent role of the regulator is to bring benefits to customers in the form of affordable service, good quality of service & on demand provisioning of service. The customer will be benefited in short term & long term depending on the initial market situation. Regulator has to facilitate accrual of benefits to society, which are desired as well as justified. To achieve this objective, regulator addresses problems associated with the market & service so that customer will get what should naturally come to him from the market. Regulation intervention is desired where the market fails in addressing the needs of consumer. Since failure is a subjective term, it can be judged more objectively vis-à-vis the customer benefit in quantitative terms when the market is having effective competition. The ideal market situation can be characterized with multiple players in market, demand and supply going hand in hand, prices being cost based, etc. Hence regulation is desired when market process alone does not deliver all that should be available in ideal market situation. Regulator also ensures that at least the minimum services should be available to the society. One example is basic service, where the regulator can establish a transparent subsidy mechanism to make these services affordable. This subsidy may be flowing from the revenues generated from other services. This is desired to bring the prices of the basic services to such a level, which is affordable to consumer at large. In short, Regulation can be seen as implementing policies related to preventing anti competitive behaviour, promoting competition, protecting consumer interest and achieving social objectives. NTP’99 : TARGETS AND OBJECTIVES The most important policy document, which governs the liberalization of telecom in the country, is the New Telecom Policy (NTP) 99. Some of the important objectives laid down under are given under: 136 SESSION - IV • • Make available telephone on demand by the year 2002 and sustain in thereafter so as to achieve a tele-density of 7 by the year 2005 and 15 by the year 2010. Encourage development of telecom in rural areas making it more affordable by suitable tariff structure and making rural communication mandatory for all fixed service providers. Increase rural tele-density from the current level of 0.4 to 4 by the year 2010 and provide reliable transmission media in all rural areas. Achieve telecom coverage of all villages in the country and provide reliable media to all exchanges by the year 2002. Provide Internet access to all district head quarters by the year 2002. Provide high-speed data and multimedia capability using technologies including ISDN to all towns with a population greater than 2 lakhs by the year 2002. Migration of Service Providers from fixed license fee to a revenue share regime • • • • In return, they agreed to loose their exclusivity As a result more competition • • • • • A well defined USO regime Liberalized framework for Internet To achieve all the above objectives, NTP 99 envisaged an important role to be played by the Regulator. This is in form of recommendations, directives and other measures to facilitate the implementation of policy. TRAI ACT, 1997 & ITS AMENDMENT IN 2000 The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), a regulatory body for telecom sector was formed in January 1997 by an act called TRAI Act, 1997. This was introduced with a view to provide an effective regulatory framework and adequate safeguards to ensure fair competition and protection of consumer interests. This has laid down various functions of regulator, which encompasses from recommendatory role to policy maker role. The Government constituted to make regulator further stronger and independent, TRAI Act was amended in the year 2000 which provides regulator with more comprehensive powers and clear authority to effectively perform its assigned functions. TRAI Act 1997 defined Regulator functions as Adjudicatory Functions, Regulatory Functions and Recommendatory functions. This was amended in year 2000, which has divided the functions in two organisations i.e. TD-SAT (Telecom Dispute Settlement Appellate Tribunal) which was assigned the adjudicatory functions while TRAI was allocated with unambiguous powers to decide on tariffs, interconnection terms and arrangement, interconnection revenue sharing, quality of service, ensuring licensing terms and conditions, ensuring universal service obligation etc. This amendment also make it mandatory to seek recommendations of TRAI before introducing any new 137 SESSION - IV service. Time periods to submit recommendations on a reference received from the Government, any further clarification desired by the Government and reply to such clarifications were specified through this amendment. REGULATION AS A WHOLE Any company who wants to start its operations of providing telecom services has to fulfill some regulatory requirements. Government has to keep in mind an objective to fulfill investor’s dream to have their clearances through an efficient and responsive system, there are multiple agencies involved in receiving the requisite applications and allocating essential resources required by the company. In short, regulatory requirements for a new entity can be summarized as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. Registration/incorporation of the company in India Licensing Tariffs Interconnection Spectrum Numbering Plan Universal Service Obligations Monopoly Restriction or Competition Technical Standards Quality of Service Carrier Pre-Selection (CPS) Accounting Separation Misc. other agencies such clearances of PWD for laying down cables, municipal corporations to erect antennas, clearances from pollution control boards, filling of direct and indirect taxes etc. Licensing is the first and foremost requirement to start any telecom service in the country as per the Indian Telegraph Act. This is assigning rights to the company to operate and provide telecom services. India has chosen bidding process among various licensing principles such as auction, First-Cum-First Service (FCFS), beauty parade, etc. An elaborated licensing condition such as license fee, delivery of service, rollout obligation, frequency allotment to operators, tariffs, interconnection, penalty clauses, specifications of services, technology, etc are part of the license. Any tariffs, which are offered to consumer, should have approval of TRAI unless it is under forbearance. Important tariff issues need to be addressed by TRAI to facilitate rollouts of services, tariff re-balancing to allow effective competition in each segment of 138 SESSION - IV the license. Further costing methodology and whether tariffs are required to be forborne/ regulated vis-à-vis competition in the market are other important issues related to tariffs. Interconnection is of significant importance to a new operator since this enable their customer to access the subscribers/customers of incumbents’ networks. The issues such as principle of interconnections like determination of access cost, number & level of interconnection, charging principles, technical standards and quality of interconnection are required to be dealt by the regulator in order to facilitate operators. Resources like numbering & spectrum are important. These are essential resources required by an operator to rollout their services. Allocation of numbering and spectrum, principles of allocation, charging principles of such resources are required to be dealt by the regulator. Universal Service Obligations addresses subsidy needs in order to make the basic services affordable. Regulator and Government has to define universal service, funding requirements, determine collection and disbursement mechanism etc. Carrier Preselection (CPS) and Carrier Access Codes (CAC) has to be incorporated by all the access providers in their networks which will provide a choice to their subscriber to access any NLDO or ILDO. Generic requirements for the same have been specified by TRAI. One of the issues against TRAI is to implement accounting separation based on structural separation introduced through individual licensing to stop cross subsidization. Open standard should be followed by all the operators which should not pose any problem in inter-operability between the networks and interconnection between the networks. TEC, ITU and ETSI are important standard making body which govern majority of the standards used for Telecom Equipment and Networks. National standards are also required to be followed by the operator to become part of National Telecom Network. Acceptance Testing is also performed on a network at its introduction and whenever interconnected with BSNL/MTNL’s networks. MRTP (Monopoly Restriction and Trade Practices Commission), now Competition Commission of India (CCI) governs mergers, acquisitions etc. Broadly it ensures that companies should not resort on any anti-competitive practices such as collusions to raise up the prices artificially and merger/acquisitions may not result in erosion of competition in the market. Regulatory is also assigned with powers to ensure that incumbent may not follow anti- competitive practices. Besides above, all the other statutory needs are required to be fulfilled by the service providers such as registration under Companies Act, 1956 with Registrar of Companies are desired, taxes are required to be paid, tax returns are required to be filled with nominated government agencies, clearances from Municipal Corporation, PWD etc as applicable & desired for rolling out of the network, etc. List is not exhaustive. Company Secretary of the company has to ensure each and every statutory requirement laid down in legislation and government rules are fulfilled. 139 SESSION - IV AVAILABILITY OF SERVICE : NTP’99 has given utmost importance to penetration of services. TRAI since inception has worked on this subject. The reduction in prices can only be possible through effective competition, which can make the prices, cost oriented based. TRAI worked constantly to bring competition in all segments of the telecommunication services. Recommendations were sent to Government from time to time on this aspect for opening up following segments of the services. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. Basic Services Cellular Mobile Services National Long Distance Services International Long Distance Services Internet Services Internet Telephony Radio Paging Services Public Mobile Radio Trunk Services VSAT Services GMPCS Services Other Value Added Services (VAS) As a result more than 31 private Basic Service licenses, 56 private cellular licenses, 3 private NLDO & 3 private ILDO Licenses have been allotted in addition to more than 400 ISP licenses. Open competition is available in almost all the segments. 4 operators are right now allowed in Cellular Mobile Services, as constraint is available due to spectrum. Recommendation in Universal Service Obligation were sent to the Government in order to establish a transparent subsidy mechanism in order to make the tariff lower for basic services. The subsidy will flow from revenues of other services. The government has established USF Administrator who ensures collection and disbursement of Universal Service Funds. Recently tender for universal service has been finalised. This may facilitate provision of telephones in rural and remote areas. TRAI had also supported introduction of various new services such as Receive Only VSAT Services, INSAT MSS Services, Internet Telephony, Voice Mail Services, Audio Text Services and Other Value Added Services like unified messaging. At the inception of TRAI, total number of DELs were around 15 million (i.e. 1.5 % penetration) which is now 40 million (i.e. 4% penetration) while cellular mobile services increased from 0.4 million (i.e. 0.04% penetration) to over 13 million (i.e. 1.3% penetration). 140 SESSION - IV During last year, 20% growth rate has been registered in Basic Services while 90% growth rate in cellular mobile services. Internet Subscribers, which were negligible in 1997, are now around 36 million (i.e. 0.36% penetration). TARIFF REDUCTION Indian consumer as established through various studies, is more sensitive to price. TRAI has worked on the issue that services should be affordable which will automatically generate a demand. There is drastic reduction in prices of cellular mobile services, it was Rs.16/- per minute call to Rs.1.5 or 2 per call. Long Distance tariffs have also seen a reduction of around 60%. TRAI ensures that the tariff offered by service providers should be cost based. Time to time costing principles are laid down, studies are done for cost of services, rental and usage charges in the form of Standard Tariff Packages which are specified in the Telecom Tariff Order. It is essential for a service provide to offer Standard Tariff Package to consumers. Besides this, the service providers were given flexibility to offer Alternate Tariff Packages (ATPs) which can be suitable for a consumer with his/her usage pattern. TRAI closely monitors tariffs offered by service providers. Every service provider has to report the tariff 5 days before the implementation. This is done to ensure that the tariff should be as per tariff order and regulations laid down by TRAI. Where TRAI feels that enough competition is available or market is governing the tariff, TRAI allows forbearance. QUALITY OF SERVICE TRAI had laid down QOS parameters related for Basic, Cellular and Internet Services. It specifies benchmarks, values and target dates to be observed by the service providers. These are monitored through performance monitoring reports, which should be submitted by the service providers at the end of each quarter on regular basis. Besides the above, TRAI recently did a survey for verifying the reported parameters through a third party. The agency assigned with the task had performed measurements and did verification of the parameters reported by the service providers. The agency also went for survey of the consumers, collected their responses and further analyzed the same to know consumer perception about the services. TRAI Regulation on Quality of Service, 2000 also covers values and target dates to be observed for such subjective parameters. INTERACTION WITH CONSUMER ORGANISATION TRAI regularly interact with consumer organisation to know problems of the consumers, their expectations with regulator and suggestion to improve the services. These organisations are also provided with consultation papers from time to time and they are invited to give their comments which are considered while any regulation is finalised. The meetings are called from time to time for such interaction. Under CIDA funding, 141 SESSION - IV TRAI has also interacted with these organisations in various workshops. These workshops were held with a particular theme like consumer linkages, Quality of Service, Tariff etc. Last but not the least, protection of consumer interest is utmost concern to the regulator as also mandated through TRAI Act. The impact of this is visible through the reduced tariff for telecom services, availability of more choices to customer and improvement in the quality of service. 142 SESSION - IV INFRA-RED (IR ) — THE SOLUTION TO LAST MILE CONNECTIVITY by Shobhan Chaudhuri Dy. Chief (S&T) Engineer/W.C. Rly. The exploitation of full potential of OFC network being laid along the railway track will depend on the final connectivity from OFC center near the railway track to service provider situated in the city. In this paper, the author has brought out his experiences of successful application of Infra – Red Technology for Last Mile connectivity on Central Railways – therby opening a new vista of opportunity for revenue generation on Indian Railway. Railway’s have drawn an ambitious plan to hire / lease out the spare Optic Fiber for commercial exploitation. Railway has a distinct advantage of the right - of - way since land adjoining to the railway track can be used for laying under ground fibers. Other service providers do not have this distinct advantage and they have to deal with various agencies/ authorities, which is a time consuming process in addition to the increased investment. Instead of this distinct advantage Railway’s have not been able to exploit its full spare fiber potential due to the final connectivity from the OFC center typically located near the track on the railway land to the service provider location, generally located at the heart of the city. The problem faced by Railways is similar to the Last Mile Bottleneck faced by the communication and networking world, as such it should be studied in the same light. The current fiber optic backbone runs to central offices in most of the large cities. There has been much work done to upgrade the fiber optic backbone by both extending its reach, and increasing its bandwidth. The high bandwidth capability of the fiber optic backbone of 2.5 Gbps to 10 Gbps has been achieved by improvements in switching and optical components, and with the implementation of technologies such as wavelength division multiplexing (WDM). Most of the recent large effort of digging up the ground and laying down new fiber has been directed towards extending the fiber optic backbone to new central offices, and not laying fiber directly to the customer. In fact, a very negligible percentage of buildings have a direct connection to the fiber optic backbone. However, more than 75% of all businesses are within a mile of the fiber optic backbone. 143 SESSION - IV Figure 1 : The last mile problem: Studies show that negligible % of buildings has a direct connection to the very high speed (2.5-10 Gbps) fiber optic backbone, yet more than 75% of businesses are within 1 mile of the fiber backbone. Most of these businesses are running some high-speed data Network within their building, such as fast Ethernet (100 Mbps), or Gigabit Ethernet (1.0 Gbps). Yet, their Internet access is only provided by much lower bandwidth technologies available though the existing copper wire infrastructure (T-1 (1.5 Mbps), cable modem (5 Mbps shared) DSL (6 Mbps one way), etc). The last mile problem is to connect the high bandwidth from the fiber optic backbone to all of The businesses with high bandwidth networks. Within each of these businesses, high speed fast Ethernet (100 Mbps) or even Gigabit Ethernet (1.0 Gbps) local area networks (LAN’s) are commonplace. While these data networks meet the needs for local connectivity within a single floor or building, there is a rapidly increasing need for similar high data rate connection speeds between buildings either locally or nationwide. This demand for wide-area high bandwidth is fueled by increasing commercial use of the Internet, private Intranets, electronic commerce, data storage and backup, virtual private networks (VPNs), video conferencing, and voice over IP. The key to high bandwidth wide-area connectivity is to make use of the nationwide fiber optic backbone. However, access to the fiber optic backbone for the majority of businesses, who are physically located within a mile of the fiber, is limited to the current phone or cable TV copper wire infrastructure. Newer technologies, such as Digital Subscriber Link (xDSL) or cable modems have increased the potential bandwidth over copper to 5 to 6 Mbps over more traditional Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) or T-1 (1.5 Mbps) lines. However, the copper-based transmission speeds are still much lower than what is necessary to fully utilize the Gbps fiber optic backbone. In addition, the ownership of the copper wires by BSNL requires leasing by any other carriers or network service providers. As shown in Figure 1, the last mile problem or bottleneck is to effectively provide a high bandwidth digital access and cost-effective connection between all of these local businesses to the fiber optic backbone. Possible solutions to the last mile bottleneck are: (1) Deployment of fiber directly to all of these customers- Fiber run to every building would be the ideal solution to the last mile bottleneck from the standpoint of system availability. However, because of the high cost and the time to get right-of-way permits and to trench up the streets, fiber is not a very practical solution. Use of wireless radio frequency (RF) technology such as Local Multipoint (2) 144 SESSION - IV Distribution Service (LMDS)- LMDS is a Wireless radio solution that does have bandwidth capabilities in the 100’s Mbps, but its carrier frequency lies within licensed bands. The additional large cost and time to acquire the license from the WPC makes this alternative, less attractive. Also, just as with copper wire technologies, the demand for bandwidth will increase, beyond, what is provided by from RF technologies (3) Use of free-space laser communication (IR) Figure 2 shows the third solution, which uses free-space laser Communication or optical wireless links to quickly provide local customers very high bandwidth access to the fiber optic backbone. Figure 2 A high-bandwidth cost-effective solution to the last mile problem is to use free-space laser Communication (also known as or optical wireless) in mesh architecture to get the high bandwidth Quickly to the customers. Free-space laser communication is very similar to fiber optic communication, except that instead of the light being contained within a glass fiber, the light is transmitted through the atmosphere. Since similar optical transmitters and detectors are used for free-space and fiber, similar bandwidth capabilities are achievable. It has also been demonstrated that WDM fiber technologies will also work in free-space, which further increases the bandwidth potential of wireless optical links. Some experts consider IR technology to be a sub-specialty of optical technology. The hardware is similar, and the two forms of energy behave in much the same way. But strictly speaking, “Optical” refers to visible electromagnetic radiation, while “infrared” is invisible to the unaided eye. Unguided Infrared and millimeter waves are widely used for short and medium-range communications and control since long. Some of its common usage are Remote control of TV / AC units, Cordless microphones, Robot control systems, Intrusion Detectors etc. Unlike radio-frequency (RF) wireless links, IR wireless cannot pass through solids. Therefore, IR communications or control is generally not possible between different rooms in a house, or between different houses in a neighborhood (unless they have facing windows). This might seem like a disadvantage, but it is used advantageouslyIR system of one room will not interfere with similar systems in adjoining rooms. Precisely for this reasons the security of IR systems is better than the radio systems. For this reason no Government licence is needed to operate an IR system 145 SESSION - IV INFRA RED AS A COMMUNICATIONS MEDIUM In the current trend of ever increasing carrier frequencies, to reduce range which allows topographic isolation and permits the increase available bandwidths, Infra Red offers short-range communications without any of the emission or susceptibility problems of radio transmissions. When infrared is employed with digital encoding techniques and incorporated with a distributed cellular approach, areas of thousands of square metres can be covered with multi-channels full duplex mobile communications. Digitally encoded infra red communications which, because of the use of low level invisible light, have no ocular or health hazard, do not radiate radio waves and are totally unaffected by high levels of electromagnetic radiation from electronic/electrical equipment. The quality of the transmitted signals even in close proximity to equipment, which is radiating high levels of electromagnetic noise, is outstanding. The infrared systems can be safely used adjacent to the most sensitive electronic equipment without any adverse effect. Thus IR based equipments can be used to solve the “Last Mile problem” to a large extent. This will eliminate the “dead zones” and extend wireless networks without incurring the costs of ground based cabling. High capacity IR wireless links to connect cellular antennas back to an existing base station. ADVANTAGES OF INFRA RED The following list defines the advantages of infrared as a communication medium: • • • • • • • Short range area of coverage, allows total security and the segregation of systems by distance. No potential health hazard. RFI / EMI immunity. No license requirements. No cross talks. Transmits across difficult terrains. Flexible deployment and quick installation (2-3 hrs) It can be used as a “Virtual Fiber”- through the air- the only technology that is transparent to protocols. COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS There are a large number of applications for these infrared systems where either there is a significant level of electrical interference or where the emission of radio waves is not permitted, such as- 146 SESSION - IV • • • • • • • • • • • Public broadcast transmitters. Industry using variable speed drives. Ships with electrical propulsion. Power generation. Radar installations. In the close proximity of medical or life support equipment. The handling of explosives. Adjacent to sensitive industrial control systems. Control rooms and control towers. Security conscious areas, where information is to be contained within the venue. Aircraft. Locations where the use of radio emissions is inadvisable: Free-space laser communication is very similar to fiber optic communication, except that instead of the light being contained within a glass fiber, the light is transmitted through the atmosphere. Since similar optical transmitters and detectors are used for free-space and fiber, similar bandwidth capabilities are achievable. It has also been demonstrated that WDM fiber technologies will also work in free-space, which further increases the bandwidth potential of wireless optical links. However, a significant difference between free-space and fiber optic laser transmission is the un- predictability of the attenuation of laser power in the atmosphere compared to fiber. Fiber optic cables attenuate at a constant predictable rate. Current multimode fiber optic cables attenuate at 2 to 3 dB/km, and single mode fibers attenuate at .5 to .2 dB/km. On the other hand, the atmosphere’s attenuation of laser power is quite variable and difficult to predict. Atmospheric attenuation can vary from .2 dB/km in exceptionally clear weather, to 310 dB/km in a very very dense fog. These large attenuation values in heavy fog are important because they can reduce the uptime or availability of lasercom systems. If proposed free-space lasercom systems, such as shown in Figure 2, are to be used in telecommunication Applications, there will be requirements for very high availability. By trading off more link margin and typically less extreme weather, the laser link range requirement can be extended slightly. But to satisfy telecom requirements for availability, the laser links ranges will still have to very short – on the order of 1500 m, or be backed up by lower data rate microwave or millimeter wave links. 147 SESSION - IV Figure 3 The bottom graph shows amount of atmospheric attenuation as a function of visibility. The top Shows the weather conditions that correspond to the visibility. For these short lasercom links, fog and heavy snow are the primary weather conditions, which can cause Link outages. This is demonstrated in Figure 3. The bottom of Figure 3 shows a plot of the atmospheric attenuation as a Function of the visibility. Bandwidth 30 dB/ km 17 dB/ km 10 dB/ km 3 dB/ km 155Mbps 100Mbps ATM, DC-3, STM-1 Fast Ethernet, FDDI * 10Mbps 2Mbps Ethernet E1 / T1 1 km 2 km 3 km 4 km 5 km 148 SESSION - IV RAILWAY’S PRESENT SCENARIO On Central Railway IR has been used by RAILTEL (equipment procured by them) to hire out Railway’s spare OFC channels / dark fibers for commercial use to private operators. On Manmad – Igatpuri section of Bhusawal division last mile connectivity to the operator’s premises has been extended from Rly’s OFC repeater station to service provider’s premises deep in the city at Nashik & Manmad. This has helped in bringing Manmad in the coverage area for cellular operations by AT&T. Buoyed by the success it is now planned to install many more such IR equipments at other locations to fully exploit spare OFC potential directly in the operator’s premises. Railway’s should harness this technology and go all out in exploiting the full potential of OFC. 149 SESSION - IV ETHERNET OVER SDH by A.M. Gopal Krishnan Associates Vice President FIBCOM SDH networks for telecommunications applications are now catering for Ethernet data services also. The author describes the various sub-system which are built into the value chain to meet the services required by end customer. Transport networks all around the world built on SDH and SONET technologies, over the years, are getting upgraded. Gradually they are required to carry Ethernet data in a big-way. Obviously, the equipment vendors have geared-up to face this challenge and the equipments are ready to transport Ethernet in a very efficient way. This is in-addition to supporting other carrier class telecommunication services. Ethernet over SDH transforms a part of the network into invisible tunnels between LANs. The big investments made in building SDH networks for telecommunication applications are now catering for Ethernet data services also. This is adding more value to these deployments. For new deployments also, the choice of transport technology should depend on the services required by the end customers. It will be important to understand the full value chain starting from the end customer to the transport technology. A Local Area Net work (LAN) interconnection mechanism operating at Layer 2, ie, Data Link Layer, offers the best interconnection of two LAN segments through Wide Area Network (WAN). Ethernet over SDH offers this facility. Ethernet is the most commonly used link layer protocol for Local Area Networks. Ethernet supports Internet Protocol (IP), which is a network layer protocol. IP datagram are encapsulated in Medium Access Control Frames (MAC) for transmission. IP address is used to uniquely identify various network components. An IP address is 4 bytes long (32 bits). This is divided into two parts, a Network part and a host part. A logical name translation can also be made for ease of use. There exist two packet switching approaches. Datagram Switching (best effort network) and Virtual circuits. In datagram network, delivery is not guaranteed. In virtual circuits, a route is set-up at the initial set-up between the end nodes through intermediate nodes, if any, for packet exchange per session. This offers guaranteed delivery. Ethernet over SDH uses Generic Framing Procedure (GFP) for frame adaptation. GFP is 151 SESSION - IV a robust and efficient packet transport procedure. ITU-T specification G.7041/Y.1303: specifies the GFP. GFP provides a generic mechanism to adapt traffic from higher-layer client signals over a transport network. Client signals may be Protocol Data Unit (PDU)oriented (such as Ethernet MAC) etc. There are other standards such as ITU-T X.86 specifying Ethernet over SDH mapping. Due to its inherent strengths, GFP is preferred by vendors over X.86. SDH virtual concatenations of virtual containers (VC) offer a powerful means of grouping transmission bandwidth, as per requirements. Link Capacity Adjustment Scheme supports variable capacity use. As an example to state, flexibility is gained through the use of VC-12 Xv (virtually concatenated VC-12s). Ethernet over SDH can provide true Virtual Private Network (VPN) connectivity for any-to-any connectivity between end-user locations in a secure way. Ethernet over SDH can guarantee Quality of Service (QoS). Class of Services (CoS) provisioning can also be done. Pure IP and Ethernet networks typically use CoS mechanisms. There are so-called softQoS where advanced queue handling, buffer etc. enables enhanced network performance (e.g. IP-Diffserv etc.), But in general, some kind of signalling between the traffic source and the network will be needed to ensure hard-QoS (absolute traffic guaranties). SDH management system makes sure that traffic put onto the network will have guaranteed QoS. Diffserv (differentiated services) and MPLS (Multi-protocol Label Switching) are two different standards to address quality problems. Diffserv operates at Layer 3 only. MPLS specifies ways that Layer 3 traffic can be mapped to connection-oriented Layer 2 transports. MPLS adds a label containing specific routing information to each packet and allows assigning of explicit paths to various classes of traffic. Spanning tree limitations, collision problems, multicast “noise” problems and limited number of VLAN tags can be solved by EoSDH Layer 2 VPN solution. Carrier class Ethernet is thus achieved by EoSDH, which is an efficient combination of data capabilities of Ethernet and high availability of SDH. Compared to other technologies / networks, EoSDH has a clear advantage in its interworking capabilities with SDH as a transport medium. Another approach to networking could be to put pure core router based solutions. It is possible to design pure L3 networks with routers having optical interfaces, but it will waste capacity, and thus will increase the network cost. There may be difficulty in integrating links carrying other forms of traffic (i.e.. Voice) etc. EoSDH provides significant cost advantages over competing solutions. By introducing the EoSDH solution, the efficiency of backbone network could be increased. EoSDH does propose a way of optimising existing transport networks while at the same time ensuring scalability towards future needs and therefore should be of 152 SESSION - IV great interest for network operators. We can see transmission network getting better in this direction. Layer 2 switching and guaranteed Quality-of-Service (QoS) in next-generation Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) equipments are already available. operators can now offer advanced Ethernet Private Networks, providing differentiated carrier-class data services to their business customers. These solutions incorporate MultiProtocol Label Switching (MPLS). The Layer 2 switching functionality enables network operators to build large Ethernet networks over long distances. Operators can offer highly flexible and differentiated services such as Ethernet VPNs or Ethernet Private Lines for applications including Internet access, business intranets etc. MPLS based Ethernet over SDH solution is expected to make a big impact on data services in our country. Fibcom India Ltd. (www.fibcom.com) is ready to offer these advanced Ethernet over SDH Transport solutions. Mapping data packets into containers SDH 153 SESSION - V ENABLING TWO WAY MOVEMENT ON EACH TRACK OF A DOUBLE LINE CAN INCREASE CAPACITY by Dr. P.R. Goundan Chief S&T Engineer, South Central Railway, Secunderabad Generation of additional capacity of the existing Indian Railways network with minimum investment is the need of the hour. There are various techniques to enhanced the capacity of the network. This paper examines a low cost of option of bi-directional signalling on the existing double line. Results o f a simultaneous safety is presented. Safety implication of tender signaling arrangement is also discussed. 1.0 SIGNALLING ON DOUBLE LINE In a double line section, the traffic is directional, i.e., one track is exclusively used for traffic in one direction and the other track for traffic in opposite direction. The present arrangement of signalling is to cater to this directional traffic. There are a few exceptions to this over short stretches adjoining major yards, where both the tracks are signalled for traffic movement in both directions. Even though, the tracks are signalled for uni-directional traffic, there is a possibility of diverting traffic from one line to the other at stations in case of emergency under special train operations procedure. This is done by provision of appropriate switching arrangement. A typical arrangement of station layout and signals for directional traffic. In Figure 1, a train from Down direction can be received on Road 1 or 2 or 4 and dispatched from these roads to the down direction. It can be observed that all roads except Road 4 have only one side signals, whereas Road 4 has signals on either end, enabling trains to be dispatched from Road 4 in either the Up or the Down direction. The switch arrangement X and Y enables connectivity between Up and Down tracks. The block signalling for controlling movements between stations is done with the help of special Block Instruments designed for double track operation. These instruments cannot be used for signalling two-way train movements on a track. Different type of Block Instruments and procedures are required for this. 155 SESSION - V 2.0 LIMITATIONS OF DIRECTIONAL SIGNALLING The deficiencies of directional signalling are: a) When maintenance work is taken up or when there is a break down on one of the lines, the traffic movement is carried out through the second line, using an elaborate and time consuming manual signalling procedure. This reduces the network capacity. Fear of capacity reduction and hence delays induces tendency to postpone the maintenance, which is a safety hazard. Two directional signaling would have allowed better traffic handling in such a situation. Stations are used to give precedence to high speed mail and express trains over low speed freight trains. The low speed freight trains are detained at stations and high speed mail and express trains are allowed to pass through. Many times one may find that the other track is free and it would have been possible to move the slow speed trains on the other line while the faster train crosses it on the main line. This precedence in motion would enable better utilisation of assets. Thus, twoway traffic movement on each track would help in enhancing capacity and better capacity utilization. This would require only a marginal additional investment in signalling. INTRODUCTION TO BI-DIRECTIONAL SIGNALLING A typical station with signalling arrangement for both directions. A freight train received from section D, can be detained at the station to give precedence to a high speed Mail/Express train following the freight train or can be dispatched on the other track to section A towards the next station, if section A is free. Some real life control charts given in Fig.3(a), (b) (c) and (d), shows the delays when a slower train is detained to give precedence to a faster trains. All the stations shown in the Figures are run through stations. In Figure.3 (a), train 1 is detained at station 5 and train 3 is detained at station 3 to give precedence to a faster train 2. Train 1 could have been allowed to proceed as shown in the dotted line in the opposite track, which is free. Similarly, train 3 could have been allowed to proceed as shown in the dotted line instead of waiting. In Figure.3(b) train 4 is detained at station 5 to give precedence to train 8. Train 1 is detained at station 4 to give precedence to trains 2 and 3. Similarly, train 5 is detained at station 3 to give precedence to trains 6 and 7. The dotted lines show possible progress of the detained trains 1 and 5 using the second track in the opposite direction, which is free at that time. In Figure-3(c) train 1 is detained at station 4 to give precedence to faster trains 2 and 3. Train 4 is detained at station 1 to give precedence to train 5. Train 4 could have been moved to station 2 using the second track, which is free of traffic, in the opposite direction as shown by the dotted line. b) 3.0 156 SESSION - V Between station 1 and 2, trains 4 and 5 could have progressed simultaneously using the two tracks. Similarly, they could have progressed simultaneously between stations 2 and 3 also as shown by the dotted line. In each of these cases the second track was free but could not be used as the signalling allows only one way movement on each track. As is discussed later, there is a reasonable chance of finding a track free to give precedence in motion. This would improve the capacity of the network. Moreover if any of the sections A, B, C and D in Figure.2 was blocked for maintenance work, trains could be moved on the other track without much delay. Analysis of train control chart of a double line (unidirectionally signalled) control section was carried out to identify situations. The number of precedences given where freight trains were detained in a period of 72 hours was noted. Also, the possibility of sending the freight train on the other track was studied by checking whether the other line is free. The number of detentions for precedences were 71 during test period. Out of these, 66 precedences could have been avoided by using the other track. Further, study of control chart show that the probability of both the tracks of a block section being occupied simultaneously was only 1020%. 4.0 EFFECT OF BI-DIRECTIONAL SIGNALLING ON LINE CAPACITY If trains were dispatched at regular intervals and all trains were of the same speed, capacity utilisation would be optimum. However, when different categories of trains (slow and fast) are dispatched, slow trains would have to be detained at stations to give precedence to fast trains as discussed earlier. Today, fast Mail and Express trains are run as per time table. After fixing the paths of these trains on the train chart, the slow freight trains are planned to be pushed during gaps. When a precedence is given, the slow speed train would have to wait at a station for a duration equal to the time taken by the fast train to cross two block sections (one in rear of the station and the other ahead of the station). Slow train S is received at the station B in the loop line and detained. The fast train following is allowed to go through on the main line of the station B. Fast train cannot enter the section between A and B, until the slow train is received at the station B loop line (since only one train can be present between stations at a time). Similarly the slow train cannot leave the station B until the fast train has reached the Station C. 4.1 Simulation Study To study the improvement that would accrue due to bi-directional signalling, a simulation exercise was undertaken. For this study, a section of 200 km was considered with 21 stations and 20 block sections. All block sections were assumed 157 SESSION - V to have equal lengths of 10 km. Two types of trains were assumed, to move on the section, one high speed mail train and the other low speed freight train. The proportion of high speed train (P) to the total trains was a variable in the simulation. A total of 200 trains (both high and low speed) were dispatched from one end of the section to the other and the run time of each train was noted to get the total train hours. The speed ratio (referred to as X) of the high and low speed trains was also a variable in the simulation. The arrival time of the train at section head was assumed to be uniformly distributed. Each station was assumed to have one loop line to permit precedence of a high speed train. The following assumptions were made in the simulation: (a) No time loss in slowing and acceleration of trains. (b) Operating procedure was considered ideal and operating time was taken as nil. (c) No speed restrictions in the block sections. (d) For in motion precedence, the low speed train would be allowed to run on the 2nd track with a probability Q (which was also a variable with values between (0 and 100%). (e) Only one train could be in a block section at any given time. The following parameters were obtained as output of the simulation exercise for different values of P, Q and X. a) b) c) e) f) 4.2 Run time of each train for the 200 km section. Number of times a train was stopped to give precedence to high speed train or when the track ahead was not free. Total detention time for each train. Total number of stops for 200 trains. Total wait period for all trains taken together. d) Sum of run time of all trains. Simulation Results The sum total of run times (train hours) of all trains is a parameter which would reflect the effectiveness of bi-directional signalling scheme. The true capacity or the number of trains that can be run on the section per day could be expressed in terms of the total train hours as follows. Let the total train hours for 200 trains with Q=0 (bi-directional signalling dis-allowed) be = TH 158 SESSION - V Average run time per train for the section = TH 200 (a section of 20 Blocks) Average run time of a train per block section = TH 200 x 20 Total number of trains that can be run per day or the capacity without bi-directional signaling or (C 1 ) = 24 x 200 x 20 TH The capacity (C 2) with the introduction of = 24 x 200 x 20(TH-£GTH) bi-directional signalling where £GƒnTH is the reduction in train hours as Q is made non-zero Improvement in capacity £GC = C2-C1 C1 = £GTH (TH-£GTH) (1) Simulation are carried out for the following parameters : a) c) Speed of high speed trains = 120 kmph P = 10, 30, 50, 80% b) Speed of low speed trains = 75 kmph, 60 kmph d) Q = 10, 30, 50, 80% Table 1 provides the total number of stops that all trains had to go through for a specific case of high speed train speed of 120 kmph and low speed train speed of 75 kmph for Q = 30% and P taking on values 10%, 30% 50% and 80%. Table 1 No of detentions Vs P for Q = 30% S.No 1 2 3 4 P(%) 10 30 50 80 No of Detentions 470 835 1056 495 It is obvious that the number of stops go to a maximum when P = 50%, i. e, when the number of high speed and low speed and are equal (maximum differential). The runtime results obtained for speed 120 kmph and 60 kmph are given in Table 2 and in Figure 5, the data for Q = 0 represents the case of uni-directional signalling and for values of Q other than zero represents bi-directional signalling. Table ¡V2 Total Runtime Vs P for Different value of Q, (X=120/60) P Q 0 10 30 50 80 10 54420 30 51575 45550 43370 40820 39130 48660 44350 41065 37235 159 SESSION - V 50 48275 80 38270 47540 44740 40725 34130 37900 36030 32920 27150 Similar results for train speed 120 kmph and 75 kmph are given in Table 3 and Figure 6. It is obvious that bi-directional signalling results in significant capacity improvement. Table ¡V3 Total Runtime Vs P for Different of Q (X=120/75) P/Q 10 42428 30 44625 50 43463 80 42428 0 10 30 50 80 35180 33600 32822 31494 37957 34840 33342 30476 39864 36429 33046 29041 35180 33600 32822 31494 Fig ¡V6. Total Runtime Vs P for Different values of Q (X=120/75). The improvement in capacity calculated using equation ¡V (1) for train speeds, 120 kmph, 75 kmph is given in Table 4. Table 4 Capacity Improvement £GC (%) vs P. S.No. for Q= 50%£GC for Q= 80% 1. 2. 3. 4. 10 30 50 80 20.0 17.5 20.0 26.0 28.0 26.0 29.2 33.8 31.5 29.2 34.7 46.4 49.6 34.7 P £GC for Q= 10% £GC for Q= 30% £GC 9.0 19.3 The capacity enhancement amounts to a value in between 20-50% depending on the value of Q and train mix value P. Q is typically very high and 40 ¡V 50% of capacity enhancement can be typical. 5. IMPLEMENTATION AND SAFETY Bi-directional signalling can be easily established with additional cross over at stations and signals. The additional cost is only marginal. The block working can be established through axle counters, for reduced operating time and increase in capacity in line with latest policy. 160 SESSION - V The proposed introduction of Anti Collision Device (ACD) on major routes will also enhance safety in bi-directional signalling. There is also proposal for mobile train radio communication on the golden quadrilateral which will also contribute to enhanced safety of train operation with bi-directional signalling. 6 CONCLUSION Bi-directional signalling on two way track and allowing of in motion precedence has a potential of increasing the capacity by 20-50% during normal working. In addition, this arrangement would enable use full capacity utilization of the available single line during line blocks, which would otherwise be very insignificant. Introduction of ACD, and radio communication with moving train will ensure that safety is not sacrificed. 161 SESSION - V LINE CAPACITY ON INDIAN RAILWAYS By N. K. Goel Chief Signal & Telecomm. Engineer, Northern Railway The throughput on a section can be increased either by increasing the throughput per train or by increasing the number of trains or a combination of both. This author describers, the various solutions for increasing throughput and concludes that modern signalling provides the most cost effective solution for increasing line capacity which can be implemented as a short term solution. INTRODUCTION Economic reforms initiated by India in 1990 led to faster GDP growth from 3.5 to 4 percent in the past to 5.5 to 6 percent during 1990-2000. In terms of transport output, this implies doubling of freight traffic every 9 to 10 years and doubling of passenger traffic every 7 to 8 years. Government of India has fixed the target of 8 percent GDP growth during 10th Five Year Plan which means faster growth in transport output. Indian Railways’ market share of freight traffic is about 40 percent and that of passenger traffic is about 20 percent. If IR has to maintain its market share, it should be able to handle 7 to 8 percent annual growth in transport output. Such a growth rate will put enormous pressure on the line capacity. Long Range Decision Support system (LRDSS) has forecasted capacity constraints on 188 rail links in the year 2006-07 based on 5 percent growth in freight traffic and 6 to 7 percent growth in passenger traffic. Huge investments are required to address the capacity issues on congested sections. Cost effective means of increasing capacity are to be identified and implemented in time so that transport bottlenecks do not become impediments in the economic growth of the country. CAPACITY DEFINITION Line capacity on IR has been traditionally calculated based on charted capacity. However, in actual field operations it has been observed that IR is operating more trains than the charted capacity in many sections. This brings out the fallacy in the methodology of calculating the line capacity. In fact, the LRDSS team in a number of computer simulations has found that the actual capacity of the sections is substantially more than the one calculated based on charted capacity. 163 SESSION - V In reality, there is no hard capacity of the section. If more trains are pushed in a section, the average speed of trains reduces as due to increased interactions between the trains the faster trains tend to slow down. In other words the transit time in the section increases due to congestion. Broad principle is that if a train takes X minutes in completing its journey in a section in case it is allowed to run freely without any hindrance from other trains then the section is considered saturated if the same train takes more than 1.5 X minutes due to interactions with other trains in the section. THROUGHPUT OF THE SECTION The capacity of a section depends upon the amount of freight traffic or passenger traffic carried through it. Throughput can be increased either by increasing the throughput per train or by increasing the number of trains in the section or the combination of both. There are basically three options available for increasing the throughput. • • • Increasing the freight train weight. Increasing the number of coaches and/or extensive use of double deck coaches in a passenger train. Increasing the number of trains. For a hypothetical line of a freight carrying railway, output defined as Net Tone per Year transported across the line can be grouped in five general components: a) b) c) d) e) The freight tonnage carried in an average wagon; The proportion of loaded to empty wagons to be moved in each direction on the route; The number of wagons in the average train; The number of trains which can pass over a line in a day; and How many days per year this level of operation can be sustained. Net tons Loaded Wagon Total wagons Trains Operating days This is summarised in the following equation: ×Net tons ——— = ———× Year Wagon load ——————× —————× ————× —————Total wagons Train Day Year In case of passenger carrying section, the freight tons carried per wagon will be substituted by number of passengers per coach. HIGHER CAPACITY FREIGHT WAGONS IR can increase the throughput per train by introducing high capacity wagons and increasing the length of the train by adding more wagons. Introduction of high capacity wagons calls for addressing the following issues: - 164 SESSION - V i. ii. iii. iv. v. vi. Decreasing the tare weight of the wagon and increasing the pay-load thereby increasing net to tare weight ratio; Decreasing the length of the wagon; Improving braking characteristics to keep braking distance within reasonable limits; Increasing axle load; Increasing track loading density; Double stacking of container service; vii. Customized wagons for transportation of road vehicles; and viii. Reducing empty movement of wagon. Higher capacity freight wagons are cheaper in terms of per ton of carrying capacity, provide more tonnage per unit length of train and increase net to tare ratio for the train. Equipment cost decline, crew and other train related costs are allocated to more tonnage and fuel efficiency per net ton moved improves. These advantages of high capacity wagons should be, however, compared with the increase in infrastructure costs such as making track suitable for higher axle loads and higher track loading density. Under heavier axle loads, some track components will wear faster requiring frequent maintenance and replacements. The track itself will have to be strengthened. Heavier freight wagons will also pose the risk of fatigue failure in case of bridges. Shorter life cycle and frequent maintenance requirement will increase track costs. In addition, longer/additional engineering blocks may be required for track maintenance. Additional costs will also have to be incurred for improving braking characteristics of the train. High capacity wagons may not give the desired benefits if the length of the wagon is increased for higher pay-loads as fewer wagons can be accommodated within the same train length. Therefore, the track loading density is to be increased along with the increase in axle load. TRACK LOADING DENSITY BOXN wagons have been designed to a maximum Track Loading Density (TLD) of 7.67 t/m. Major constraint in respect of TLD is on account of bridge design. In 1987, IR adopted MBG loading standard for bridges which permits TLD of 8.25 t/m. The effects of MBG loading were studied and guidelines for checking and strengthening of existing bridges were issued. It may therefore be possible to adopt 8.25 t/m track loading density for the future design of wagons. HIGHER AXLE LOADS With the introduction of higher axle loads, the rail stresses are expected to go up leading to reduction of fatigue life of track components like rails, fastenings, sleepers, etc. The 165 SESSION - V cost of track maintenance and inspection will also go up. The axle load of 20.32 ton for general freight stock on IR is very low as compared to 33 ton presently permitted on US rail roads. The new track being laid on Rajdhani route and on B routes having annual GMT of more than 20 is of 60 kg 90 UTS rail, 1660 sleeper density and 300/250 mm ballast cushion and on other low traffic density B routes the track is of 52 kg rails, 1540 sleeper density and 250 mm ballast cushion. In view of this there may not be much difficulty in introducing 25 MT axle load and 8.25 t/m TLD on routes where 60 kg rails have been laid. However, increasing the axle load further may require increasing the poundage of rails and the sleeper density. INCREASING THE TRAIN LENGTH The trailing load will increase if the length of the train is increased. This will necessitate use of multiple or higher horse power locomotives in order to keep the horse power to trailing weight ratio same. Increase in the length of train will also call for longer loops and high speed turn outs. For example, upgrading the existing rail line with 20.5 ton axle load and 800 m siding to the heavy haul design with 25 ton load and 1600 m train length will require the loop length of about 2000 m. 400 m extra loop line length is required so that the train clears the main line at the maximum permissible speed of the turn out and then safely decelerate to stop in the siding. In case the loop length of 400 m more than the longest train is not provided, the driver will have to apply the brakes much in advance to cater for longer braking distances and the train will take more time in clearing the main line thereby reducing the line capacity. INCREASING THE NUMBER OF TRAINS The throughput can also be increased by increasing the number of trains in a day in the section. This can be achieved either by laying additional track or by running more trains on the same track through improved signalling. In absolute block working system another train can not be sent into the block section unless the previous train has completely arrived at the next station and the reception signals are put back to normal. After complete arrival of last train the block section is closed, a fresh line clear is taken, the dispatch signals are cleared and the next train is dispatched. The next train, therefore, can be dispatched depending upon how fast the previous train clears the block section and how fast the signals at the station are operated. If t1 is the time taken by the slowest train for clearing the longest block section and t2 is the time taken for clearing the reception and dispatch signals and for closing the section and taking fresh line clear for another train then the minimum head way between trains can be t1 + t2 . If the head way between trains is t then: For preventing congestion In practice t ≥ (t1 + t2) t = P (t1 + t2), where P > 1 and ∝ 1/t, t1 is the block running time and t2 is the station operation time If the number of trains in the section is to be increased then the head way t should be 166 SESSION - V reduced or the station operation time t2 and block running time t1 should be reduced. P is the efficiency factor that depends upon the ability to dispatch the train immediately as soon as the previous train clears the block section and is normally more than one as some delay can not be avoided. P is also inversely proportional to the head way which means that more the congestion in the section greater will be the delay in dispatching the next train. Efficiency in dispatching the train increases by providing Centralised Traffic Control system since the controller comes to know instantaneously as soon as the previous train clears the block section. He also gets the information about the movement of other trains in the section and therefore the decision making process is expedited. BLOCK RUNNING TIME (T1 ) Block running time, which is the time taken by the slowest train to clear the longest block section, can be reduced by the following: • • • Increasing the speed of the trains. Reducing the speed differential between the slowest and the fastest train in the section. Reducing the length of the block section. It is more important to reduce the speed differential between slow and fast trains rather than increasing the speed of a few trains in the section thereby further increasing the speed differential. There are two ways of reducing length of the block section. The inefficient way is to provide the stations at closer spacing. This will increase the expenditure in train operation and will not be a cost effective solution. The other way is to split the block section by providing Intermediate Block Huts (IBH) or Intermediate Block Signalling (IBS) or Automatic Block Signalling (ABS). ABS is the most widely used system for increasing the line capacity. It can increase the capacity by as much as 100 percent without increasing the transit time through the section appreciably. On IR, ABS has been provided mostly in suburban sections and covers about 2.7 percent of railway track as compared to 90 percent in UK, 67 percent in Japan and 84 percent in China. With ABS, Chinese Railways are able to run 143 trains each way in a day on Beijing – Zhengzhou section which is a double line section. 167 SESSION - V STATION OPERATION TIME (T2) Reduction in station operation time depends upon how fast the signalling system at the station can be operated and how fast the line clear from the adjacent station can be obtained. Centralised operation of point and signals with relay based or solid state interlocking (PI) and axle counter block working are the fastest means of operation of signalling system at the stations. Panel interlocking enables setting of points and clearing of signals by one person from a central location at the station thus eliminating coordination time between cabins and reducing the station operation time t2. A study of station operation time for various types of signalling systems indicates that t2 reduces from 2 minutes 53 seconds to 1 minute 33 seconds if central panel is provided instead of end cabin system. Keeping this in view, Railway Board has issued the policy directive that in future central panel with axle counter block working should be provided wherever new signalling is provided at the station. CONCLUSION The throughput on a section can be increased either by increasing the throughput per train or by increasing the number of trains or a combination of both. Introduction of high capacity wagons and double deck coaches and longer trains are the important issues to be addressed for increasing the throughput per train. This is a time consuming process and call for heavy investments in rolling stock and track infrastructure. These issues therefore should be addressed in the medium and long term. Modern signalling systems provide cost effective solution for increasing line capacity which can be implemented as a short term measure so that rail transport system does not become a bottleneck in the economic growth of the country. 168 SESSION - V AUTOMATIC TRAIN CHARTING (on Kota Division) by Piyush Mathur, Sr. Divisional Signal & Telecom Engineer Western Region, Railway Topics Covered in the Presentation • Limitations of Manual Charting • Computerized Train Charting. • Data loggers in Kota Division • Features of Data logger based Train Charting • Report Generation • Financial aspects LIMITATIONS OF MANUAL TRAIN CHARTING • • • • • • • Timings for each Train & from each Station Human errors in plotting Charting is not neat & clean Only one copy is available for all purposes Forecasting is Limited & not precise Report generation require more man hours & may be inaccurate One has to go to the Controller to watch Train movement Controller 169 SESSION - V COMPUTERIZED TRAIN CHARTING. • • Controller feeds the information in computer rather than recording on Chart. (Adopted at Chennai, Delhi & Palghat Divisions) This results in improved working and lots of benefits as experienced by the Railways who have introduced computerised train charting. LIMITATIONS OF COMPUTERIZED TRAIN CHARTING • • • • SM has to repeat train Arr/Dep or passing timings to Controller on control phone Controller has to enter this information on computer. Delay in giving information by SM to controller may be critical for taking decision. Controllers are reluctant in entering all information on computer particularly in sections having more traffic. DATA LOGGERS IN KOTA DIVISION • Data logger networking was provided by Kota division for preventive maintenance. Kota - GGC Section : 25 GGC - MTJ Section : 19 Kota – NAD Section : 29 • • On line & Off line Simulation of train movement ,signal aspects and point position. Automatic train charting developed as spin off benefit. Kota Gangapur Section Monitoring system Microwave Backup KTT ‘A’ KTT ‘B’ NNW LRU GGCA RE TELECOM CABLE 25 Data loggers , 23 stations , 170 SESSION - V T R A C K S I M U L A T I O N YARD LAYOUT & SIMULATION Signal positions, tracks, level crossings, routes, knobs, etc. 171 SESSION - V DATA LOGGER BASED TRAIN CHARTING ON KOTA DIVISION • Commissioned on Kota-Nagda Kota- Gangapur City Gangapur City - Mathura Since then working satisfactorily FEATURES OF DATA LOGGER BASED TRAIN CHARTING Aid to the Controller. ü ü ü ü ü It saves his time for drawing Chart and taking times. It permits More time for better Planning and controlling train movement. Automatic Forecasting of Train movement helps him for planning Maintenance blocks. Can monitor average speed in block section. Can observe status all lines of all stations on line - Feb’2002 - Mar’ 2002 - Dec’ 2002 Plotting is almost on real time basis Seamless change over of trains to other control sec. FEATURES • • • Controller can have adjacent control chart on his screen. Up & Down trains can be viewed separately Possible to see the train timings in tabular form also. Useful tools. ü • • ….CONT Do & undo Linking /De-linking, drawing lines & blocks, highlighting trains, searching trains. Entry Forms for feeding Train Details. Reminder of block completion by blinking. 172 SESSION - V FEATURES • Predictions ü ü ü ü ü ü Preferences of the Trains- (imp & less important trains). Booked speed Speed Restrictions Train speed Maintenance blocks User friendly – Controller can Change preferences according to the situation. ….CONT FEATURES • • • • • • • • Possible to put comments & directly recording unusual on chart. Master chart is mouse click away. Master chart can be mapped on to the actual chart. Schedule timings of trains can be seen in tabular form. Time lost/gained in block section is displayed on line. Caution orders are displayed on the screen. Dual monitors – 1. Dedicated to Chart 2. Showing Entry Forms In case of Auto mode failure ordinary computer charting is possible. ….CONT STATISTICAL REPORTS • • • • • LTM Brief / Detail Report Train wise Punctuality Report Unusual Report Engine Utilization Report Caution Order Report 173 SESSION - V • • • REPORTS Block wise / Dept. Wise Block Report TOR Report WKM / NTKM Report FINANCIAL ASPECTS • • • • • • Cost of one Data logger at station For one Control section(about 20 station) Control room Hardware&Software Train charting Hardware at control office Train charting software Total cost for one control section 1.6 Lakh 32.0 Lakh 3.4 Lakh 8.0 Lakh 2.0 Lakh 46.9 Lakh 174 SESSION - V RAIL FRACTURE DETECTION USING SIEMENS AFTC TVPE FTG S by Naresh T Advani Siemens Ltd. 1. GENERAL Rail fractures pose a serious threat to safe train operation, as past accidents on Indian Railways are testimony to. In order to be able to avoid the occurrence of dangerous accidents, arising out of rail fractures, it is imperative that rail fractures are detected promptly and over the complete length of tracks on which passenger trains ply. Audio Frequency track Circuits (AFTC), of Siemens make and type FTG S. which are primarily used for track vacancy detection, can also be used to detect rail fractures on sections which are equipped with them. Since, however, these track circuits are predominantly installed in electrified areas, where either an earth rail is connected to the tracks or the tracks themselves are earthed to the OHE masts, it is not possible to detect rail fractures at all locations on the tracks. The Audio-frequency choke (TFG - acronym in German) ensures that every possible rail fracture at any point on the tracks would get detected, so long as the fracture results in an electrical isolation in the rail. The TFG can be used at all locations which are equipped with the Siemens Audio Frequency Track Circuit type FTG S. 2. FUNCTION The installation of the audio-frequency choke (TFG) requires a closed electrical circuit. The essential components of this electrical circuit are the earth rail and the isolated rail. One needs to differentiate between intermeshed and non-intermeshed track circuits in connection with rail fracture detection. Non-intermeshed Track Circuit: Detection of rail fracture as an electrical isolation in both rails resulting out of substantial reduction of the received voltage Track occupied indication in case of rail fracture of the concerned track circuit (Fig 1 ) 175 SESSION - V Fig. 1 Track Circuit without intermeshing and with rail fracture Legend: SV Erdschiene Sender Abstimm-BG "S" Bond Earth Rail Transmitter Tuning Unit SB isolierte Schiene Empfanger Rail Fracture Isolated rail Receiver Intermeshed Track Circuit: Unrestricted detection of rail fracture resulting out of an electrical isolation in the isolated rail (electrical separation) Current flows over the intermeshing in case of rail fracture in the earth rail (Fig. 2) Reduction in the receiver voltage is dependent on the intermeshing arrangement In case of rail fracture in the earth rail, the detection is limited and dependent on the location of the rail fracture, topography of the track circuit and intermeshing arrangement, and the adjustment of the track circuit Track Circuit FTG S 46 / 917 with intermeshing Fig. 2 Track Circuit with intermeshing and with rail fracture 176 SESSION - V Legend: SV Erdschiene Sender Abstimm-BG "S" Bond Earth Rail Transmitter Tuning Unit SB isolierte Schiene Empfanger Vermaschung Rail Fracture Isolated rail Receiver Intermeshing Intermeshed Track Circuit with AF Choke (TFG) AF choke (TFG) introduced in each intermeshing branch Unrestricted detection of rail fracture in case of fracture in the isolated rail (electrical isolation) leading to substantial reduction of the receiver voltage Track section occupied indication in case of rail fracture in the associated track section (Fig. 3) Track Circuit FTG S 46 / 917 with intermeshing and AF Choke TFG Fig. 3 Track Circuit with AF Choke in the Intermeshing path Legend: SV Erdschiene Sender Abstimm-BG TFG "S" Bond Earth Rail Transmitter Tuning Unit AF Choke SB isolierte Schiene Empfanger Vermaschung Rail Fracture Isolated rail Receive Intermeshing 177 SESSION - V The prototype of the AF Choke (TFG) designed, developed and manufactured by Siemens has been installed, and is in operation since 1999 in Norway with the Railway operator "Jernbaneverket". 3. PRINCIPLE OF OPERATION By means of an appropriate AF Choke in the path of the intermeshing at each point on the rail, the audio-frequency current flowing through the intermeshing path is reduced substantially. Thus, this audio-frequency current is flows almost entirely along the earth rail and the isolated rail of the track circuit. The alternate path via that offered by the intermeshing offers a very high resistance to the audio-frequency current. However, for the traction return current the intermeshing path remains virtually a short so that the appropriate path for the traction return current is ensured even in case of rail fracture. In case of rail fracture, the current flowing to the receiver gets substantially reduced. As a result of this, the associated track circuit is declared as being occupied and the rail fracture resulting in galvanic separation of the isolated rail gets detected. (Fig. 3) The introduction of the AF chokes leads to a reduced damping of the track circuit. Thus, the audio frequency track circuit is suitably adjusted in such cases. An impermissible voltage increase, even in the extreme situation of a short-circuit in the AF choke, is thus eliminated. The removal of an AF choke from the intermeshing path causes a reduction in the receiver voltage of the track circuit. By means of the exclusive use of an appropriate AF choke, the high resistance offered by the intermeshing path to audio frequency currents can be ensured. Voltage spikes, which are possible when using parallel resonance circuits e.g. when component values drift from their nominal range, do not occur with the use of AF chokes. 4. CONSTRUCTION The purpose of the AF choke is to provide a high resistance electrical separation from the intermeshing path for audio frequency signals by means of an inductive resistance, which causes a reduction in the current flowing through the intermeshing path. Owing to the high values of traction return currents, the AF choke is designed using copper coils having a large cross-section and heavy-duty bolts. At the same time, the choke has a high inductive value, which, considering the large crosssection and low number of turns, can only be achieved by using ferrite cores. These cores are provided with air gaps in order to avoid saturation effects in the range of operation and to achieve the desired inductance value. 178 SESSION - V Fig. 4 AF Choke at the track-side In order to provide mechanical stability and proper channel for heat transfer, the choke is mounted on a simple base plate and enclosed in a track-side connection box (Fig. 4). Further constructional characteristics of the AF choke (TFG): Interface connection between outdoor cable and AF choke cable is suitable for carrying high currents Interface isolation between the choke and the track-side connection box Type of connections (Fig. 5) Each connection point is directed vertically below and fitted with a heatshrinkable tube to provide isolation The ends of the coil (inside the box) are at right angles to the connecting bolts Connection bolts are provided for connecting the box to earth The pipe at the base of the box is 1000 mm. long isolated with a rubber sheath (smaller lengths are also possible) 179 SESSION - V Connection box dimensions (Length x Breadth x Height): 359mm x 359mm x 305mm Weight approx. 35 Kg. Fig. 5 AF Choke (TFG) Connections: outer = choke connections; middle = earth connection 5. TESTS The necessary type tests required to be performed before using the AF choke (TFG) been completed successfully. Testing the current carrying capacity The testing of the current carrying capacity was carried out in line with the requirements of the railway operators. The current carrying capacity of the AF choke (TFG) was checked under the following conditions: continuous current rating: AC 150 Amps . impulse current rating: AC 20 kA. 180 SESSION - V - length of current impulse: 140 ms or 300 ms Fig 5. Impulse diagram with impulse duration of 140 ms The same diagram is valid for impulse duration of 300 ms with the impulses being 300 ms long. High-voltage Test The high-voltage test is conducted by applying 2.5kVeff between the AF choke connections and the connection box for a duration of 2 sees. This test is performed with the coil connections of the AF choke shorted. 6. CONCLUSION There is a tailor-made solution available with the House of Siemens to provide the feature of reliable rail fracture detection in electrified areas by means of appropriate installation of the AF Chokes in intermeshed track sections where the Siemens AFTC type FTG S have been installed. The use of the AF choke ensures that all rail fractures, resulting in galvanic isolation of the rail section under consideration, would be detected, which would be of immense benefit to Indian Railways. Thus, the AFTC of Siemens type FTG S could play an instrumental role in providing both the function of track vacancy detection as also the feature of rail fracture detection for track sections where it is installed in conjunction with the AF choke. 181 SESSION - V SIZING A DATA LOGGER SYSTEM by LR Chandru Sr. Vice President, KJS Rao Engineer & NK Chennamaneni Engineer HBL FIFE Power System With data logger now moving out from a passive—logging device to a pro-active maintinana and fault analysis device there is need to have closer look System capacity of datologger. Based on experience gained this paper....brings out guidlines for sizing up the Data logger vis-avis the system requirement of a station/yard. It is an accepted fact that Data Loggers can be used as an invaluable aid to improving reliability in Railway Signaling. However, it is seen that there is not enough information available to optimally size a Data Logger System for a given station or network of stations. It is also seen that with improving software and other analytical techniques, the role of a data logger is fast moving from a passive-logging device to a proactive maintenance and failure analysis system. This paper addresses this important issue for the following reasons: 1. Considering individual data loggers: If a data logger is undersized, there may be many vital and non-vital inputs that may be missed when the equipment is actually hooked on to the Data Logger system. This incomplete information, due to non provision of adequate Digital or Analog Inputs to the data logger results in an incomplete picture of the yard status and thus defeats the very purpose of installing Data Loggers. Considering a Networked Data Logger System: If the individual Data Loggers and other associated equipment that make up the Network are not properly defined for their size and capacity, the installation cannot be complete. In other words, if the information given in the specifications to the supplier is not complete, again the purpose of the exercise is defeated. If either or both of the above happen, a lot of unwarranted time, effort and money will need to be expended both by the Railways and the Supplier to rectify this problem. If the Data Logger System is sized to suit the exact existing requirements, there is no possibility for accommodating any extra requirements that will arise due to technology upgrades, new equipment, new inputs to accommodate new information/features on 2. 3. 4. 183 SESSION - V existing data loggers due to improvements on the software, or line/capacity expansion. It would therefore be prudent to keep sufficient margin to meet the above needs in the initial stage itself. This paper attempts to give the information needed as a guideline for sizing the Data Logger System Requirements of a station/yard, based on the RDSO specification No. IRS: S99 / 2001. SIZING AN INDIVIDUAL DATA LOGGER: The following factors are to be considered while deciding the configuration of individual Data Logger (i.e. the number of Digital Inputs and the number of Analog Inputs) for a specific station. 1) The number of Analog inputs and Digital inputs required at a station can be decided depending on the size of the yard and location of its various functions. A typical 4 road wayside station can be considered to have 11 main signals, 3 shunt signals, 2 calling-on signals, 3 slots, 6 points, 3 crank handles, 30 Track circuits, and about 45 panel push buttons / switches and other equipment. The concerned relays will be in the Relay Room or sometimes in the field location boxes. An example of such a yard is given in an Annexure of this paper. In addition to the above inputs, some specific conditions like fuse blown-off, battery charger defective, battery low voltage etc need to be monitored on analog or digital side through Data Logger. For monitoring these as Digital Inputs, potential free contacts should be provided by connecting them to relays. These inputs can also be monitored as Analog Inputs. If they have to be monitored as Analog Inputs, one Analog Input Isolation card for each such input will be required. Increasing the number of Digital Inputs is much cheaper and easier when compared to increasing Analog Inputs. However, it does not mean that only Digital Inputs should be always preferred. Analog Inputs are definitely required when considering power supplies and the like. As per RDSO specification No. IRS: 99 / 2001, the minimum number of inputs for any Data Logger has been specified as 512 Dls and 32 Als. It is expandable up to 4096 Dls and 96 Als. 2) 3) 4) Apart from the above minimum requirements, provision must also be made for expansion of the Data Logger system considering upgrading of technology and increased capacity that will be required when the yard is upgraded to meet increasing traffic demands and enhanced safety requirements. It would also be a good idea to have a provision for a technology buffer for accommodating inputs that would be required while enhancing the functionality of the Data Logger due to newer and improved versions of software. It would therefore be practical to provide an increase of 20%, over the basic requirement works. Considering the example given in the annexures, the requirement now works out to be: 184 SESSION - V Digital Inputs = 600 X 1.2 = 720 Analog Inputs = 17 X1.2= 20.4=20 Sizing of larger stations or yards can be done on the same basis. The decision on the number of Digital Inputs and Analog Inputs can thus be made considering: • • Actual Present Requirement Expansion Factor. This will ensure maximum utilization of the Data Logger System in respect of all the various utilities and functions that it offers. One may entertain a genuine doubt as to why all repeater relays have to be read by the data logger. The answer is ‘because it helps in the failure diagnosis of the signalling functions’. In a particular circuit, if ASPR or GNPR or TPPR is proved whose input is not fed to the data logger and only its principal relay is read, correct conclusions cannot be made in finding the cause of failure. Therefore, if one wishes to have the advantage of failure diagnostics provided by a sophisticated data logger system, reading the condition of various repeater relays is very much called for. Precluding the need for diagnosing the faults developed in non-vital functions as a must, a modest count of one repeater relay for every function control or detection relay is made while assessing the minimum required inputs to be read. Apart from the basic Data Logger, some other support equipment is required for the Data Logger System to function. These should also be considered when drawing up the specifications for purchase. Input Supply: Data Loggers as per RDSO specification, have to function with an input supply of 24VDC, which is expected to be provided by the Railways. In case the Railway is unable to provide an uninterrupted 24VDC supply, the same can be procured from the Data Logger manufacturer by ordering separately for a suitable battery with a charger. In case of a networked Data Logger with external modems, additional Input supply to suit the modems is also to be provided by the Railways. Generally the operating voltage of these external modems is 230 VAC. Printer: A standard Data Logger is provided with a port for connecting an 80 or 132 column Dot matrix-printer only. If an inkjet printer is to be connected, a PC will be required. The required type of Dot matrix printer (80 or 132 column) should be specified clearly while ordering. 185 SESSION - V Figures: Station / Cabin Station / Cabin CMU (Local P.C.) Data Logger Printer other than Dot matrix Dot Matrix Printer only Data Logger Local PC: Even though a Data Logger can function as a separate unit with only a Dot matrix printer, the full capability of the Data Logger can be utilized only with the use of a Local PC. Except for network management related tasks, all other functions of CMU (Central Monitoring Unit) including Fault Analysis can be performed with the Local PC loaded with customized application software for a specific station / yard. SIZING OF DATA LONGER NETWORK: A network consists of individual Data Loggers at different stations, yards and cabins that are connected together so that information gathering, analysis and report generation can be done from a central location. The process of sizing a Data Logger that is going to be a part of the network, is the same as that of sizing a stand-alone Data Logger. However, to form the network, the following are required: Front End Processor (FEP): A Front End Processor is a network manager that acquires data from Data Loggers located at various stations and stores the same. In a network, all the Data Loggers and an FEP are connected in a ring form and the FEP is connected to the CMU. The FEP transfers the acquired data to the CMU as and when a request for the same is received. FEPs are required only when networking of Data Loggers needs to be done. One FEP is required for each network. One network can have upto 32 Data Loggers. FEPs are not directly connected with Fault Analysis Software and hence the term PC based FEP is misleading and avoidable. The Fault Analysis software resides in the CMU. Figure: 186 SESSION - V Networked Datalogger Modems. FEP. CMU and Printer Central Monitoring Unit (CMU): The CMU is a PC loaded with customized application software for a group of stations / yards. The CMU acquires the data of all the Data Loggers in the network through FEP. CMU can be used to display and report a variety of activities, records and alarms. Failure analysis is part of the application software and therefore the CMU is also referred to as Failure Analysis System (FAS) at times. The minimum configuration for a PC / CMU and its features are part of the RDSO specification. Modems: Modems are required for connecting Data Loggers with each other and to the FEP. Every Data Logger will require a pair of Modems and the FEP will also require a pair of Modems. Modems can be built-in (with separate Modem Card) as part of the Data Logger or as separate bought out units. RDSO approved Modems are available ex-stock in the market and can be replaced immediately if they go faulty by the regular maintenance crew. Built-in Modems have the disadvantage of requiring the attention of the manufacturer’s Service Engineers if faults arise. Communication Link: The responsibility of providing communication links between stations and central control location is with the Railways and the termination of this communication link to suit the standard Modem should be made available to the Data Logger manufacturer at the stations, yards, and control-room to be networked. 187 SESSION - V ANNEXURE - 2: The typical yard considered for minimum requirement for data logger inputs is a small 4 road wayside station. It has one ON loop line, one common loop line, one goods line having 2 slotted GF controlled points and a level crossing gate. The Signalling functions provided are as below : 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Number of 3-Asp main signals Number of 2-Asp main signals Number of C.O signals Number of shunt signals Number of points Number of C. H. controls Number of slots (LX etc) Number of track circuits Number of Routes Group of Digital Inputs ECRs & repeaters HR’s HHR’s, DR’s or equivalent & repeaters Point operating relays NWR’s, RWR’s or equivalent & repeaters Point indicating relays NWKR’s, RWKR’s or equivalent (including WNKR if provided) & repeaters Buttons, Knob relays and their Repeaters Track and Axle counter relays & Repeaters Timer repeater relays Intermediate interlocking relays like UCR, ASR, JSLR etc. or equivalent & Repeaters. Emergency operation relays (e.g. route cancellation, overlap cancellation, point operation under emergency, crank handle release, gate release etc) & their Repeaters. CH, GF LX release and indication relays with Repeaters Relays concerned with block instruments and SM’s key Miscellaneous relays -6 -5 -2 -3 -6 -3 -3 - 30 -16 Existing Requirement 72 66 24 36 90 60 9 134 40 12 28 19 Minimum Number of Digital Inputs: 600 188 SESSION - V 189 SESSION - V Vital power supplies to be considered for monitoring as Analog Inputs. Button Relays: GNRs WWRs YNRs CHYNRs UNRs Com. Button Relays Total Their Repeaters Total DRs: A/S DRs MNSr DRs H/S DRs Dist DRs Total UHRs MERs Total Sig Contr Relays Repeaters Total –2 –2 –2 –2 –8 –3 –6 = 33 = 33 = 66 –14 –6 –3 –3 –8 –11 –45 –45 –90 Int Interlock Relays TSRs VCRs ASRs JSLRs WLRs WJRs Total Repeaters Total –7 –16 –16 –16 –6 –6 –67 –67 –134 HR’s : MN sig HRs 8A sig HRs CO Hrs Total Dist HHRs –9 –3 –2 –14 –2 Block Realy & Others (SMR) LCRs ZCRs SRs SNCRs SMR Total Repeaters Total –3 –6 –2 –2 –1 –14 –14 –28 190 SESSION - V Type of Analog Input 230 V AC 110 V AC 24 V AC 12 V AC 1 V AC — Axle Counter 110 V DC 80 V DC 72 V DC Requirement 3 2 1 1 2 2 — — Minimum number of Analog Inputs: 17 This means that the minimum Digital Inputs and Analog Inputs that are required in such a yard will be as follows: Digital Inputs = 600 Analog Inputs = 17 Type of AnalogInput 60 V DC 48V DC 24 V DC 18 V DC 12 V DC 6 V DC 3 V DC Requirement 2 — 2 — 2 191 SESSION - VI 192 SESSION - VI ROUTE RELAY INTERLOCKING WITH AUDIO FREQUENCY TRACK CIRCUITS by Shri R.C.Tripathi Chief S&T Engineer/Central Railway Shri Naresh Kumar Chief S&T Engineer (Const.) Central Railway While AFTC have been in use on straight track for many years on Indian Railway, its adoption in point zone few. Successful commissioning of RRIs at Datavali on Central Railway; with AFTC both on straight portion and in point zone in is the first major step in using AFTC for full yard on Indian Railways. In this paper the authors describe their experiences on AFTC design, the field problems encountered and the reliability improvement achieved in the functioning of RRI at Datavali & Panvel stations. 1. INTRODUCTION A New Route Relay Interlocking installation, as a part of Diva - Vasai Doubling Project has been commissioned at Dativali station in October 2001, on CSTM - KYN suburban section of Mumbai Division of Central Railway. Since the work of conversion of 1500V DC traction system to 25 KV AC traction system is already in progress in Mumbai suburban transport systems of both Central and Western Railways, the work had to be done meeting requirements of signaling in 25 KV AC Traction area. Presently, in the 1500 V DC traction system, track circuiting has been done using Siemens make AC track relays. All old installations in Mumbai Division are having AC track relays, which are not suitable for 25 KV AC traction, going to be introduced all over Mumbai area in phases in next 5-6 years. Therefore entire signaling system in Mumbai Division of both Central and Western Railway is being made suitable for 25KV AC Traction by • • • • Changing all AC track circuits by Audio frequency track circuits. Providing secondary battery backed power supply for all signaling subsystems. Providing earths for equipments, cables, block circuits, Block filters etc. Providing AC immune relays, Point machines with higher immunity and other protective measures for external circuits. All new signaling installations (PIs, RRIs, Automatic signaling) in Mumbai area are being commissioned with above provisions including Audio Frequency track circuits (AFTC). Therefore Dativali RRI has been commissioned with Audio Frequency Track circuits. This is the first RRI installation on Indian Railways with Audio Frequency track circuits. 193 SESSION - VI 2. SALIENT FEATURES OF DATIVALI RRI Dativali station lies between Diva & Dombivali stations on CSTM - KYN section of Mumbai Division. Dativali Route Relay Interlocking installation has been commissioned with Siemens make metal to metal relays, group relays, Point machines and Siemens make `FTGS' type Audio Frequency track circuits of `remote feed' variety. Dativali yard consists of basically two portions, main line portion consisting of the 2 `Through' lines and 2 `Slow' lines and the yard portion consisting of three lines (2 Up & Dn loops with one common loop). Dativali yard daily handles about 375 trains in all the four directions. The work pertaining to 5th & 6th lines has also been completed simultaneously. Important yard statistics are given in Table-1 below. Table - 1 FUNCTIONAL 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Main signals Shunt Signals `Calling On' signals `A' Markers Track Circuits Point Machines No. of Routes 24 10 15 03 71 34 75 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 3. INSTALLATION Relay Racks Block Instts. K-50 Mini groups K-50 Interlocked mini groups. RRI Point Group Point Chain Group Signal Groups Route Groups AFTCs 44 Nos. 1 pair 545 128 18 04 28(24+4) 22 71 ADVANTAGES OF REMOTE FED JOINTLESS TYPE AFTCS Provision of AFTCs is not only a technical necessity because of introduction of 25 KV AC traction, it has a host of advantages over conventional DC track circuits provided all over Indian Railways. Some of the major advantages are listed below • It drastically reduces the number of Insulated / Glued joints, which require intensive maintenance. Only 2 insulated joints over the crossing portion in Point zone track circuits are required and the straight Track circuits can be free of joints. Transmitter & Receiver comprising the main active components of this track circuit can be located in a central location at a distance of up to 6.5 KM from the actual track circuit. At site, only passive components, i.e. tuning units, S / a bond, track connections are used. Thus it permits centralization of electronics / track circuit equipment in relay room. It makes use of 12 different frequencies, which is sufficient to map any yard. • • 194 SESSION - VI • It makes use of Frequency modulation / FSK technique, making it immune to interference due to harmonics generated by modern Thyrister / IGBT based locomotives. The receiver not only senses the amplitude of the received signal but also the frequency of the modulated signal. The bit pattern of the modulating envelope is additional safety feature. It can be easily upgraded to a coded track circuit to transmit additional track-side information (Data transmission from track to train) for CATC use at a later stage. Up to 10 FTGS track circuits can be accommodated in one relay rack. Diagnostic aid in the form of LED indicators on PCBs to facilitate early detection of faults and replacements at card level, ensure very high `maintainability' & 'availability'. With electrical track section separation, the `traction return current' is fed back via both the rails. • • • • • 4. SELECTION OF AFTCS As per the Interlocking plan and the route section plan, frequency planning was done in consultation with the manufacturer so that no two adjacent track circuits had same frequencies. Four quad cable was laid in the entire yard to carry the transmitter signal from relay room to the tuning unit at site and from receiver to the relay room. A general schematic diagram showing various components of AFTC is enclosed as figure - A. M/ s Siemens was advised about the frequencies and the number of AFTCs of various types required for Dativali yard. Frequency used are i) ii) 4750 Hz, 5250 Hz, 5750 Hz, 6250 Hz for FTGS 46 St or M 9500 Hz, 10500 Hz, 11500 Hz, 12500 Hz, 13500 Hz, 14500 Hz, 15500Hz, 16500 Hz for FTGS 917 St, W, KR Frequency Shift used in FSK technique = ±64 Hz Transmission speed (keying speed) = 100 Hz (200 Bd). Following 5 types of, Remote fed `FTGS' type (Siemens make) Audio Frequency Track circuits have been used. • • • FTG S 917 St, 24 Nos, for straight track sections of length up to 300 m (Fig - 1). FTG S 46 St, 10 Nos, for straight track sections (i) 400< L< 750 m if Rb > 2.5 Ohms, (ii) 300< L < 600 m if Rb > 1.5 Ohms (Fig - 1). FTG S 46 M, 7 Nos, for straight track sections, center fed variety for lengths > 600 m (Fig - 1). 195 SESSION - VI • • FTG S 917 W, 28 Nos, for point zone with 2 Receivers (Fig - 2). FTG S 917 KR, 2 Nos, for point zone with 3 Receivers (Fig - 3,4,5). The number and location of S bonds and a bonds were decided accordingly. 12 different frequencies with 15 different 8 bit patterns in transmitter allow 180 combinations. 5. COMMISSIONING METHODOLOGY Considering the fact that 1.5 KM of existing Main line track portion required slewing to suit the new lay out, only five motor points out of 34 remaining at their original place, all track circuits to be replaced by AFTCs and all the signals except two were to be placed at new locations, the work was carried out in phases in a planned manner to avoid cancellation, detention and regulations of traffic during execution of the work. Most of the work was carried out in night traffic blocks so that suburban services are maintained during day time peak hours. The work was briefly carried out as under Preparatory work a. In preparatory blocks initially 1.5 KMs of existing Main Line was slewed in three different blocks to suit new alignment of DN Main Line. To have this realignment work four Nos. of Signals and Ten Nos. of Track ckts were temporally shifted in the existing yard. Turn outs which were feasible, inserted on running lines and linking completed before Non Interlocking. Connection between Main Line and Branch Line was re-aligned by inserting new cross overs and commissioning two new turn-outs from existing Dombivali RRI to give existing flexibility in the yard in order to maintain existing level of traffic. First block was operated during the night shut down period, in which DN and UP Through lines were transferred to new Dativali RRI without any detention and regulation of traffic. During this block alterations were also carried out in Diva and Dombivali RRI cabins to suit new Inter cabin control circuits (ICC). After transferring UP & DN 'Through Lines' in new Dativali RRI cabin, Diva - Vasai traffic was diverted via newly laid 5th Line. b. In second block, existing Loop No.1 was disconnected and all cross overs at CSTM end were connected to their proper alignment with traffic diverted via new DN Main Line. In third block, UP and DN Loop Line was connected to UP and DN Main Line by inserting cross over after dismantling existing track at KYN end of Dativali yard. During above activities at b & c, AFTCs were charged in the affected areas and Points & Signals were tested from Panel. b. c. Non interlocking work a. c. 196 SESSION - VI Simultaneously alterations were also carried out in Diva and Dombivali RRI cabins to suit double line working to avoid extra blocks. 6. RELATIVE PERFORMANCE OF RRI WITH AC TRACK CIRCUITS & AFTCS In order to arrive at realistic assessment about improvement due to provision of AFTCs in lieu of AC track circuits, failure data has been collected for Dombivli RRI installation, which earlier was controlling the Dativali portion of the yard. Dativli RRI was commissioned on 31st October 2001. 6.1 DOMBIVALI RRI Track circuits before commissioning of doubling at Dombivali - 82 Nos. Track circuits after commissioning of doubling at Dombivali - 69 Nos. Month &Year April 2001 May 2001 June 2001 July 2001 August 2001 September 2001 October 2001 Total Failures 13 11 13 5 9 12 15 Track circuit failures 4 8 6 3 5 8 7 During this period, the installation had AC Track circuits. The track circuit failures from April 2001 to October 2001 for AC track circuits are 41out of total signal failures of 78. TC failures / TC / month come to 0.071. 6.2 DATIVALI Month &Year October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 Total Failures 5 5 11 2 6 14 9 AFTC failures 2 1 6 Nil 3 4 4 197 SESSION - VI Dativali has 71 AFTCs. The number of AFTC failures from Oct 2002 to April 2003 is 20 out of total signal failures of 52. AFTC failures / TC / month come to 0.040. It can be seen that there is a marked improvement in failures attributed to track circuits after provision of AFTCs in lieu of conventional AC track circuits. 7. INSTALLATION The AFTCs are installed on Siemens type relay racks with fuses on top of the racks as can be seen in Figure - 6. Each AFTC is provided with a Power supply unit on the back side of the relay rack. The transmitter output from the relay rack goes in one pair of the 4 quad cable, to the feed end tuning unit provided by the side of the track. Similarly, the output from the receiver end tuning unit comes to the receiver in the relay room in another pair of the 4 quad cable. The photographs of AFTC, Power supply unit, tuning units, connections to track are enclosed as figures 7 to 11. A schematic diagram for AFTC and schematic diagrams for S & a bonds are given in figures A, B & C below. F2 F1 Track connection box with tuning unit A F3 A Outdoor equipment Indoor equipment Transmitter/modulator Receiver / Evaluator Track vacancy indication (Figure - A) 198 SESSION - VI FTGS 46 FTGS 917 9m 3.2 m 9m 3.2 m (Figure -B) FTGS 46 FTGS 917 6.7 m 1.75m (Figure -C) 8. PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED & SOLUTIONS EVOLVED So far ATFCs had been provided only on straight portion of track in Automatic Signalling sections. In Dativili, AFTCs have been provided in point zones for the first time. A numbers of problems were encountered. Solutions to these problems were found through a heuristic approach as well as from literature. Some of the important problems along with solutions are listed below:1. The audio frequency signal received at the receiver end was poor, because of higher voltage drop due to increase in length of track leads in "cross over" portion of point zones. This was leading to frequent failure of the TC. The track leads were duplicated in cross over portion wherever the track leads were more than 3.5 m length. It was found that in long berthing portions, if Rx and Tx are placed sequentially in series, the LED indications on Rx-1 card starts flickering even though the track circuit does not pick up due to different bit pattern. The plan was changed as under:Rx…..F1….Tx Rx….F3….Tx Rx…..F1……Tx Rx……F3……Tx (Scheme with problem) 2. 199 SESSION - VI Rx…..F1….Tx (120M) 3. 4. 5. Tx….F3….Rx (300m) Rx…..F1……Tx Tx……F3……Rx (Corrected Scheme) While preparing frequency planning for AFTCs, the neighboring frequencies were kept 2 level higher or lower i.e. F1, F3, F5, F7 -----. A number of track leads got damaged due to ballast screening / other activities leading to TC failure. The track leads were finally provided in HDPE pipes. While providing AFTCs in point zone with 2 as well as 3 receivers, it was found that strength of signal received on diverted portion of track was low even though the total length of track circuit was within specified limit. Finally the lengths on diverted portions were kept less to compensate for extra loss in the jumpers provided in crossing portion. Leads from tuning units to rail are copper ropes of 25 mm2 S bond or a bond - steel rope with copper cladding on top of 20 mm2 cross section. Tightness and effectiveness of longitudinal bonds with double GI wires for rail continuity is very important. Below the fish plates, bonds with copper ropes have been provided to take care of heavy traction return current in DC traction area. This has helped indirectly. For point zone track circuits, the receivers have been located in such a manner that the distance between Tx and Rx on straight and diverted portion is almost same. This was done after it was found that with different lengths, the strength of signal received on Rx for the diverted portion was low with high probability of failure. The tuning units of each track circuit had to be tuned to maximize the strength of received signal. The connections to rail from the tuning units are made through lugs held to the rail through a tapered bolt inserted in a 16 mm hole in the web of the rail. The connection is made tamper proof by providing locking nut & washer and double nuts. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 9. CONCLUSION As is well known AFTCs are suitable both for DC as well as AC traction areas and are easily upgradeable for track to train data transmission. Therefore the work of replacement of AC track circuits in Mumbai Area can be done in advance and completed well in advance of switch over to 25KV AC Traction system. The 3 phase AC track circuits (Siemens make) are already phased out world over and are causing problems of spares and maintenance. M/s Siemens have already stopped manufacturing these track relays. These track circuits use impedance bonds which are very costly as well as theft 200 SESSION - VI prone. These bonds require special side connections made of very thick wire ropes. Therefore provision of AFTCs has not only solved this problem but also improved reliability of signaling installations in Mumbai Suburban section, facilitating better use of the track infrastructure for running more services, which is a crying need of the hour. Recently one more RRI installation at Panvel has been commissioned with ATFCs and previous experience of Dativali has paid rich dividends in smooth commissioning of Panvel RRI. Thus Central Railway has commissioned two RRI installations with AFTCs. ( Figure 1 ) ( Figure 2 ) 201 SESSION - VI ( Figure 3 ) ( Figure 4 ) 202 SESSION - VI ( Figure 5 ) ( Figure 6 ) 203 SESSION - VI ( Figure 7 ) ( Figure 8 ) 204 SESSION - VI EXPERIENCE ON DIGITAL AXLE COUNTER : PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED & SOLUTIONS by R.C. Tripathy CSTE/C. Rly. Sanjay Kumar Singh Dy. CSTE/C/C. Rly Harbour line is one of the worst ballast resistance setion on Central Railway, where it is stremely difficult to maintain track circuit. To provide a long term solution to this problem, Central Railway has installed Multiple section Digital Axle Counter at Raoli In on this section. In this paper the authors share their experiences with this state of art technology and the performance improvement it has brought to the railway. Suburban Railway system is lifeline of Mumbai and Signalling plays a very important role in its operation. Reliability of track circuits is very important to ensure smooth functioning of signaling system. It is difficult to ensure high reliability in suburban section due to following reasons. 1. 2. 3. Poor ballast condition due proximity of hutments, garbage throwing on track, poor drainage condition. Traction return current due high density of traffic. Shorting of glued joints by miscreants. Raoli – King Circle- Mahim section on harbour line is one of the worst ballast resistance section where it is practically difficult to maintain track circuit due to above reasons . Initially Audio Frequency Track Circuits of different make were tried but could not work due to extremely poor ballast condition those were removed later. Multiple Section Digital Axle Counter has been commissioned on 22/03/2000 at Raoli Junction on Harbour section of Mumbai Division covering UP and DOWN lines between RVJ and Mahim. This has been put on trial. There are total 16 detection points and 12 track sections, out of which 7 track sections are on Down and 5 on Up Harbour lines. Two point zones have been also provided with detection points of axle counter. Distance between Axle Counter Evaluator (ACE) and farthest detection point is approximately 2.2 Kms. Total 8 conductors of four quad cable is only required to connect all 16 detection points to ACE in bus configuration. To have better reliability two separate four quad cable have been laid for Up and Down detection points. Besides, one separate 12 core cable has been also laid for extending 205 SESSION - VI 96 volts DC supply to each detection point. Multiple Section Digital Axle Counter installed at RVJ is of model “AzL90-4” of M/s Alcatel, Germeny.. It is first installation on Indian Railways of its kind with 16 detection points. Multiple section Digital axle counters are installed at six stations for loop line berthing and point zone application on Bhusawal Division of Central Railway . At Nishatpura on Bhopal Division (now WCR) Multiple section Digital axle counter with 25 detection points is installed on complete yard in connection with RRI work . Details of digital axle counter installations on Central Railway are as under: DIGITAL AXLE COUNTER :- POPULATION ON CENTRAL RAILWAY ( As on Apr, 2003. ) Sr No. 1 Mumbai Division RAOLI JN. Station MARCH,2000 Dt.of Instt. Alcatel Make 1 Set 16 Detection Points 12 Track Section Remarks Automatic signaling section and point zone Loop line including point zone Loop line including point zone Loop line including point zone Loop line including point zone Loop line including point zone Loop line including point zone   2 Bhusawal PACHORA 05/01/2002 Alcatel 1 13 6 3 Bhusawal VARANGAON 31/03/2002 Alcatel 1 9 4 4 Bhusawal BADNERA 06/08/2002 Alcatel 1 10 5 5 Bhusawal PARAS 24/09/2002 Alcatel 1 8 3 6 Bhusawal AKOLA 28/12/02 Alcatel 1 9 4 7 Bhusawal VAGHLI 28/02/2003 Alcatel 1 4 2   TOTAL       7 69 36 206 SESSION - VI DOWN LINE RVJ UP LINE TOWARDS CSTM DETECTION POINTS SHOWN IN NOS LAYOUT SHOWING MULTISECTION DIGITAL AXLE COUNTER SYSTEM ON RAOLI-MAHIM SECTION OF MUMBAI DIVISION. GENERAL ARRANGEMENT: System is based on a 2 out of 2 module. The Axle Counter Evaluator (ACE) consists of Vital Computer Module, Power Supply for Electronics, Serial I/O including Modems for data buses, Parallel I/O for output to Relay Interface and input from reset panel, Relay Interface Unit with relays for upto 12 sections, a Reset Panel containing switches and LED for resetting up to 12 sections. Track side detection point consists of the double rail contact (Sk30) and the Electronic Track side Unit . Two physically offset coil sets are mounted on the web of same rail which work on frequency 29 & 30 Khz. Three bolts to the rail web of same rail fit the rail contact. EAK 30C energizes the Tx heads, run self tests & transmits telegrams containing count & supervision information to the ACE. There are two independent processor in each EAK. Two pairs of conductors are required for data transmission from ACE to EAK. Upto 8 EAK30C can be connected to the same two pairs in the form of a bus. Each EAK is polled by ACE by telegrams transmitted by modems. EAK sends telegram back to ACE when it is polled. Multiple section Digital axle counter system installed on Central Railway are confirming to safety standard CENELEC SIL –4. 207 SESSION - VI GENERAL ARRANGEMENT OF DIGITAL AXLE COUNTER SYSTEM RESET RELAY INTERFACE ACE CABINET ACE MODEM DIAGNOSTIC DATA 4 QUAD CABLE MODEM TO OTHER EJB UNITS ELECTRONIC JUNCTION BOX (EJB) RAIL MOUNTED TRANSMITTER & RECEIVER HEADS TRACKSIDE DETECTION POINT PERFORMANCE : Axle Counter systems have been working satisfactorily and there has been no failure attributable to the system after initial stabilization and the two case of failures during the initial stabilization. Summary of month wise cases for seven axle counter system consisting of 69 detection points and 36 track section are as under : CENTRAL RAILWAY DIGITAL AXLE COUNTER - PERFORMANCE : MONTH WISE TOTAL FAILURE/TRACK SECTION/MONTH Total failure/track section/month Month & Year Total failure/ Track section/ month April,’02 0.36 May,’02 0.18 June’02 0.41 July’02 0.55 Aug.02 0.59 Sept.’02 0.19 Oct.02 0.25 Nov.02 0 Dec.’02 0 Jan.’03 0 Feb.03 0 March’03 0 April’03 0 208 SESSION - VI CENTRAL RAILWAY DIGITAL AXLE COUNTER - EQUIPMENT PERFORMANCE Month wise Equipment failure/track section/month Equipment failure/track section/month Month & Year April,’02 May,’02 June’02 July’02 Aug.02 Sept.’02 Oct.02 Nov.02 Dec.’02 Jan.’03 Feb.03 March’03 April’03 Equipment failures/ Track 0 section/ month 0.05 0.09 0 0.04 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 DIGITAL AXLE COUNTER PERFORMANCE TOTAL FAILURE / TRACK SECTION/MONTH 0.70 0.60 0.55 0.50 0.40 0.30 0.25 0.20 0.10 0.00 Ap ril ,0 2 M ay ,0 2 Ju n, 02 2 2 Ju l,0 2 Au g, 02 2 ,0 ,0 .0 ov ct pt 0.59 0.41 0.36 0.18 0.19 0.00 2 ,0 ec 0.00 03 n, Ja 0.00 03 b, Fe 0.00 3 M ar ,0 0.00 0.00 Ap r,0 3 Se O N TOTAL FAILURE / TRACK SECTION/MONTH 209 D SESSION - VI DIGITAL AXLE COUNTER SYSTEM 0.1 0.09 0.08 0.07 0.06 0.05 0.04 0.03 0.02 0.01 0 0 0.00 2 Ju l,0 2 Au g, 02 .0 pt FAILURES PER MONTH PER - PERFORMANCE TRACK SECTION 0.09 0.05 0.04 0.00 2 ,0 ct 0.00 2 ,0 ov 0.00 2 ,0 ec 0.00 03 n, Ja 0.00 03 b, Fe 0.00 3 M ar ,0 0.00 0.00 Ap r,0 3 Ap ril ,0 2 M ay ,0 2 Ju n, 02 Se O N RESET PROCEDURE There are three type of resets are available in digital axle counter system : 1. 2. 3. Direct Hard reset Conditional hard reset. Preparatory reset On Central Railway Conditional hard reset and Preparatory Reset is configured in Digital axle counter system . Track section will get cleared immediately with direct hard reset. With conditional hard reset section will clear if last count is count out of the section. With preparatory reset, track section will get cleared after a passage of train after resetting .All event are recorded in the system.. MODIFICATION SUGGESTED Based on experience of first system at Raoli , manufacturer was advised to provide following facilities/ modifications which has been incorporated in the current systems : 1. 2. 3. Provision of electromechanical counter in the system for each section reset . Provision of cooperative type reset . Real time clock for logging of all events. 210 D SESSION - VI ELIMINATION OF TROLLEY SUPPRESSION TRACK CIRCUIT ANALYSIS This report is a short survey on influence of various non-specific types of wheels on Digital Axle Counter and a suggestive method for detection or elimination of such wheels by the system. Following methods are generally smaller size of insulated trolleys. 1. 2. used for eliminating detection of wheel of Trolley suppression Track circuit. Fibre trolley wheel (Non Magnetic material). The current generation of some of Digital High Frequency Axle Counters works on the principle of both voltage dip and phase reversal influenced by train wheels which makes the product extremely reliable in terms of its basic function – The Axle Counting. This method of wheel detection is available with Digital Axle Counters and this happens to be a unique feature, which can be utilised to blend out various types of non-specific wheels from being detected by the axle counter. In context to Axle Counter Installation in Indian Railways, it is essential to provide a means in the System, which ensures that the Light Trolleys are not detected. These trolleys are of different types and they all ply on the railway tracks under non-signal condition. They usually enter into a section and then may change the track from middle of it and then come out from the different section. These movements thus not only cause an axle counter section to remain in occupied state, but also make another section disturbed (negative axle count). To prevent such occurrence, a short Track Circuit Section is provided across the detection head of the Axle Counter. A contact of this Track Relay is taken into the Axle Counter Circuit that prevents the system from counting when it is in energised state (i.e picked up). Since the axle of the Trolley is insulated, thus, when it passes over the detection head, Track Circuit Relay prevents the counting in the axle counter and this results into the non-detection of the trolley by the system. In case of a normal train axle, the Track Circuit Relay drops and enables the axle counter to count the movement of train into or out of the section. While this method is popular in India but it has following drawbacks: 1. 2. Reliability of Axle Counter is reduced to that of a Track Circuit. This adds the cost of providing additional devices with the axle counter not to mention the associated running maintenance. Provision of two track circuits for every axle counter track section and their maintenance efforts offsetting all the advantages of axle counter Axle Counter cannot be provided in the tracks with steel sleepers – like bridges , loop lines and sidings and yards 3. 211 SESSION - VI Use of fibre wheel trolleys are still facing problem of high friction and is under trial. All these calls for a system which will eliminate all the above constrains and improve the reliability of the digital Axle Counters. THE SOLUTION The solution lies in its unique feature of both voltage dip and phase reversal technique. This article will give an insight how the system behaves in various types of wheels and how to achieve the desired result to detect or eliminate non-specific wheels. A short view is explained about various considerations during the installation. The dip and phase reversal that takes place in the system primarily depends on the following factors : 1. 2. 3. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 1. Diameter of the Wheel. Height of the Flange of the Wheel. Rail profile. Nature of the wheel, i.e. solid or spoked. If spoked – number of spokes. Orientation of the spokes while plying over the Rail Contact. Thickness of the Flange. Position of the flange, i.e. if near or away from the rail contact and rail table. Light Trolley (manually pushed or motorised) with spokes (4 or 6 nos.). The Flange Thickness is usually 8mm and height is 35mm. The diameter of the wheel is about 500 mm. This Trolley should not to be detected by Axle Counter. ( Sketch 1& 2) Heavy Motorised Trolley with Heavy Spokes and Flange 40 mm. or over. Diameter is again 500mm. These trolleys are to be detected by axle counter and they move under signal condition. Dip Lorry Non insulated with Diameter of 300mm and Flange height 40mm. These are to be detected by Axle Counters. Rail Dolly having a pair of small solid wheels with very short diameter (<300mm) and small flange height (<10mm). They are used to carry materials by rolling over on one side of the rail. Additionally following factors also contribute in the wheel detection The Trolley which are used in Indian Railway are of following types: 2. 3. 4. 212 SESSION - VI The Digital Axle Counter is usually calibrated during installation at 40 mm of Dummy wheel setting, keeping in mind the standard wheel with specific Diameter and Flange Height. With this adjustment itself the light trolley wheels are automatically not detected, as the worst case dip (rectified Rx voltage) never crosses the ZERO to trigger count. The dip with heavy motor trolley wheel however goes beyond -50mV and thus it is just perfectly counted in the system. A very important observation came out with the Digital Axle Counter System that any dip between 0 to -50mV caused the system to go to a disturbed mode and system then had to be Reset. This happened with the dip lorries and rail dollies. The explanation for above again lies to the fact that apart from phase reversal, there has to be an “overlap” of pulses for a minimum time period between two heads of the Rail Contact. Any overlap shorter than above will cause the system to be in disturbed state. This overlap can be measured by a dual trace storage oscilloscope, else, approximately can be calculated by Rectified Output Voltage of both heads. As stated earlier any dip that remains within 0 to -50 mV causes insufficient “overlap”. There could be three options for such non- - specific wheel influences. 1. To remain with the problem since such movements of dip lorry are very few and dolly wheel can be taken on other side of the track on which there is no installation of Rail Contact. A reset has to be activated in such disturbances. To make such wheel properly “detected’. To make such wheel ‘not seen” at all by the system. 2. 3. To make the wheel properly detected the Rail Head has to be adjusted of higher sensitivity (may be at 35mm of Dummy Wheel Setting). This will ensure that such wheel is detected by the system properly. To make the wheel “unseen” by the system, which is the preferable scenario in Indian Railway, it is recommended to adjust the Rail Heads to a lower sensitivity (may be at 45 or 50mm of Dummy Wheel Setting). This eliminates such wheel from being detected keeping the specified wheels detection undisturbed. It is always advised that to eliminate any wheels from being detected at all, a proper survey has to be done in terms of the Rail Head Setting and its influence on such setting. Too much change of sensitivity on the lower side might cause a normal wheel to be disturbed and may also lead to miscounts. A chart has been made in respect various reading of rectified voltages at different setting of dummy wheel, at different insertion of Flange height (by means of dummy wheel again). This chart gives an insight of importance of flange height with respect to its influence to wheel detection. Annexure B 213 SESSION - VI SUMMERY Following points is the gist of the report:. 1. To make an unspecified wheel to be not counted: It should be necessary and sufficient to adjust the Rail Contact such that they maintain the minimum dip above 0mV. To make any wheel to be counted properly by the system: It should be absolute necessary to maintain minimum “overlap”, alternatively the dip should be well beyond –50mV. Any short wheel pulses, usually generated by the dip between 0 –50mV will cause an improper count and may lead to “disturbance state” and Reset will be essential to restart the system again. 2. 3. COST ANALYSIS Cost analysis of trolley suppression track circuits is indicated in annexure-A. Life cycle cost of one DC track circuit is Rs 4,27,630/- which includes cost of installation ,regular maintenance by the staff and periodic replacement of its components . Based on the above factors the cost of trolley suppression track circuit for axle counter of two detection points will be Rs. 8,55,260/- (approx). By taking this into consideration that provision of trolley suppression track circuits reduces the reliability of the axle counter and makes it dependant on the performance of the trolley suppression track circuit and also the expenditure involved in the maintenance of the track circuit it is felt that the adjustment of the track devices be done in a way that the passage of the trolley axles does not cause the system to attain the disturbed mode nor to the occupied state in case of passage of push trolleys and motor trolleys. CONCLUSION 1. 2. 3. Digital axle counter technology offers high reliability due to fault tolerant digital communication Immediate digitization at track side electronics and Phase reversal method for wheel detection eliminates the need for trolley suppression track circuits. Better maintainability due software diagnostics tool with remote monitoring facility, SUITABLITY OF APPLICATION Digital axle counter is suitable for major yards including turnout , straight section and where ballast resistance is very poor and long block section as performance of Digital axle counter is independent of Ballast resistance, traction current and rail continuity the system can be used without trolley suppression track circuits. 214 SESSION - VI SKETCH 2 215 SESSION - VI DIGITAL AXLE COUNTER – An International Approach to increase Reliability and Safety. By Joachim Janle Regional Director Internation Business ALCATEL Transport Automatation Solutions Digital Axle Counter has emerged as a viable & proven alternative to Track Circuit. This paper describes the Safety and reliability levels to which this technology has reached and the world wide applications it is gaining. Electronic Axle counters are used to detect the presence of railway vehicles within defined sections of track. They may be considered as a one to one alternative to track circuits. Unlike track circuits however, their functioning does not depend on the ballast resistance of the track. Axle Counters are therefore the only means of automatic train detection on tracks which cannot be adequately insulated. All over the world, Railway Administrations are investing more and more into the modernization of their networks to fulfil the Operations need for increased train speeds, better Quality of Service and at the same time increase of the Level of Safety. In complex station yards or lines with little train headway, axle counters often provide the only means of a fast and cost effective implementation of track changes or modernization. The reduction of possession time as well as possibility of shadow mode operation in parallel to the existing infrastructure (e.g. for commissioning tests) facilitates the changeover to the new track layouts. This reduces project cost and increases the safety on the railway by providing minimal disruptions to the parallel working railway service. These factors have resulted in a decision by German Railways DB in 1995 to exclusively use axle counters for construction and modernization of their railway network. With the introduction of Digital Axle counter technology and fault redundant fail safe digital telegram transmission from Outdoor to Indoor Equipment, that has proved its outstanding performance in the last years in regions from arctic temperatures to tropical climate, the reliability of train detection has increased dramatically. 217 SESSION - VI Several Railway Administrations such as RHK in Finland, Railtrack in UK, SBB in Switzerland and also IR in Indian are currently following this trend towards a more reliable and safer railway environment by using Digital Axle Counter technology in increased scale. In November 2001, Railtrack have announced their strategic decision to go for a widespread application of Digital Axle Counters in UK. The first commercial application of the latest generation of Digital Axle Counter on the West Coast Main Line in UK, the North Staffs Project, has successfully been commissioned by Alcatel and WSAtkins on 27th May 2002. Railtrack have issued CENELEC Safety Approval of Alcatel Az LM system based on Cross Acceptance of the CENELEC SIL 4 approval by German Railway Authority EBA of December 2001. On 4th October 2001, the first of 14 stations on the Kouvola-Pieksamaki line section in Finland has been put into service operation with Digital Axle Counter Az LM followed Zurich Hard in Switzerland in April 2002. Also Central Railway of Indian Railways with the latest Az LM Axle counter installations such as Pachora station, is amongst the world-wide leading Railway Administrations for the operational introduction of the new generation of axle counter technology. The Multiple Section Axle counter Az LM, latest in the line of Alcatel Digital Axle Counters, offers a cost effective solution in train detection applications where reliability and safety is to be maximized and equipment space requirements must be kept to a minimum. 218 SESSION - VI SINGLE SECTION DIGITAL AXLE COUNTER By A.K.Tripathi Director/Signal / RDSO & G.Babu Rao Chief Manager, CEL Synopsis Single Section Digital Axle counters have been indegenously developed by M/s CEL in association with RDSO. The paper brings out the design features & efforts undertaken for indigenous development of this new technology. 1.0 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Principle of working of Axle Counters is based on counting of axles of train. The analogue axle counters are in use in more than 5000 locations for over 3 decades in Indian Railways. They are susceptible to failures mainly due to analog transmission. The Signal to Noise ratio plays a major role in analog system and should be as high as possible for proper working. Keeping S/N ratio high has become more difficult in noisy environment in RE areas. Hence the need was felt to develop indigenous Digital Axle Counter technology. With the evolution of Micro controllers and its processing power, it has now become easier to develop a digital axle counter indigenously. 1.2 2.0 HISTORY OF DEVELOPMENT 2.1 The Digital Axle Counter project was taken up for indigenous development during the year 2000, jointly by CEL and RDSO with the support from Department of Science & Technology and Railway board, Ministry of Railways. The tasks for development of the system are divided in two phases 1. 2. Single Section Digital Axle Counter Multi Section Digital Axle Counter Phase 1 Phase 2 The total time period for completion of Phase1 & Phase 2 is 3 years. The development of Single Section Digital Axle Counter has been successfully completed in Sep 2002 and the systems are being inducted in Railways with approval from RDSO. 219 SESSION - VI The Multi Section Digital Axle Counter is under development and the laboratory model is undergoing the various tests. We present the details of Single Section Digital Axle Counter (SSDAC). 3.0 SPECIFICATIONS The RDSO has formed a detailed specification for Digital Axle Counter bearing the number RDSO/SPN/177/2003. The standards applicable and the safety requirements are also given in this specification. 4.0 FEATURES OF SSDAC Digital Axle Counter being the processor based safety system for railway signalling, the hardware and software has been designed based on fail safety principles.. Refer Block Diagram of SSDAC given in fig 1 BLOCK DIAGRAM OF SSDAC TX1 PULSE 1 Rx1 RX1 AXLE DETECTOR SCC1 MLB 1 MODEM TO NEXT SSDAC TX2 SCC2 RX2 PULSE 2 MLB 2 RELAY DRIVE (24V) VITAL SIGNAL RELAY 'Q' TYPE AXLE DETECTOR LEGEND SCC 1 & 2 : SIGNAL CONDITIONER CARD MLB 1 & 2 : MICROCONTROLLER LOGIC BLOCK FIG 1 4.1 DESIGN • • 2 out of 2 voting logic Inter processor communication to check processor failure 220 SESSION - VI • • • • • • • 4.2 • • • • 4.3 • • 21 KHz & 23 KHz High Frequency Axle Detectors. Detection of all wheels with diameter > 400mm. Compatible with quad cable (2 wire), OFC & Radio. Watch Dog timer to ensure proper working of software and completion of periodical self-checks. Vital relay output is read back in the system for occupied and clear. Extensive self-checks and diagnostics for Error Detection & its display Safe withdrawal of vital outputs in case of error Efficient operation Fast and easy testing with limited functional modules Reduced hardware Low maintenance costs Conformance to CENELEC, SIL-4 requirements Adaptability to the different regulations for operation by the Railway authorities. Highly reliable hardware design. High availability with MTBF of more than 20 years. System can be used for Track circuiting at stations. Block proving by Axle Counter including automatic signalling. Intermediate Block signalling Train warning at LC Gates. Vital relay output at both ends of track section. Reset operation by SM is independent at both locations. ECONOMY SAFETY 4.4 RELIABILITY • • 4.5 • • • • • • • FLEXIBILITY 221 SESSION - VI 4.6 ENGINEERING • • 4.7 • • • 5.0 Web Mounted Axle Detectors Track side SSDAC counting units Reduced maintenance through highly reliable hardware RS-232 port for Online Diagnostics Error Display near the system MAINTENANCE BRIEF DESCRIPTION The single section Digital Axle Counter comprises of axle detectors and trackside Electronic unit linked by connecting cables. It is installed at both limits of track section. Refer Fig 2 for SSDAC in Block section STATION A STATION B BLOCK SECTION TYPICAL 10 - 20 KM AS 4 BLOCK/ INTERLOCKING EQUIPMENT 4 2 4 4 VITAL RELAY POWER BLOCK/ INTERLOCKING EQUIPMENT VITAL RELAY SSDAC-1 POWER SSDAC-2 FIG 2 The axle detectors operate on a high frequency (21KHz & 23KHz) according to the proven method of electromagnetic wheel detection. When a train wheel enters in between the detectors, it influences the electromagnetic field and wheel is detected. The detected wheels of a train are converted into pulses and these pulses are counted at the entry and exit of the track section. The stored counts are exchanged by telegram packet between the units The track clear decision is arrived at if the counts are equal and vital relay is picked up for signalling the next train, otherwise the track is shown as occupied. 222 SESSION - VI 6.0 SAFETY The safety of the SSDAC is chiefly ensured by the duplicated hardware of the system. The functional correctness of the software is proven by an independent verification and validation. The extensive error detection in the system provides for data integrity during counting transmission and other checks. Internal cyclic self-test routines provide failure detection and shutdown of vital relay. 7.0 STRUCTURE The principal functions of SSDAC are arranged in the following level: 1. 2. SSDAC counting unit on trackside inclusive of axle detectors at 2 locations. Reset box for system status with Station Master. RESET BOX ERROR DISPLAY MODEM MODEM ERROR DISPLAY RESET BOX VITAL RELAY MLB (2 OUT OF 2 ) COUNTS SUPERVISORY OTHER CHECKS MLB (2 OUT OF 2 ) COUNTS SUPERVISORY OTHER CHECKS VITAL RELAY SIGNAL CONDITIONER CARDS SIGNAL CONDITIONER CARDS AXLE DETECTORS (ON TRACK) AXLE DETECTORS (ON TRACK) FIG 3 8.0 SOFTWARE • • • • Count Packets Power On Self-Tests Watch Dog Timer Diagnostics 9.0 SYSTEM STATUS The system has been put for field trials at 6 locations in Indian Railways since Sept 2002. The report has been found satisfactory. 223 SESSION - VI 10.0 SAFETY TESTS • • • • 11.0 Hardware safety tests up to component level have been conducted by RDSO and found satisfactory. The functional tests of all types have been conducted and found OK. The software has been Independently Verified and Validated to CENELEC standards – SIL 4. The Software & Hardware Integration Tests have been conducted. CONCLUSION Indigenously developed Digital Axle counter technology is suitable for 2 detection points and therefore can be used successfully for various signalling applications like track circuiting, block working applications including automatic signalling, Train warning at LC Gates etc. 224 SESSION - VI “AFTC”— ITS EXPERIENCE & FUTURE APPLICATIONS IN EASTERN RAILWAY by Shri Chief Shri Chief A. K. Kapoor Signal & Telecom Engineer, Eastern Railway & S.K.Mandal Signal & Telecom Engineer(Project), Eastern Railway Large scale adoption of AFTC for track occupancy detection has already begun on Indian Railways. In this paper the authors describe their experiences of installation, maintenance and rail fracture detection by AFTC on Eastern Railway. 1. INTRODUCTION Since the introduction of simple DC track circuit in 1872, the system of interlocking and railway signalling have undergone a revolutionary change. Over the years, due to technological advancements, the interlocking system has undergone complete transformation from candle light signalling to modern SSI based interlocking. Nevertheless, the use of track circuit for detection of track occupancy continues, in some form or other. In fact, track circuit has proved to be the most important tool in ensuring safety in train operations. Over the ages there has been several evolution in the track circuits. On Indian Railways, following types of track circuits are in use: (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) DC Track Circuit AC Track Circuit (50 Hz) AC Track Circuit ( 83 1/3 Hz) Jeoumont Track Circuit Audio Frequency Track Circuit. Out of all the above types, the DC track circuit continues to be the easiest and cheapest alternative and accordingly being used extensively in the station area. But, owing to its short length and requirement of insulated joints , these are generally not used for longer sections . The AC track circuit and Jeomont Track circuit are becoming obsolete and 225 SESSION - VI technology has provided us superior types of track circuit at comparable costs, Audio Frequency Track Circuits, due to its reliability and versatility, has proved to be the best option of track circuit at present. 2. AFTC AND ITS ADVANTAGES Basic advantages of AFTC are : (a) (b) Avoiding mechanical insulation Joint by electronic joint. Longer length than conventional DC track circuits ( c ) Immunity to interference due to traction (d) Feasibility of data transmission between train & the track for implementation of AWS and CAB signalling (e) Centralisation of the system. Maintenance of the conventional insulation joints is a tedious and labour oriented job. Experience has shown that large number of failures take place due to malfunctioning of the insulation joints for track circuit. Moreover, the rectification of the joints are to be carried out jointly by signalling and engineering department, which makes the down time longer. In continuously welded sections, the engineering department generally do not encourage cutting of rails to provide insulation joint. This problem can be totally eliminated by using AFTC, as the electronic joints do not require any cutting of the rail section. On account of modulation techniques and coding used, AFTC is immune to electrical interference due to harmonic contents of conventional and thyristor locomotives. This feature has made AFTC an universal type of track circuit, which can be used in all sections of the railway, electrified or non electrified. On account of electronic detection system employed for AFTC, the working voltage required is much less compared to the AC track circuits providing similar length of track circuit. This, together with the electronic detection system allow longer length of track circuit to be realised with AFTC. Typical ranges of different make AFTC are given in Table –I 226 SESSION - VI TABLE-I MAKE TYPE TYPICAL LENGTH IN METRE 1000 750 850 800 700 2000(WITH Compensator BALLAST RESISTANCE/KM ( OHM) 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5 0.5 0.2 TRAIN SHUNT RESISTANCE ( OHM) 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 SIEMENS FTG S 46 M FTG S 917 BOMBARDIER T1 21 ( END FED) TI 21 ( CENTRE FED) ALSTOM DTC24 3. AFTC ON INDIAN RAILWAYS : On Indian Railways AFTC was introduced for the first time in Southern Railway for replacement of 83 1/3 Hz track circuit. Subsequently, the same was introduced in several zonal Railways like Western, Central, Eastern and Northern Railways, Calcutta Metro, Delhi Metro etc. AFTC is being used mostly in the automatic signalling territories as well as in station sections. At present nearly 500 units of AFTC are working in different sections of Indian Railways. The performance of the track circuits over past years are found to be quite satisfactory and these track circuits can be universally adopted in both in block section and station section. 4. AFTC LAYOUTS : AFTC has been used on Indian Railways in Indian Railways both on end fed layout as well as in centre fed layouts with or without remote feeding. The typical layouts for end and centre fed AFTC are given in Fig 1 to 3. FIG-1 227 SESSION - VI FIG-2 FIG-3 With quad cable of 0.9 mm dia, remote feeding up to a distance of 8 Km is attainable. 5. PROBLEMS ASSOCIATED WITH INSTALLATION : (a) In Eastern Railway, the first installation was done in Sealdah- Dumdum Quadruple section. In the section, there are a number of girder bridges. Since the maximum attainable length of the AFTC is affected by the presence of such bridges and no analytical data was available to calculate the extent of reduction in length, maximum length of the track circuit was restricted to 600 M in the planning stage itself. With such reduction in length, there has been no problem in the performance of the track circuits, even in the full monsoon period. The AFTC works on double rail system. During installation of the AFTC, earth connection to the traction masts were removed. However, at a later date, the rails 228 (b) SESSION - VI were replaced and the earth connection to the traction mast were connected without the knowledge of S& T department. This created unbalance in the circuit and the track circuits had to be adjusted again for proper tuning. (c) The Tuning unit is connected to the rail through 35 mm square copper conductor, which is prone to theft. There were some cases of theft of the copper wire and impedance bond. The reliable operation of the AFTC depend on stable power supply . In SitarampurChotaambana section of Eastern Railway, AFTC was provided with AT power supply without stabiliser, which caused failure of the track circuits. Introduction of stabiliser improved the performance of the circuits remarkably. CADWELD joints provided in AFTC was also found to improve the performance. (d) (e) 6. AUTOMATIC SIGNALLING WITH AFTC: After the gruesome accident of Rajdhani Express in Rafigunj Station of Mughalsarai Divisions, it was increasingly being realised that there is a need to devise and implement a system for checking the continuity of the rails by electrical means. AFTC is inherently a two rail balanced track circuit and it has the capability of checking the continuity of the rails. With the objective of checking the continuity of the rails and to increase the throughput of the section, Indian Railway have decided to provide automatic block working with AFTC in the Rajdhani & Satabdi Routes and part of the work has already been sanctioned. Before execution of the work, various important aspects need to addressed to make the system reliable, versatile and cost effective. Some of the aspects which require urgent attention are ; (a) TYPE OF AFTC : Most of the AFTC installed so far on Indian Railways are basically analog type, having no coding or data transmission facility. Digital AFTC with data transmission capability is available abroad and these are being used in some of the most modern high speed sections like TGV, France. The digital AFTC is very versatile as they facilitate track to train transmission of signalling information. Thus with digital AFTC, enormous facility is created for implementation of cab signalling and AWS at a later date. (b) STABLE POWER SUPPLY Very reliable and stable power supply is absolutely necessary for proper functioning of the track circuits and the signals. Unreliable functioning of the automatic block system may have adverse effect on the speed of the trains and the throughput. The power supply from at least two primary sources shall be available in ring main configuration. Connection of UP & DN AT power supply at the intermediate signals, is also desirable. 229 SESSION - VI (c ) CENTRALISATION OF THE TRACK CIRCUITS : With AFTC, it is possible to centralise the transmitters and receivers controlling the block section. A block section of 7-8 KM can be controlled by about 12-14 track circuits, which can be centralised in the nearest station. A mimic display system indicating occupancy of various sections and the aspect of the intermediate signals should also to be provided to facilitate early fault finding and rectification. (d) MAINTENANCE INFRASTRUCTURE : Proper maintenance facilities to be provided to the signalling maintenance gangs to attend to the failures in the block section. With continuous track circuiting, inspection of each and every meter of the track will come under the responsibility of the signalling maintenance gang. Repair and maintenance gang similar to that adopted for OHE maintenance should be adopted. Provision of tower wagons is felt absolutely necessary. EFFICACY OF AFTC IN DETECTING PWAY DISCONTINUITY : What amount of success the AFTC will provide in detecting P-way irregularity, is a highly debatable question. While metallic discontinuity can be easily detected by the track circuit, hair line rail fracture may not be able to modify the electrical parameters of the track circuit to that extent as to create a failure of the track circuit. Similarly, removal of the fishplates may not always create electrical discontinuity of the track circuit. Cases of sabotage may not be detected altogether, as part of the rail section can be removed by the saboteur, keeping the electrical continuity in tact by alternate means. Analysis of the available data in Eastern Railway revealed that only about 20% cases of rail fracture caused failure of the double rail track circuits. Therefore, it may be concluded that provision of continuous track circuit by AFTC can, at best, be considered as an additional safety aid which should be used in conjunction with all other available means of monitoring and surveillance, as being followed at present, without any liquidation of their respective responsibilities. (f) STANDARDISATION OF THE DESIGN : The work of continuous track circuit and automatic block working has been sanctioned on all Rajdhani and Satabdi routes distributed over different zonal Railways. It is important to standardise the system to be adopted uniformly by all the Railways. It is felt that RDSO may standardise the specification for AFTC, Power Supply, Display system, Circuit arrangement etc. A committee may also be formed to make recommendation for creation of suitable maintenance infrastructure. (e) 7. COST OF AUTOMATIC SIGNALLING WITH AFTC Abstract cost for providing continuous track circuit with AFTC and automatic signalling is given in the table below: PROVISION OF AFTC IN THE BLOCK SECTION WITH AUTOMATIC SIGNALLING SECTION LENGTH = 8 KM 230 SESSION - VI SR NO 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 DESCRIPTION AFTC(LONG) AFTC(SHORT) LOCATION BOX 4 QUAD CABLE INDOOR CABLE OF SORTS RELAYS OF SORTS MISC ITEMS EXT OF RELAY ROOMS RELAY RACKS STABILISER 5KVA 230:110 5KVA TRANSFORMER SIGNAL POST & UNITS 18 C SIG TAIL CABLE 12 c TRACK REPATING CABLE 12 c ASPECT REPEATING CABLE 110: 24/60 V RECTIFIER AUTO SIG GROUP POWER CABLE 25 mm sq. AL SIGNAL LOC. BOXES TRENCHING & CABLE LAYING UNIT NO NO NO KM COILS NO LS NO NO NO NO NO M KM KM NO NO KM NO KM 2 4 2 2 14 1400 56 14 14 14 16 14 16 50000 20000 50000 20000 24000 90 63010 63010 15000 26000 80000 23180 30000 QUANTITY 14 14 56 30 20 50 RATE(Rs) 420000 210000 23180 130000 512 2200 TOTAL(Rs) 5880000 2940000 1298080 3900000 10240 110000 25000 100000 80000 100000 40000 336000 126000 3528560 882140 210000 364000 1280000 324520 480000 22014540 LABOUR CHARGES LOADING, UNLOADING & FREIGHT D&G CHARGES 14.83% 10% 4% 2201454 880582 25096576 3608888 28705463 UNIT COST PER KM (S&T) UNIT COST PER KM (ELECTRICAL UNIT COST PER KM (ENGG) TOTAL UNIT COST /KM(Rs) 3588183 64106 100016 37,52,305 The unit cost per KM works out to be about Rs. 37 lakhs. Therefore for implementation of the above for entire golden quadrilateral (approximately 10000 KM), the total cost works out to be Rs. 3700 Cr. 231 SESSION - VI 8. CONCLUSION : In view of the reliability, AC immunity and versatility of the AFTC, these should be adopted universally for all automatic signalling applications to be executed by Indian Railways. To facilitate easier maintenance it is preferable to centralise the installations in the adjacent stations. Keeping in view of future application of Cab signalling and AWS, digital AFTC should be adopted instead of analogue AFTCs. The complete system specification, including the specification of digital AFTC need to be standardised for universal adoption of all zonal Railways. 232 SESSION - V ‘MODERNIZATION OF SIGNALING SYSTEMS IN GHAZIABAD-KANPUR SECTION UNDER KFW LOAN’ (GKSM PROJECT) by A. K. Misra Chief Project Manager/IRPMU & Wolfgang Kriener Team Leader, Consultants, KfW Project New Delhi- Ghaziabad section of North Central Railway is one of the heaviest section of Indian Railway having maximum permissible speed of 130 Kmph and carrying 45 Mail/Express and 60 Goods trains. All signaling & telecom assets in this section have outlived their useful life and have become obsolete. KREDITANSTALT FUR WIEDERAUFBAU (KfW). Germany, on the basis of the Experts’ report, have agreed to extend soft loan of 185.0 Million DM to the Ministry of Railways for ‘Modernization of Signaling Systems in Ghaziabad-Kanpur section‘. The KfW Project is for enhancing the safety in train operations and line- capacity in this section. The design of the Project is based on the ‘Feasibility Study Report’ conducted by DEConsult (Germany) & RITES (India) Ltd. - Final Report dated June 1996 and Supplementary Report dated August 1996 after the Experts’ Investigation into various Technological Options for Modernization of Signaling and Operations between Ghaziabad and Kanpur in association with KfW and Ministry of Railways (Railway Board). Indian Railway Project Management Unit (IRPMU) has been set for implementation of the project. Ministry of Railways have appointed Indo-German Consultants Consortium of De-consult, Germany & RITES, India as consultants for KfW project in December 2002. Consultants shall assist IRPMU in functional planning, supervision of execution and training of IR staff in operation & maintenance. Project is scheduled to be completed in 55 months. 1 INTRODUCTION In the past, increasing traffic demands in section Ghaziabad –Kanpur has been met with by increasing the train lengths and loads accordingly. This approach is now fully exhausted and any further effort in this direction would require huge investments of increasing the lengths of tracks and platforms in the stations of major parts of the ‘A’ route. 233 SESSION - V On the other hand, the existing signalling equipment on the Ghaziabad - Kanpur section has more or less exhausted its useful life and replacement of S&T equipments by modern state-of-the-art installations only could give the possibility of enhancing safety of operations and increasing line capacity. Accordingly, the major operational targets of the ‘GKSM’ project are improving the safety of operations and increasing the line capacity of this section by about 50% as well. 2 PROJECT OBJECTIVES The Objective of the project is to improve the safety, the capacity and efficiency of the train operations in the section. This would be achieved by replacement and or upgrading the Signalling and Telecommunication Systems by the introduction of Solid State Interlocking on Ghaziabad – Kanpur Section, Automatic Block Signalling on Ghaziabad – Aligarh Section, Optical Fibre Communication on Ghaziabad – Kanpur Section and Rehabilitation/Upgrading of the Train Radio System on Ghaziabad – Mughalsarai Section. In short the objectives are: • • • Improve safety of train operations. Increase the line capacity and improve punctuality of trains. Reduce maintenance cost. The above objective would be achieved by replacing the out-dated Signalling System with a modern one, to increase availability and reliability of the same. 3 PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION Indian Railway Project Management Unit (IRPMU) has been set up, headed by Chief Project Manager for overall project management including financial, legal and contractual matters. In December 2002, M/s Indo-German Consultant consortium comprising of De-Consult, Germany & RITES, India was engaged by IR to provide consultancy support to IRPMU by way of preparing the Detailed Project Report, the Tender Specifications, Tender Schedules and other Tender Documents. Further, the Consultants are assigned to assist IRPMU in the Bid Evaluation and the Construction Supervision, Testing and Commissioning of the systems. Organisation for implementation of GKSM project is shown in Exhibit S-1. The Project is sequenced into the four phases in a duration of 55 months: • • Phase I:Preparation of Detailed Project Report (DPR), Tender Documents; Tendering etc. Phase II:Evaluation of Proposals, Contract Negotiations and Contracting, Development of Project Plan 234 SESSION - V • • Phase III: Implementation Phase Phase IV:Services during Operation (Warranty and Maintenance Period) Phase I is the crucial one, because it would determine the course for the entire project. 4 EXISTING SITUATION The 413 km long double-track electrified line Ghaziabad - Kanpur has 49 intermediate stations with average station spacing of less than 9 km. Almost all stations are equipped with loop lines for both directions. Thus the track infrastructure offers the best possibilities for creating a high capacity rail link. With a charted capacity of less than 60 trains and an actual number of almost 70 trains per day each direction between Ghaziabad and Kanpur, the line is already overloaded and is operating at 110% to 120% of the charted capacity. Relief by other neighbouring lines is not available as these lines are Single track and/or not electrified. The section from Kanpur to Mughal Sarai, however, is less busy and has a capacity reserve of 10 to 15 trains allowing for a moderate capacity increase without any investment. The trains are quite evenly distributed along the line and most of the trains are through trains between Ghaziabad and Kanpur. With about 50% each for express and goods trains the train mixture is quite balanced. No basic change of this pattern is expected in the future except for the line section near Ghaziabad where an increase of the Delhi suburban traffic is intended by Northern Railways. The line is equipped with 76% mechanical and 24% relay interlockings, which have been commissioned between 1930 and 1996 and are on average 35 years old. There are block huts in less than half of the block sections and a few line sections are equipped with automatic signalling. The track circuiting in the stations, however, has been nearly completed and almost all station tracks are now equipped with track circuits. 5 OVERVIEW OF PROPOSED SIGNALLING & TELECOMMUNICATION SYSTEM SIGNALLING SECTION 5.1 Signalling and Interlocking Concept Each station will have its own independent SSI (Solid State Interlocking) and in case of communication failure between CTC and station, it will be possible for the Station Master to perform local interlocking operation through a Man-MachineInterface (MMI), which will be installed in ASM’s rooms. Normal operations at small stations will be through CTC and only in emergency; the Control will be transferred to ASM, whereas larger stations will be locally operated by the ASM. 5.2 Solid State Interlocking System The SSI is the heart of the entire signalling system and would cover all requirements regarding safety, operating, maintainability and reliability. The system design shall 235 SESSION - V comply with the relevant CENELEC standards; especially those mentioned below and shall correspond to the Safety Integrity Level – 4 (SIL4). The SSI to be provided would be a proven system operating successfully with other Railway Organisations. The Reliability of the System is of particular importance. Therefore the rate of breakdown for the different components should not cross specified thresholds. SSI system would have to fulfil the following conditions: • • • Min. availability must be more than 99.999 %. The Mean Down Time (MDT) should not exceed more than 2.0 hours and the Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) should be more than 940.000 hours The system-typical response time from the time of controller’s input to tune to initiate an operation until the corresponding display on the monitor shall be not more than 2 seconds. This should apply e.g. to route setting, signal from proceed to danger aspect and any individual operation. Element Control Unit (ECU) The ECU will be housed in suitable prefabricated hut in air-conditioned racks at every station in the section (Exhibit S-2). The following will be connected to the ECU • • • • • • • • All field elements such as points, signals, track necessary installations etc. The MMI in SM’s room with the monitor and the keyboard The frames of the SSI The cable termination rack The Maintenance & Repair (M & R) workstation of the maintenance staff The power supply The telecommunication installations The indoor cabling up to the cable termination rack The indoor installations of the ECU would consist of the following: The ECU includes complete railway-specific application software of interlocking, controlling operational sequences and also contains the software for control and monitoring of the elements of the outdoor equipment (points, signals, track vacancy detection devices etc.) This application software has to be present on an element-related basis in each ECU. Topographical data is supplied in the downloading phase and enables the elements to be logically linked specifically to the system. The following tasks will be executed by each ECU. 236 SESSION - V • • • • • • • • Checking of received commands according to the signalling logic conditions Execution of the tasks according to the signalling logic conditions Interlocking of all elements according to the station related drawings Output of the commands to the connected field elements Reading-in and processing of indications from connected MMI Compilation of status indications and handling of fault indications from the elements Handling and indications from the power supply\ The control distance to the different field elements must not exceed 5.0 km. Therefore the maximum distance between 2 ECU might not be more than 10 km. Each ECU contains the logic for linking up the operation and display level with the signalling logic and control level. The basic functions of ECU are as follows: • • • • • • • • 5.3 receipt and storage of process status of the outdoor installations transmission of element-status information to the MMI at stations and CTC transmission of element-status information to the Service and Diagnostic system evaluation of inputs of the MMI relating to formal and logical errors plausibility, authenticity and with regard to non-permissible parameters transfer of the checked inputs to the signalling logic and control level generation of system status information to the Service and Diagnostic system processing of interlocking tasks Operating Equipments at Stations It would be possible for the SM, in emergencies to put the signal to most restrictive aspect during local as well as during Centralised. Operator control of the interlocking will be supported by user-friendly menus. Each operator action results in an optical or acoustic reaction, which will confirm to the operator that the input has been accepted by the system or that the input was incorrect and has therefore been rejected. Indications of the system are passed on to all the MMl. Each MMI independently selects the indications, which are relevant to it. Each warning status is signalled immediately and prompts the operator responsible to perform a particular action. In addition, indications are output on the logging printer. The type and extent of indications are determined during configuring of the system. MMI is provided with the components as shown in Exhibit S-3. 237 SESSION - V 5.4 Train Number Indication System Each train shall be allocated a number (train number). The train number serves various purposes and it is possible to deduce e.g.: • • • • • • • • • Train identification Direction of travel Class of train Destination Priority rating Rolling stock characteristics Service characteristics (e.g. passing through platform tracks only) Link to a timetable Train handling characteristics (e.g. dangerous goods, override consignment etc.). The Train Number Indication System shall monitor train movements by progressive stepping of train numbers, based on information available from interlocking. The overview and zoomed display windows on the MMI of both the Station Master and the CTC shall display the number and location of each train. Each controller in the CTC and the Station Master shall have access to the Train Number Indicating System. 5.5 Centralized Train Control If the Station Master or any other operational staff in the station must switch over to local control they have to inform the CTC controller first, who will then act immediately. In regular operations, when all trains are running more or less on time, there is no noticeable difference between local and central control. However, in case of disturbed operations, when trains are running with delays, the central control is more effective as any necessary action will be executed directly and on time by the CTC Controller instead of calling the Station Master and telling him what has to be done.The centralised system also offers the advantage that the information on the train running conditions is displayed automatically and on real time basis on the Central Controller’s console. Thus any irregularity or derangement is immediately noticed by the CTC Controller who can directly report such major incident to the responsible member of the operations management. Six workstations will be provided in the CTC Control Centre. Besides general operating procedures like switching a point, setting up a train route etc. the following procedures has to be foreseen: 238 SESSION - V • • • • Emergency route release, Emergency switching of point machines (occupied point track circuit) Emergency block release, Axle counter reset, 5.5.1 Additional Features to the CTC for the Supervision The work of a traffic dispatcher is focused on regulating activities and not on controls. As already mentioned, the idea suggests itself to integrate the actually separated functions of train working and train control into one person, i.e. the Train Controller in the CTC. The following additional tasks would be assigned to the CTC-controller: • • • • • Time table management Support of automatic train guidance systems and train describer Conflict resolution for the execution of planned train connections, crossing moves and passing moves Computation of current plan deviation Statistics /archives and some others. To cover these duties without many additional efforts every workstation will be provided with the data of the line mirrored in various screens as follows: • • • Geographical line overview Time-Line-Chart Various Screen Tables The geographical line overview displays the configuration of the whole line including the stations with all running tracks and the stop-signals concerned. In the lines are embedded small fields where the train numbers according to the actual position of the trains will be displayed. The train numbers will be shifted from one field to the other according to the actual train movements. The time-line-chart consists of a basic scheme, where on the x-axis the stations of the line and on the y-axis the time-scale will be displayed in a sequence of minutes. The time-line-graphs will be generated from the computer-system and is comparable to the already existing manual graphs. The difference however is the precision, the actuality and further information that will be displayed. All time-line-graphs can be stored and printed for every period and at any time for later evaluation. Various Tables can be calculated and displayed as required by Indian Railways. 239 SESSION - V 5.5.2 Loco Controller of the CTC Tundla The section between Ghaziabad and Kanpur will be supervised by operation and traffic dispatchers.For the tracking and dispatching of the locos for the whole line however a workstation for 1 loco controller would be installed. This loco-dispatcher can be provided with the same information of train running, the screens, timegraphs and other information available to the train dispatcher. The workstation for the loco-dispatcher should be installed in the CTC-centre of Tundla with the workstations of the CTC-operators in the same room. 5.6 Data transmission of signalling All installations on the section such as ECU and the CTC will be connected and interfaced. Therefore, the transmission including interfaces between interlocking in the ECU and CTC centre in both directions shall ensure safe and fast data transmission. It must be duplicated for redundancy and high availability. The transmission shall be via two optical fibres. Both OFCs will be laid in ducts on either side of the track to have ‘route-diversity’ in order to have high reliability. For signalling purposes the following fibres will be required in each OFC: • • • 4 fibres for the ECU–CTC-BUS, 2 fibres for the ECU-ECU-BUS 2 fibres as spare for signalling purposes The concept of data transmission is dependent on the individual technique of the supplier of SSI. However, the above mentioned number of fibres will be sufficient for the most common systems in use at that time. 5.7 Mains Supply The power supply supply to the ECU in the stations will provided through AT supply. Integrated Power Supply System (IPS) of the latest technology shall be provided for each ECU and CTC centre at Tundla.In case the mains supply fails totally or partially, the Standby Automatic Disiel Generator (SADG) shall start automatically after a time delay of at least 30 seconds. Mains and SADG shall be monitored continuously. The SADG shall be installed in a prefabricated block hut or other room suitable. 5.8 Service and Diagnostic (S+D) System In order to facilitate fault finding of the signalling installations a Service und Diagnostic System would be provided. For that purpose in all signalling rooms terminals for S+D shall be installed in each signaling room to support technical staff in the maintenance centre for the first level maintenance and shall facilitate fault finding. All important installations of signalling such as Interlocking, power 240 SESSION - V supply, transmission systems and other important installations shall be connected to the S+D terminals. In case of failures alarms shall be raised. The S+D computers shall analyze, link and evaluate indications such as status, fault, and event indications. On the basis of these analyses and the specific fault conditions, the diagnostic computer shall identify the displayed faults. These faults shall be stored in a data-base separate for each system. Eliminated faults shall be stored for statistical evaluation at a later stage. Faults shall be displayed on the basis of lists. Time and place of occurrence, processing status, controller and assumed reason of any selected fault are to be displayed. 5.9 Signals Colour light signals with LED Signal Units shall be provided. LED Signal Units afford higher flexibility and reliability of signalling equipment. The benefits of the LED-units are as follows: • • • • • • Low life-cycle costs through low-maintenance signal light units Service life of the signal units is at least 10 years Periodic replacement of signal lamps is not necessary and as a result, saving in time and cost. Signal light unit as a whole remains operational even if individual LED´s fail Maintenance of signal light units is restricted to cleaning and inspection within customer-specific cycles of the higher-level system No readjustments or regular measurements for checking purposes The only disadvantage of using LED-units is of initial higher investment cost. However, based on life cycle cost, it has been established that it is economical to use LED signals. 5.10 Point machines The characteristics of the proposed electrical point machines would be : • • • • • 3-phase-AC–machines with internal locking Automatically switching off the power, if the point machine does not reach the final position within 10 - 12 seconds. The final position would be monitored by tongue detectors The point drives shall be switch-able by manual crank. Before inserting the crank, the drive must be switched off electrically. The switching process wouldould be reversible. 241 SESSION - V 5.11 Track Vacancy Installations The control and the supervision of new signalling installations is based on a continuously working track vacancy system or track circuiting system. With this system the vacancy or occupation of the lines in a station or section will be supervised by technical installations such as • • Audio Frequency Track Circuits or Axle counters. Main line at stations will be provided with AFTC in line with the existing Board Policy. Remaining areas can be covered through digital axle counter including concerned auto signalling section. 5.11.1 Audio Frequency Track Circuits (AFTC) With the occupation of a section the wheel sets of a vehicle will short circuit the rails, thereby de-energizing the relay and indicating “track section occupied”. As compared with the former track circuit, the AFTC requires no physical rail joint insulation equipment. Section isolation here is generally demarked thus permitting the continuous welding of running rails. This reduces the maintenance and the outlay of permanent way. In addition, considerable outlets for the series bonding of insulated rail sections at points and track crossings locations may be dispensed with. Insulated joints are actually required only for points and crossing frogs and at locations where an interbonding with existing, conventional track-circuits is necessary. AFTC are suited for application on all lines where a specific track ballast resistance of 1.5 Ohm/km is maintained. The installation of such joint-less track circuits permits a two-rail traction current return array both with a straight track run as also for points sections. 5.11.2 Axle Counter Systems Axle Counter Systems serve the purpose of indicating the free/occupied state of track sections. It consists of counting heads at each end of the detected section. In an evaluation unit all sections will be controlled. The simple indication finally results to a released or occupied section. The processing and transmission of the information within the System must be fail-safe. The axle counter shall be suitable for use with any type of traction and independent of the track parameters. It is acknowledged that axle counters have to be reset occasionally. • • Re-setting of axle counter procedure, as per the existing policy will be provided. Preparatory resetting facility will also be provided in the digital axle counter. 242 SESSION - V The axle counter shall be applicable with the following technical prime characteristics: Rolling stock Traction Running speed Wheels Diameter > 300 mm, Width > 115 mm < 1,500 A Wheelbase (axle distance) ≥ 700 mm Rail current 5.12 Cabling for Signalling The cabling system of the new signalling system shall be provided completely new. The most important consequences of the continuous working Solid State Interlocking System are the control lengths of the various signalling elements connected to the ECU. As already mentioned this length comes to a maximum of 5 km. Signalling cables with solid circular cores will be used, with the individual cores arranged in concentric layers. Permitted core diameters are: 0.9, 1.4 or 1.8 mm. The cables shall be chosen such that in consideration of the above restriction all field equipment can be controlled/operated/monitored up to a distance of 5.0 km. The signalling cables shall have the following structure from inside to outside: • Copper cores with uniform coloured PE (polyethylene) insulation. Each layer of cores shall have a distinctly coloured starting core or other acceptable means of core identification. PVC (polyvinyl chloride) sheath Armouring consisting of 2 overlapping layers of galvanised steel tape, not less than 0.1 mm thick, overlapping not less than 10 % (protection against rodents) PVC protective outer sheath. Diesel and electric traction possible 0 ... 250 km/h • • • 5.13 SID - Station Identification Number For every ECU a SID will be provided. This number will be used for all signalling installations as basic number and will be added with the individual element number. The several SID will be determined as follows: 2 digit scheme using numbers 00 to 99 will be adapted to the entire line from Ghaziabad to Kanpur. In order to cater for the possible installation of additional ECU where the block sections are more than 10 km, spare SID will be kept. 243 SESSION - V stations separated from 5 to 12 kms. Back-bone for the GSM-R will be the fibre cable along the track. Exhibit T2 shows the GSM –R network levels. The system is based on the ETSI GSM standard. To meet additional functionality and performance requirements, this standard is to be supplemented by the following GSM services: • • • • • • • • • • • • Voice broadcast service; Voice group call service; Enhanced multi-level precedence and pre-emption; General Packet Radio Service (GPRS); Exchange of number and location information between train and ground to support functional and location dependent addressing; Emergency calls; Shunting mode; Multiple driver communications; Direct mode facility for set-to-set operation; The system comprises the following elements: (Exhibit T-3) Base Station Sub-systems (BSSs) of base station controllers (BSCs) controlling base transceiver stations (BTS) each containing a number of transceivers (TRXs). Network Sub-Systems (NSSs) interfacing to the Base station sub-systems via the GSM ‘A’ interface. The Network sub-system contains mobile services switching centres (MSCs) with primary responsibility for call control. The network also comprises General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) infrastructure elements supporting the respective packet radio services.. Subscriber Identity Modules (SIMs) containing information specific to single subscribers. A SIM and mobile equipment (ME) combined are termed a mobile station (MS). To meet the specific railway requirements, a number of additional features are required. The main aspects are summarised as under. Railway’s specific applications are: - 6.1.3 Out line Architecture • • 6.1.4 Railway specific services and facilities • 245 SESSION - V 5.14 Training Maintenance Training of IR-personnel, that forms an integral part of the responsibility of the supplier/contractor and Operation Training for IR-personnel that is to be carried out by the Consultant. Details of the operation training are to be worked out separately. 5.15 Maintenance, Spare Parts, Tools, Measuring Instruments Maintenance and the provision of spare parts is included for the installed system by the successful supplier for a period up to 3 years. The quantity of spare parts, tools, measuring instruments, measuring cars and machinery are to be worked out and specified by the Tenderer according to the stipulation of the specification. After the free warranty period of 3 years the supplier will be requested to submit an offer indicating: • • • Consumables (wear and tear) spare parts for further 2 years Spare parts for further 5 years Tools and measuring instruments for the maintenance Supply of all parts for a ten-year period shall be guaranteed by the supplier. TELECOMMUNICATION SECTION 6. MOBILE TRAIN RADIO SYSTEM (MTRS) The proposed new digital MTRS is based on the GSM-R technology for Ghaziabad – Mughal Sarai Section. The Standard applied is the European Integrated Railway Enhanced Network (EIRENE). All locos running in the section would be equipped with MTR. In addition, 800 General Purpose Handsets (GPH) & 200 Operational Purpose Handsets (OPH) would be provided. 6.1 Scope The EIRENE System Requirements Specification defines a radio system satisfying the mobile communications requirements of the European Railways. It encompasses ground-to-train voice and data communications together with the ground-based mobile communication needs of trackside workers, station and depot staff and railway administrative and managerial personnel, which means integration of all railway services into one communication network. Exhibit T-1 shows the system, by associating each element of the system together with interfaces. 6.1.2 System Overview / Location The MSC will be located at TUNDLA. Since one BSC is able to control up to 128 BTSs, the BSC will also be located within the MSC. The BTS will be located at all 244 SESSION - V • • Frequency: Equipment is to be capable of operation in 876-915 MHz (uplink) & 921-960 MHz (DN link) (Exhibit T-4) Voice broadcast and group call facilities: All mobiles are to support these services as defined in the relevant GSM specifications. The services will mainly be used to: broadcast messages from controllers to certain groups of trains in a controller area; broadcast messages from trains or shunting team members to controllers or other mobiles in a defined area; conduct group calls between train drivers and controllers over pre-defined areas; conduct group calls between trackside workers, shunting team members, station staff and similar groups, typically over local areas. Enhanced Multi-Level Precedence and Pre-emption: This GSM specification is to be implemented in order to achieve the high performance requirements necessary for emergency group calls. It is also necessary to meet different grades of service requirements for different types of communications traffic on the system (e.g. safety (e.g. train control system), operational and administrative communications). Functional numbering: Many railway staff needs to be addressed by functional rather than personal numbers. The functional numbers may change on a regular basis. • • • • • • 6.2 Network configurations Existing/new towers would be used to have transceiver coverage of 5 to 8 km, which will create an overlapping of radiation of about 30%. Also, coverage probability of 95% based on a coverage level of 38.5 dBmV/m (-98 dBm) for voice and non-safety critical data would be ensured. The handover success rate should be at least 99.5% over train routes under design load conditions. Call setup time requirement is dependent upon the eMLPP priority of a call. 6.3 Mobile Equipment Specifications All mobiles are specified with a common level of basic services, facilities and features in order to ensure inter operability. The following three types of mobile equipments would be provided: • • Cab radio - for use by the driver of a train; General purpose radio - for general use by railway personnel; 246 SESSION - V • Operational radio - for use by railway personnel involved in train operations such as shunting and trackside maintenance. FIXED NETWORK 7.1 Introduction Fixed network will be upgraded by two different models e.g Small Station Model & Large Station Model. Basically the fixed network is classified into: Operational Network Administrative Network. Operational Network is used for the safe operation of the trains. Administrative Network is used for all other purposes in order to avoid any disturbance to the operators; access to the operational network is restricted to operational personnel only. However, operational personnel would be able to access the administrative network. All other personal, wanting to contact operational personal are to call the operator & operator would connect to the opearional personnel. For separation of the two networks and for safe and independent operation it would be new PABX’es in small stations and additional small PABX’es in large stations. 7.2 Small Station Model A small PABX will be installed in all stations to connect typically the concerned persons such as: • • • • Station Master East/West Cabin Level crossings next to the station Block hut next to the station. All PABX’es will work as ‘Child Exchanges’ of the large stations. Interconnection would be done through OFC. Similar functions will have same dialing numbers at all stations as shown in the following table: Function/Location Station Master ASM East Cabin Tel.-No 10 11 12 Function/Location West Cabin East Level Crossing West Level Crossing Tel.-No 13 14 15 247 SESSION - V Every ‘Child Exchange’ can be dialed by a 3-digit access code followed by the functional number as shown above from the concerned large station. The Mother Exchange can be reached by dialing “0” (zero). (Exhibit T-5) 7.3 Large Station Model To keep the two parts of different subscribers (operational and administrative) apart, an additional small exchange, covering all operational subscribers and the links to the child exchanges at small stations, will be installed. Every operational person will be able to access the administrative network without any restriction. From the operational network any small station can be reached by dialing the 3digit station code. The operational exchanges will be connected via OFC with the small stations (Exhibit T6). A programmed ISDN telephone will be provided for every controller with the following features: Group call • Conference call • Knocking • Hands free talking • • • • 7.4 Programmed calls as: 10 programmed connections on buttons 99 programmed connections to be dialed by two buttons Caller ID display · Caller switching Optical Fibre Cable System For safety reasons (redundancy for signalling elements) and to connect all stations, it is necessary to lay two OFCs along the track from Ghaziabad to Kanpur and one OFC from Kanpur up to Mughal Sarai. A metal-protected OFC will be used for rodent protection. Metal sheath is to cut every 2000 m to avoid Interference problems. Repeater would be provided at a distance of 40 Kms (approx). The OFCs to be laid will be blown-into a HDPE pipe. The blow-into a pipe of the second OFC has many advantages like: • • • • • the possibility to blow-in a second cable rodent protection by the pipe easy maintenance no problem with the electro interference of some metal band for rodent protection independence of trenching (-and trench closing) and cable laying during the implementation and so on. 248 SESSION - V Utilization of fibres in the two OFCs would be as under:OFC 1 Fiber 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 Use GSM-R STM1 to BSC send GSM-R STM1 to BSC receive GSM-R bus for BTS Reserve GSM-R Fixed Network STM1 send Fixed Network STM1receive Fixed Network E1 #1 Fixed Network E1 #2 Fixed Network E1 #3 Fixed Network E1 #4 Reserve Fixed Network ECU - CTC bus #1 ECU - CTC bus #2 ECU - CTC bus #3 ECU - CTC bus #4 ECU - ECU bus #1 ECU - ECU bus #2 Reserve ECU Reserve ECU OFC 2 Fiber 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 Reserve Fixed Network ECU - CTC bus #1 ECU - CTC bus #2 ECU - CTC bus #3 ECU - CTC bus #4 ECU - ECU bus #1 ECU - ECU bus #2 Reserve ECU Reserve ECU Use GSM-R STM1 to BSC send loop GSM-R STM1 to BSC receive loop GSM-R bus for BTS loop Reserve GSM-R Fixed Network STM1 send loop Fixed Network STM1receive loop 7.5 Training & Maintenance Adequate training shall be arranged for the Railway personnel responsible for the maintenance of telecom system. Training for Railways staff in maintenance of the new system will be the responsibility of the supplier. The contractor will be responsible for maintenance of the system for a period provisionally set at 3 years. IRPMU will ensure that the contractor puts in place a set of procedures and practices that will enable Railways to take over maintenance successfully after the end of the warranty period and that a sustainable work organization is in place, once the warranty expires. 249 SESSION - V Member Electrical Board Level General Manager NCR Zonal Level Chief Project Manager/ IRPMU Project Level CONSULTANT Team Leader • • Signalling Experts Telecom • Experts Procurement • Manager • Electromagnetic Experts Civil Engg. etc • Chief Signal Engineer Chief Comm. Engineer Chief Engineer Chief Traffic & Transport Manager Fin. Adv. & Account Off DYCSTE / SIG ESTE (Signal) DYCSTE /TEL ESTE (Tele) Dy. CE DEN Dy. COM DOM DYFA & CAO SAO Exhibit S-1 Organisation for implementation of GKSM project OFC SM ECU Printer Monitor Mouse Key-board Exhibit S-3 : Configuration of a workstation of the SM (station master) in the stations Exhibit S-2 Element Control Unit at every station 250 SESSION - V Exhibit T1 - Layout of EIRENE specifications and details of interfaces 251 SESSION - V Exhibit T-2 GSM-R Network Levels 252 SESSION - V Exhibit T-3 GSM architecture overview • • Exhibit T-4 Note: the R-GSM band includes the Public GSM (P-GSM) and Extended GSM (E-GSM) bands. 253 SESSION - V Exhibit T-5 Numbering Plan of Small Station 254 SESSION - V Exhibit T-6 Numbering Plan of Large Station 255 Anti - Collision Device (ACD) ‘ACD’ Mounted on Locomotive Fixed Inside Locomotive Data Entry Key Pad GPS*Receiver For COMMAND & CONTROL UNIT (Micro-Processor Based) Locomotive ‘POSITIO N’ TRACKING through IRSTE Conference Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi 14th & 15th June 2003 Presentation By SATELLITE Power Converter Radio Trans-Receiver (3 KMs Range) Antenna Fixed Outside Locomotive Ba ttery 72 V I/O Sub System Braking Signal for Locomotive Speed Control Message Display Ajaykumar A. Bhatt, * IRSSE SOS 1 Global Positioning System Chief Signal & Telecommunication Engineer Konkan Railway Corporation Ltd. ACK Visual Audio 4 Crew Interface Today’s Situation n n n The railway operation today has a limitation of single point failure which is built in Driver ’s human actions. At stations –failure to read signal can be disastrous!!! In block section, driver has to drive section, BLINDLY till he approaches next signal, on TRUST ! u He has no way to know what is ahead at 3 km - to be able to stop to prevent collision Working of ACDs-take inputs from satellites/talk to each other and have intelligence to act to avoid collision Some of the 24 satellites in the sky Input taken from minimum 3 of them The atomic time signals used Digital radio modem Communication Microproces sor GPS receivers Microprocessor Knowledge embedded intelligence 2 5 What is ACD ? n GPS Satellites n ACD is a computerized equipment comprising of t Global Positioning System t Digital Radio Modem t Central Processing Unit t Interfaces to Auto-Braking Unit/ digital tachometer/station signalling equipment u fitted on locomotives, guard vans, stations and level crossing gates. ACDs derive their location, speed and direction through Global Positioning System (GPS) and work on Angular Deviation Count principle 3 UHF Data Radio Modem IR Loco ACD GPS Receiver Loco ACD IR ACDs have Knowledge Embedded Intelligence Working of “on-board” ACDs Take inputs from satellites, communicate with each other and have intelligence to act to avoid collision 6 257 What is ACD ? n Angular Deviation Count uniquely identifies track line for the Loco and Guard ACDs Line No. 4 - Left DC = 2 Line No. 3 - Left DC = 1 Line No. 2 (Main Line ) - DC = 0 Line No.1 - Right DC = 1 All ACDs communicate through digital radio with a range of minimum 3 km and indicate to each other their exact location n Loco ACDs apply automatic braking in case of collision like situation Station Building 7 10 Technology breakthrough: Angular Deviation Count n n GPS has error of 20m, not sensitive to 5 m distance between tracks A new theory indigenously has been developed called Deviation count theory which has made the technology break through to produce the most cost effective, intelligence based auto acting antianti-collision device. 8 So on a plane, once we know the track on which train moves and the direction of movement, we can prevent mishaps! 11 Concept of Angular Deviation... Half deviation Half deviation n Reversal of angleGPS is sensitive GPS receiver gives output in ‘Angular’ terms as the loco/guard van is turning away from the main line while negotiating a turnturnout in a station yard n A ‘deviation’ is counted when such Angular change either towards LEFT or RIGHT is detected quickly followed by another angular change of the same order which is more than THREE degrees 9 Imagine In dark space The ACD constantly looks for another ACD, within range equal to braking distance required for relative speed - they communicate with each other- identify and if they happen to be having same track identification and are moving towards each other – automatically restrain and stop each other! 12 258 ACDs Network to form Raksha Kavach- strength comes from network n Basic Philosophy - 2 n n n n systemsIndependent of signaling systems- double line/automatic block/electrified/multiple line/ all combinations of traction the ACD logic is the same. No human inputs – equipment self-deduces selfAdditional safety layer- never gives any positive indication to driver to override any existing rule Quietly protects if some collision-like disaster 13 is likely to occur SAME ‘Track-ID’ - Every Train ACD recognizes the other Train ACD and identifies their Track-IDs. Irrespective of their location in the railway network system if their Track-IDs are same, these two ACDs will judge whether they are approaching each other or going away from each other and in case they are approaching each other, then on the basis of distance required to brake, the speed is controlled to 16 prevent any collision-like situation. Basic Philosophy - 3 Cardinal principles n n n n n Always the network has a minimum of two knowledge based ACD systems in communication At least two systems to agree to allow the trains to proceed normally No human inputs and all data is collected and analysed by ACDs themselves automatically System never prompts driver to take positive step, overriding existing safety system of train operations and hence ‘non- vital’. 14 ‘Track-ID’ DIFFERENT -BUT UNUSUAL BEHAVIOUR- When two ACD fitted trains are approaching each other with different Track IDs, the ACDs look for unusual behavior of any one of the trains. On the basis of distance required to stop short of collision, they control their speed. If there is a positive indication that the unusual behavior is not (or no more) dangerous, the speed control is removed. 17 Basic Philosophy - 1 n Basic Philosophy - 4 n Track-ID - After deviation count profile survey is done for each yard, the Track-ID is derived by LOCO ACD, using the GPS inputs and Deviation Count profile. Where not amenable, input is taken from point position or Infra-Red beams, to derive the Track-ID. 15 OBSTRUCTION ON TRACK- ACD perceives the entire railway network only in terms of station areas, points and crossings zones and block section areas. Additionally, pre-defined possible track obstruction areas like gate zones, temporary work on the track will stop and proceed or any other such severe conditions also can be recognized. If any obstruction is perceived in the pre-defined obstruction zones, the same logic of speed 18 control, based on the distance required to stop, ill b li d 259 Basic Philosophy - 5 n In case of station areas, fouling of adjacent tracks is detected for a train when the points and crossings zone is occupied by any of the ACDs or by portion of a train. In such a case, the approaching train ACDs will control the speed on the basis of distance required to stop short of collision. At stations n Additionally, fouling of point zones detected to prevent side collisionscollisionsusing the Guard ACD n Complete arrival of train too detected by the arrival of Guard ACD n Either by Deviation Count Profile or in exceptional case, limited data-logger datafunctionality provides the Track -ID for ACDs fitted in trains 22 19 Basic Philosophy - 6 n CONTROL OF SPEED PROFILE- ACDs have an inbuilt capacity to follow a defined speed profile, while approaching the station and ACD will ensure this speed profile. The speed profile will however be controlled based on the more severe of conditions, namely, either based on distance required to brake when main line is occupied or the target speed required at the points and crossings zones. The inputs necessary to know the ‘run through’ via main line will be taken to confirm whether the speed is to be controlled while approaching the points and crossing zones of station or not. 20 ACD’s view of Railway n The Railway is viewed as u Station area with t PXZ area- points crossing zones areau Block section area u Gate protection zones u Train formation/loco-shed areas formation/locou Any other zone specifically designated 23 Basic Philosophy - 7 n Different types of ACDs n EMERGENCY- When ‘manual’ SOS is received from other ACD which is within a range of 3 Kms, the Loco ACDs fitted with ABU shall apply emergency brakes to bring them to a stop, irrespective of their direction of movement w.r.t. the source who originated SOS. This is treated as an Emergency, for which cause has to be investigated. 21 n n n n Loco ACD u Fitted on a locomotive along with an auto-braking unit, becomes Saathi to driver Station ACD u Fitted at a station- linked to station signaling circuits where needed, is Saathi to the station master Guard ACD u Fitted on the last vehicle becomes Saathi to the guard Gate ACD u Fitted at level crossing gates is Saathi to the gateman and road users Repeater/Look-out ACD u Bridges the shadow zones of radio communications 24 260 Locomotive ACD (with Driver’s Console) Station ACD (with SM’s Console) Station ACD - 360 x 390 x 240 Weight - 14 Kg SM Console - 195 x 230 x 80 Weight - 1 Kg All dimensions are in ‘mm’ Loco ACD - 300 x 370 x 185 Weight - 12 Kg All dimensions are in ‘mm’ Driver Console - 125 x 150 x 95 Weight - 1 Kg All dimensions are in ‘mm’ 25 Station ACD installed with Console 28 Station ACD Automatic Braking Unit (ABU) Fitted at a Station & linked to Signalling circuits where needed, is ‘Saathi’ to the Station Master Size - 330 x 250 x 195 Weight - 13Kg 26 Hon’ble Hon’ble MR MR Inspecting Station ACD Inspecting Station ACD 29 Braking - Normal, Emergency Loco ACD - Fitted in a Locomotive along Autowith an Auto-Braking Unit (ABU), ‘Saathi’ becomes ‘Saathi’ to Driver Inset – Driver’s Cab ACD ABU Guard ACD (with Antenna fixing arrangements) Guard Antennae Base for Radio and GPS antenna Guard ACD - 210 x 235 x 130 Weight - 3 Kg (w/o Batt.) Hon’ble MR Driver’s Console 27 - 5.5 Kg (with two rechargeable Batteies) 30 261 Manned Gate ACD with Boom Locking proving arrangement Auto-Braking Unit (ABU) n Manned Gate ACD - 220 x 320 x 155 Weight - 5 Kg All dimensions are in ‘mm’ 31 Heart of the Loco ACD equipment – the force which initiates and controls the protective braking action of train. n Intelligent braking system- Integrated systemwith Loco ACD , can derive the characteristics of the train braking and apply rationally the brake power, like human, just to stop short of obstruction 34 Un-Manned Gate ACD (with Infra-Red beam arrangement) Raksha KavachA Network of ACDs ACDs of all types network among themselves, exchange information and take decisions to prevent ‘collision’ type of dangerous situations well in time, automatically – without manual inputs, forming a IR Beams Un-Manned Gate ACD 205 x 285 x 110 Weight - 3.5 Kg 32 “RAKSHA KAVACH”. 35 All dimensions are in ‘mm’ ACD Repeater (with Tower & Location Box) n n n n What types of accidents ACDs can prevent ? Head on / rear end/ side collisions at stations and in block sections Train parting detection and take preventive steps to stop other trains Train -road vehicle collisions at level crossing gates by pre-warning preCollisions of such nature involving NO ACD fitted trains, train portions escaping from stations, poor brake power of ACD fitted trains, material lorry, no time margin left to brake the train, cannot be prevented. Analysis of 128 cases over 5 years (1997-2002), show that had ACDs been fitted, 82% of accidents could have been prevented and 93% of lives lost would have been saved! 36 ACD Repeater - 205 x 285 x 110 Weight - 3 Kg All dimensions are in ‘mm’ 33 262 Our Indian Product… n ACD has been invented by Konkan Railway Corporation n Patent for device applied for No 668/BOM/ dt 24 Sept 99 and in 128 countries. n ACD technology produces a new generation of knowledge embedded self-acting networking equipments selfwhich will cause a paradigm shift in rail guided transport 37 • Reliability •Self deduction of Track ID by Loco ACD - In Summary of Events logged by Networked ACD System during Extended Field Trials. 2137 trips 38976 times decisions for change in TID was taken on facing points out of this 38950 times correct decision were taken (99.93%) •Self deduction of Track ID by Guard ACD - In 1992 trips 30117 times decision were taken on change in Track ID on facing points. Out of this 30068 times correct decision were taken (99.83%) •Assignment of TID by Station ACD of DZ station - Out of 2702 times 2608 times correct assignments were done (96.52%) 40 ACD development Dec 1999 First prototype demonstrated by Konkan Railway u Jan 2001 First trials on NF Railway u March 2001 Second trials on KRCL u June 2001 Third Trials on KRCL u Aug 2002 Extended Field Trials begin on Northern Railway u Jan 2003 Trials completed u April 2003 - Review done by Hon’ble MR with Rly Bd, RDSO, N Rly & KRCL u Current Status - FRS & SRS under finalization with RDSO 38 u Summary of Events logged by Networked ACD System during Extended Field Trials. • Durability (Availability) - (for 62 days period) •Availability of correct TID of both Loco & Guard ACD Out of 2989 trip hrs of ACD fitted trains, for 2932 trip hrs the train carried correct Track ID (98.09%) •Availability of Loco ACD - During 2989 trip hrs of ACD fitted trains their Loco ACD were available for 2952 hrs in working condition (98.77%) •Availability of Station ACD - Out of 16368 hrs, the Station ACD were available for 16365 hrs (99.98%) Availability of Gate ACD - Out of 13392 hrs the Gate ACD were available for 13199 hrs (98.55%) 41 Summary of Events logged by Networked ACD System during Extended Field Trials. • Suitability • Loco ACDs with ABU tried on - WDM2, WDG2, WDP2, WDS6, DMU •Guard ACDs tried on - SLR & Goods Brake Van •Workability •Total 2936 trains ran with ACDs, 2771 trains had no detention on count of ACD, 165 trains suffered average detention of 3.3 minutes 39 • Maintainability •Loco ACD - Out of 52 Loco ACDs 42 worked without any trouble 9 out of 10 Loco ACDs were attended on Summary of Events logged by Networked ACD System during Extended Field Trials. board for minor troubles. Only one was replaced. •Guard ACD - 20 out of 21 Guard ACDs worked without any trouble. One got damaged due to sliding of its antennae base from roof top of SLR •Station ACD - 9 out of 11 ACDs worked without any trouble. At two stations due to removal of battery charger plug the battery got deeply discharged. •Gate ACD - 7 out of 9 ACDs worked without any trouble remaining 2 ACDs were attended at site for minor trouble 42 263 ACD s are knowledge based.. n ACD Survey Routes Selected on Indian Railways Rly NFR SCR Route Selected by Railway Board Entire Broad Gauge Route Vasco – Madgaon – Hubli – Tornagallu – Guntakal –Renigunta Chennai – Jolarpettai – (Bangalore) – Erode Bangalore) – Palghat – Shoranur - Ernakulam RKm Stations Start Date 1,700 790 181 97 14.05.03 22.04.03 n Just like an experienced driver must learn a new route, the ACD network has to acquire the knowledge of the route This is done in two stages u First by survey and design to profile the route in terms of Deviation Counts and singular points u For the knowledge base designed as above, Incubation period of about 3 months when a data base of a million occurrences in the route is used to refine the initial knowledge base 43 SR 849 107 27.05.03 3,339 385 46 ACD survey for route designeach turn-out in every station, gate and every kilometer has to be surveyed n n n n Radio reception between two moving locomotives at 3km distance through out u May result in repeaters to bridge any shadow GPS survey for possible shadow over critical locations like points & crossings Deviation Count Profiling for stations and identification of singular points Identify stations with need for limited data logger functionality provision in Station ACD 44 Indian knowledge based core strength is show cased using international standard hardware getting value addition through our software and system design strengths. ACD Technology will make India lead the world railways! 47 Special survey specific ACD equipment n Very special ACD equipment for fast data capture and analysis is designed and manufactured for survey Using this, both off-line and on-line analysis is done to create the knowledge base for the ACD network to form Raksha Kavach By computerising the entire work, we are able tackle within 100 days, route length of 700km! 45 n n 264 INCREASE IN LINE CAPACITY USING AUTOMATIC SIGNALLING WITH AFTC by Jagrut Gandhi Engineering and Technical Support Bombardier Transportation India Ltd. With the present growth on Indian Railways there is an urgent need for increasing line capacity with enhanced safety. Automatic Signalling offers advantages of increased traffic at very low cost in a short time and with greater safety. AFTC is a safe, reliable, proven, joint-less track circuit, immune to traction and additionally offers broken rail detection under defined conditions. This paper highlight how Automatic Signalling with AFTC is an ideal solution for increasing the line capacity on Indian Railways. 1. INTRODUCTION Looking at the rate at which the traffic is increasing on Indian Railways it is urgently needed to increase the line capacity. The line capacity can be increased by either providing an extra line or by use of Automatic Signalling. Automatic Signalling offers following advantages vis-a-vis provision of extra line with Absolute Block working: • • • • • More train movement as the headway is reduced. Safety level is improved as the LC gates can be interlocked and last vehicle check will be performed automatically. Execution time is less as only track circuit and signals are to be installed on the existing line. More economical. More environment friendly. At present very small portion of total route Kilometers of Indian Railways is provided with Automatic Signalling and thus the potential to increase the line capacity using Automatic Signalling is still untapped. 265 AFTC offers following advantages vis-a-vis conventional AC/DC track circuits: • • • • • • Joint-less - when used on straight-line sections, no joints are required for bifurcating two track-circuits. Immune to traction. Can be used on AC/DC electrified sections or non electrified sections. Can be used in Centralized (Remote fed) or De-Centralized (Localized) configuration. Can be used in End fed configuration for track-circuit lengths up to 650m -700 m and in Center fed mode for track-circuits longer than 700m. Proven worldwide on Mainline as well as Suburban line with different types of traction systems. Provide broken rail detection under defined conditions. Blending the advantages of AFTC with Automatic Signalling will provide an ideal solution for increasing the line capacity and enhancing the safety. 2. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF AFTC TYPE TI 21: AFTC type TI21 is designed to meet the onerous immunity requirement in AC or DC electrified areas, where high level of interference may be present due to traction harmonics. AFTC type TI 21 operates at frequencies ranging from 1.6kHz to 2.5kHz on the principle of Frequency Shift Keying (FSK), where the carrier frequency is shifted between two frequencies close to each other. Frequency Modulated signal is fed to the track and is received by the Receiver (Rx). Both of these frequencies are detected independently and a number of other checks are performed to ensure very high security against false operation. AFTC type TI 21 has a modulation rate of 4.8 Hz. Coded version of AFTC is known as TI 21 C. In this version, Transmitter (Tx) can be modulated at one of the seven different modulation rates (codes) between 2 to 10 Hz using an additional module known as CODEC. Seven codes are possible for each of the eight frequencies, thus allowing a total of fifty-six variations. This version is basically used in station (yard) areas where complex traction bonding arrangement may be present. 266 Frequency Allocation for 4 Parallel Tracks A B A B A Track 1 C D C D C Track 2 E F E F E Track 3 G H G H G Track 4 For both the types of AFTC, i.e. normal and coded, eight frequencies A, B, C, D, E, F, G and H are used and each track circuit operates at a particular frequency. Each line is allocated a pair of frequencies. This enables two frequencies to be used per track, for up to four parallel tracks. For more than four tracks the sequence is repeated. Code and Frequency allocation for typical station yard fB1 fA1 fB2 fA2 fB3 fA3 fD1 fC1 fD2 fC2 fD3 fE1 fF1 fE2 fF2 fE3 fH1 fG1 fH2 fG2 fH3 fB4 fA4 fB5 fA5 fB6 fA6 fD4 fC4 fD5 fC5 fD6 The above diagram shows the frequency distribution for a yard having 6 lines. Here, 32 track circuits are shown. Each track circuit has a distinct combination of frequency and modulation rate. Total 56 track circuits with distinct combination of modulation rate and frequency distribution can be formed using seven codes and eight frequencies. In this way, a large separation between the track circuits of the same frequency can be achieved. 2.1 System composition of AFTC type TI 21 The AFTC system consists of the following equipment: (a) Transmitter (Tx): Transmitter (Tx) produces a FSK signal with carrier frequency between 1.6kHz 267 to 2.5kHz. This signal varies ± 17 Hz about the carrier frequency. For TI 21, the modulating frequency is 4.8 Hz, whereas for TI 21 C, it can be one of the seven frequencies between 2 Hz and 10 Hz, depending upon the code selected in the CODEC. This signal is given to the track through Tuning Unit (TU) or End Termination Unit (ETU) or Track Coupling Unit (TCU). (b) Receiver (Rx): The signal from the Tuning Unit (TU) or End Termination Unit (ETU) or Track Coupling Unit (TCU) is fed to the Receiver (Rx). Receiver (Rx) checks whether both the side bands (f + 17 and f – 17) are present and are in anti-phase with each other. If both side bands are present and are in anti-phase for 2 seconds then it will drive the final Track Relay (R). (c) CODEC: CODEC generates seven different modulation rates (codes) C1 to C7 to modulate Transmitter (Tx). It also compares the signal received by the Receiver (Rx) with generated signal. If these signals are in phase and of the same frequency, the CODEC picks up a Relay (Rc). Relays of CODEC and Receiver (Rx) are connected in series to indicate track occupancy. Two types of CODEC are used; one for track circuit with single Receiver (Rx) and other for track circuit with multiple Receivers (Rx) up to a maximum of three Receivers. (d) Tuning Unit (TU): Tuning Units (TU) are used to form the electronic separation joint, which provides separation between two joint-less AFTCs. (e) End Termination Unit (ETU): End termination Unit (ETU) is used to connect the Transmitter (Tx) to rails for centre fed applications. (f) Track Coupling Unit (TCU): Track Coupling Unit (TCU) is used for interfacing between two AFTC of unpaired frequency or for termination of AFTC with other type of track circuits. TCU will be used with a pair of insulation joints. (g) Power Supply Unit (PSU): Power Supply Unit (PSU) supplies 24 V DC to Transmitter (Tx), Receiver (Rx) and CODEC. It is rated for max. output of 4.4 A. (h) Relay (R) or (Rc): The final Track Relays (R) and (Rc) are metal to carbon 50 V DC relays, which are directly operated by the Receiver (Rx) and CODEC respectively. (i) Lightening Arrestor (LA): 268 Lightening Arrestor (LA) consists of two Metal Oxide Varistor and one Gas Discharge Tube. The gas discharge tube protects the electronic circuitry of Transmitter (Tx) and Receiver (Rx) from lightening and MOV provide protection against high voltage spikes. (j) Line Matching Unit (LMU): Line Matching Unit (LMU) is a transformer that steps up the feeding voltage, thereby reducing the transmission losses. In centralised version of AFTC, it is used on transmitting side only. Line Matching Unit (LMU) is not required for receiving side. LMU-Tx is used on transmitter side and LMU-TU is used on TU, ETU or TCU side. (k) Z bond: Z Bond is an MS strap used for balancing the traction return current and is installed in alternate tuned zones. When Z bonds are used it is not required to use impedance bonds for balancing the traction return current. 2.2 Various configuration of AFTC type TI 21 and TI 21 C (a) Decentralised: In decentralised configuration, Transmitter (Tx), Receiver (Rx), Power Supply Unit (PSU) and the Track Relays (R) are mounted in wayside location box, whereas the Tuning Unit (TU), End Termination Unit (ETU) and Track Coupling Unit (TCU) are located by the track side. For TI 21 (normal version) codec and the corresponding relay Rc will not be used. 19.5M 19.5M TRACK CIRCUIT FREQUENCY `A' TUNED ZONE TRACK 35 sq mm Cu cable or CIRCUIT 50 sq mm Al cable FREQUENCY `B' TUNED ZONE TRACK CIRCUIT FREQUENCY `A' TU`A' TU`B' TU`B' TU`A' 2x2.5 sq mm Cu Cable or equivalent LA 2x2.5 sq mm Cu Cable or equivalent LA 2x2.5 sq mm Cu Cable or equivalent To Rx A Tx`A' From Rx A LA Rx`A' CODEC Rc Tx`B' CODEC Rc PSU 110V AC LA Rx`B' PSU 110V AC R R 269 (b) Centralised: In the centralised configuration, the Transmitter (Tx), Receiver (Rx), Power Supply Unit (PSU), Track Relay (R) and the Line Matching Unit – Tx side (LMUTx) are centralised in the equipment room. Only Tuning Unit (TU), Track Coupling Unit (TCU), End Termination Unit (ETU) and Line Matching Unit – TU side (LMU-TU) are mounted at the site. For TI 21 (normal version) codec and the corresponding relay Rc will not be used. EQUIPMENT ROOM 110V AC PSU Rc CODEC Tx `B' Rx`B' LMU (Tx side) R Internal wiring of Tx,Rx,PSU,LA,LMU (Tx Side) & Relay done using 1.5 sq.mm. Cu Wire LA Cable Termination Rack LA LMU (TU side) LMU (TU side) TU-A (Tx end) TU-B (Tx end) 0.9 mm dia 4 quad cable or equivalent 0.9 mm dia 4 quad cable or equivalent TU-B (Rx end) TU-A (Rx end) TRACK CIRCUIT FREQUENCY `A' TUNED ZONE 35 sq mm Cu cable or 50 sq mm Al cable TRACK CIRCUIT FREQUENCY `B' TUNED ZONE TRACK CIRCUIT FREQUENCY `A' 19.5M 2.3 Various types of AFTC type TI 21 and TI 21 C (a) Straight line - End fed: The signal is fed to the track circuit from one end and is received from the other end. The receiver relay and the CODEC relay (Rc) are connected in series. For TI 21 (normal version) codec and the corresponding relay Rc will not be used. 270 TC1 TC2 TC3 19.5m TUNED TRACK CIRCUIT FREQUENCY 'B' ZONE TRACK CIRCUIT FREQUENCY 'A' TUNED ZONE TRACK CIRCUIT FREQUENCY 'B' TU/TCU* `B' TU/TCU* `A' 110 V AC TU/TCU* `A' TU/TCU* `B' LA LA LA LA R Rx-'B' Tx-'A' PSU Rx-'A' R Tx-'B' CODEC PSU Rc PSU 110 V AC 110 V AC * When distance of 19.5 m is not available to form the tuned zone then TCU with insulation joints will be used. (a) Straight line - Centre fed: In this case, the signal is fed at the centre of track circuit and is received at both the ends of the track circuit. This is normally used for track circuit having longer lengths. The relays of both the receivers and CODEC are connected in series. For TI 21 (normal version) codec and the corresponding relay Rc will not be used. F2B NEVER SHUNTED F2B MAY BE SHUNTED F2B ALWAYS SHUNTED F1B MAY BE SHUNTED 30m 5m 5m F1B NEVER SHUNTED F1B ALWAYS SHUNTED TC1 30m Tuned Zone TRACK CIRCUIT FREQUENCY `B' `F1B' TRACK CIRCUIT FREQUENCY `B' `F2B' Tuned Zone TU/TCU* `B' LA Rx1`B' 110V AC ETU`B' LA TU/TCU* `B' LA 24V DC from PSU Rx2`B' PSU Tx`B' R CODEC R Rc * When distance of 19.5 m is not available to form the tuned zone then TCU with insulation joints will be used. 271 (a) Pt. zone with one turn out: Pt. (2) type of track circuit with two receivers is used for point zone with one turn out. The relays of both the receivers and CODEC are connected in series. For TI 21 (normal version) codec and the corresponding relay Rc will not be used. 110V AC Rc PSU CODEC AFTC JUMPER 35 mm sq Cu cable OR MS Strap TU/TCU* `A' LA Tx `A' TU/TCU* `A' LA Rx1 `A' R1 24V DC from PSU Tuned Zone FREQ. `A' Tuned Zone IRJ TCU `A' Rx2 `A' R2 (R1 and R2 & Rc will be proved in series) 24V DC from PSU * When distance of 19.5 m is not available to form the tuned zone then TCU with insulation joints will be used. (a) Pt. zone with two turn outs: Pt. (3) type of track circuit with three receivers is used for point zone with two turnouts. The relays of all the three receivers and CODEC are connected in series. For TI 21 (normal version) codec and the corresponding relay Rc will not be used. 272 TC1 110V AC Tx `A' Rc PSU CODEC Rx3 LA TCU `A' `A' R3 TU/TCU* `A' AFTC JUMPER 35 mm sq Cu cable OR MS Strap TU/TCU* `A' LA Rx1 `A' R1 FREQ. `A' Tuned Zone 24V DC from PSU IRJ TCU `A' Rx2 `A' R2 (R1,R2, R3 & Rc will be proved in series) 24V DC from PSU * When distance of 19.5 m is not available to form the tuned zone then TCU with insulation joints will be used. 2.4 MOUNTING ARRANGEMENT: (a) Decentralised configuration: Transmitters (Tx), Receivers (Rx), Power Supply Units (PSU), Lightening Arrestors (LA), Relays are mounted in wayside location boxes. Tuning units (TU) / End Termination Units (ETU) / Track Coupling Units (TCU) are normally mounted in an MS enclosure with steel post having their bases buried in the ballast adjacent to the track. They are connected to the rails using 35 mm2 copper cable or 50 mm2 Al. cable. (b) Centralised configuration: Transmitters (Tx), Receivers (Rx), Power Supply Units (PSU), Lightening Arrestors (LA), Line Matching Units – Tx side (LMU - Tx), Relays are mounted on racks in the centralised room. Tuning units (TU) / End Termination Units (ETU) / Track Coupling Units (TCU) are mounted similar to Decentralized configuration. Line Matching Unit -TU side (LMU-TU) will also be mounted in the MS enclosure used for mounting TU, ETU or TCU. 273 274 3. Application related issues with AFTC 3.1 Use of Z bond with AFTC Tu ne d Z o n e Fr equenc y 'A ' Fr equenc y 'B ' TU ' A' `Z ' B O N D (M .S . S tra p o f c ro s s s e c ti o n 5 0 x6 m m ) 'Z ' B o nd F ixi n g C la m p TU ' B' Z Bond is an MS strap used for balancing the traction return current and is installed in alternate tuned zones. When Z bonds are used it is not required to use impedance bonds for balancing the traction return current. Z bond has following advantages over impedance bond: • • • 3.2 No copper hence no theft No oil hence no maintenance Lighter in weight and hence easy to handle Broken rail detection using AFTC: AFTC can detect broken rail under defined conditions. Detection of rail breakage depends upon the following factors: (a) The extent of breakage: Clear breakage can be detected however hairline fracture may not be detected (b) Alternate paths to AFTC signal Rail breakage may not be detected if any of the following are present across the break: (i) Bonding wire across fish plate D o g S p ike s Bo nding Line (ii) Girders on metal bridges R a il G ir d e r R ai l Fi s h Pl ate 275 (iii) Mast having low earth resistance Ma st Con n ecte d to Ra il (iv) Traction bonding between UP and DN lines T rack 1 T r a c tio n b o n d in g T rack 2 Ra il M a s t c o n n e c te d to R a ils (c) Setting of the track circuit Incorrect setting of the track circuit could also lead to non-detection of the rail breakage. 4. PROPOSED SCHEME FOR AUTOMATIC SIGNALLING IN MAINLINE BLOCK SECTION USING AFTC Please refer the diagram 1, which shows the proposed scheme for Automatic Signalling in Mainline block section using AFTC. The inter-signal distance is assumed to be 1 Km and the overlap could be of 300 m to 350 m. Hence the berthing track will be 650 m to 700 m. For both the overlap and the berthing track circuit end fed type of AFTC can be used. In case the berthing is longer than 700 m then center fed type of AFTC should be used. Here decentralized configuration of AFTC is proposed as in this configuration no quad cable is required for connection between Transmitter (Tx), Receiver (Rx) to Tuning Unit (TU)/End Termination Unit (ETU) / Track Coupling Unit (TCU). Hence there is a substantial saving of cost compared to centralized configuration. Normally Centralized version is used when the distance between two stations is less e.g. Sub urban areas like Mumbai where the distance between two stations is of the order of 4 Km or less. For main line application where the distances between two stations are more it is not practicable to use Centralized version as substantial quantity of quad cable will be required and the cost will go up drastically. Decentralized version in addition to being less expensive offers advantage of quick restoration in case of a failure as Transmitter (Tx), Receiver (Rx) and Tuning Unit (TU)/End Termination Unit (ETU) / Track Coupling Unit (TCU) for any particular track circuit are in close proximity. Hence one person can easily attend to the failure. 276 The decentralized version also means that since the personnel has to necessarily go to the track side to attend to the fault, there is a very high possibility that he will also measure the train shunt value. This will have a positive impact on safety. However in case of centralized version the Transmitter (Tx) and Receiver (Rx) are located in the centralized location and Tuning Unit (TU)/End Termination Unit (ETU) / Track Coupling Unit (TCU) are located at site. Hence in case of a failure two persons with communication equipment will be required to attend to the fault. Thus Decentralized configuration of AFTC is a good solution for Automatic Block Signalling application on Main line sections as no quad cable is required and this will lead to reduction in the cost of providing Automatic Signalling. L oc at i o n B o x . f o r S 1 L oc at i o n B o x . f o r S 2 1AT .T R 1T . T R TX RX PS U D A TX RX PS U A B TX RX P SU B A TX RX PS U A B 2 X2 . 5 s q. m m . C ab le STATIO N 'A' S1 S2 PF1 Rx Tx Rx Tx Rx Tx Rx 1 T 'A ' 1 A T 'B ' 2 T 'A ' 8 A T 'D ' Rx Tx 8 T 'C ' Tx Rx Tx 2AT .T R 2T . TR 7 A T 'D ' Rx 7 T 'C ' Tx Rx Tx PF2 S8 L oc at i o n B o x . f o r S 8 S7 L oc at i o n B o x . f o r S 7 8AT .T R Rx Tx PS U D C Rx C PS U Tx C Rx Tx PS U D C Rx Tx P SU C C Diagram 1: Proposed scheme for Automatic Signalling in Mainline block section using AFTC 277 7AT .T R 8T . T R 7T . T R “SOLID STATE INTERLICKING CENTRALISED TRAFFIC CONTROL SYSTEMS AND SC ADA SYSTEMS. A SPANISH EXPERIENCE” by Julian Mayoral Electronic Engineer, Regional Area Manager International Department at ELIOP, S.A. ELIOP as an experienced Company in Telecontrol Systems has supplied technology for Railway Companies in Spain during more than 20 years. Working closely with the Spanish Railway Company, RENFE, ELIOP has supplied several SCADA Systems for Traction Substations in different regions in Spain, being one of the most important suppliers. ELIOP has also supplied CTC technology for RENEF being one of them the biggiest CTC in Europe in terms jof number of controlled Stations. With the experience acquired in the Signalling field during years of close work with the Spanish Railways and by means of a joint effort, ELIOP developped the only existing Spanish Solid State Interlocking System, SSI, with high end 2 out of 2, and 2 out of 3 technology, of modern Structured design. All this experience and know how is now offered to the Indian Railway Companies with the Support. 279 Electronic wagon detectors for improving freight operations By Mahesh Mangal Director/NP&M RailTel Corp. of India Ltd., New Delhi Key statistics of Indian Railway • One of the largest Rail Network in world – – – – – – – – – – Track Kms Freight carried Net tonnes kms Freight wagons(BG) Freight earnings Passenger earnings Electric locos Diesel loco BG passenger coaches Wagon turn around(BG) 63140 Kms 492.5 M Tonnes 333228 Millions 2.17 lacs Rs. 24587 crore Rs. 11162 crore 2871 4851 39236 7.16 days 281 Introduction • To manage such a large freight business, IR decided to implement Freight Operation Information System (FOIS) • Phase I which consists of Rake Management System (RMS) to monitor running position of rakes, interchange, in-sight & empties position has been commissioned with 233 nodes. • Phase II which consists of Terminal Management System (TMS) is under implementation with 388 additional nodes Introduction …..cont • The present system requires manual updating of data regarding arrival of rakes at divisional boundaries which is neither accurate nor in-time. • To overcome this, many countries are using Radio frequency Identification (RFID) to provide more accurate in-transit information, enabling improved services, scheduling, tracking and reducing manual errors. 282 What is RFID technology • Use of Radio frequency to provide automatic identification of a item. It is contact less and non line of site technology which can read at very high speeds. • Other technology is bar coding, which uses optical signal to provide ID, however, does not work if surface is dirty or weather is foggy or very sunny. • RFID technology can read through snow, fog, ice, paint, woods etc. & other visually/environmentally challenging conditions. • Higher frequency can read at distance greater than 90 feets They use RF signal in ranges of 30-500 khz, 850 – 950 MHz and 2.4 – 2.5 MHz.. Applications of RFID • • • • • Electronic toll collection (ETC ) Railway car identification and tracking Inter modal container identification Asset identification and tracking Item management for retail, health care, and logistics applications • Access control 283 Components of RFID system • An RFID device (tag) that contains data about an item • An antenna used to transmit the RF signals between the reader and the RFID device • An RF transceiver that generates the RF signals • A reader that receives RF transmissions from an RFID device and passes the data to a host system for processing • Application-specific software. RFID device - Tag • Programmed with data that identifies the item to which tag is attached. • Tags can be read only, read/write or write one /read many and can be either active or passive. • Active tag contains their own power source. The passive tag derive transmitting power from the radiation impinging on the tag and has battery only for retaining the memory of tag. • Now dynamic tags are available which can give fuel level, water and oil pressure, temperature and other critical information. • They are designed for long range operations and can withstand exposure to harsh environmental conditions. 284 Works on 915 MHz band Range 1.5 to 3 meters Stores upto 120 bits data Transportation Tag Size 23.6 x 6.0 x 1.75 cm Weight 160 gms Has extended memory which can be written using an asynchronous wire interface. Dynamic Tag Range up to 9 meter Weight 300 gms Antenna • Used for transmit & receive RF signal • Two types Yagi & log periodic – use depend on specific application Yagi Log Periodic 285 RF Transceiver • Source of RF energy used to activate and power passive RFID • Generally enclosed in the same cabinet as the reader. • Read & write data to tag at high speed along with reader RF out put power 32 mw to 1 W Input voltage AC or DC Reader • It directs RF transceiver to transmit RF signal, receive encoded signal, decode tag identification and transmit ID to host computer. 286 Application of RFID for tracking rolling stock like locos, wagons, passenger coaches Following is proposed for rolling stock tracking: # Each loco and wagons/coach are provided with tag. It can be Mounted underneath the engine/wagon with antennas on track bed Or tags can be mounted on both side of engine/wagons with antenna Placed besides the tracks. # Track readers to be provided at strategic points such as all entry points of a junction stations, divisional interchange stations, entry & exit points of goods sheds & sidings, maintenance facilities such as Loco sheds, C&W depots, coaching depos and weigh bridges for automatic weigh in motion. Rolling stock tracking ….cont • Tag on wagons could be read only and for locos it can be either read/write or even dynamic tag. • At each junction stations, readers provided at 4 to 5 locations can be connected through wireless or cable to a local host computer which in turn is networked with central host computer to interface with existing FOIS servers. • Railways/RailTel are providing OFC system on all important BG routes with 155 MBPS bandwidth dropped at each stations with Ethernet connectivity. Most of BG junction stations are already connected on OFC or work is in advance stage. 287 Rolling stock tracking ….cont • Whenever a freight train crosses such strategic point, the details of loco tags and IDs of wagons/coaches will be captured by track side reader and it will relay the time, date or other programmed information to host computer. • The above arrangement will provide automatic and accurate information for Yard and Goods shed management system, printing of RRs under implementation as Phase II of FOIS. • Automatic weighing will ensure proper loading of wagons and accurate charging. Rolling stock tracking ….cont • MIS applications of rolling stock monitoring and maintenance modules can use on line data for scheduling and the information from dynamic tags can be sent to loco controllers & sheds to decide un schedule maintenance, if any, required. • The location information of passenger trains can be used to provide accurate status of train to passengers and control display boards & announcement systems at stations. It can also update existing NTES or other server regarding train location. 288 Rolling stock tracking ….cont • Every year end, wagon census is carried out which wastes lot of manpower and other resources and still accurate information is not available. With this, there will be no need for such activity as information on census can be recovered for any moment. Benefits to Railways • Improvements in utilisation of rolling assets (wagon turn around, engine utilisation, average speed of goods train etc.). • Automatic data capture and updation – reduced manual entry and on line data • Proper stock of wagons detached on route. • Avoid overloading of wagons and proper charging. • No need for wagon census. • Proper implementation of FOIS and achieve all intended benefits. 289 Benefits to Railways …cont • On line monitoring of critical parameter of rolling stock for safety and maintenance decisions. • Proper records of movement of rolling stocks for maintenance scheduling. • Information of passenger trains to update existing servers for customer satisfaction. • Provide accurate web based information to customers regarding their consignments. It can also be used for automatic train positioning, location and train separation by use of reader on board engine with wireless Connectivity and tags along the track with location data It will result in to: # Relays speed and location data to controller for better management of trains and increase line capacity. #Alert the drivers when certain conditions arises such as temporary Speed restrictions or malfunctioning of trackside control etc. #Provide on line information regarding location of trains for passenger satisfaction. 290 Some of Railways where RFID technology has been used Some of Railways where RFID technology has been used ..cont 291 Proposed implementation • A pilot project be taken up for implementation in one sections before decision is taken for entire BG network. • It is proposed that movement of tank wagons is largely limited to few sections and can be selected for pilot projects. • It can be implemented by RailTel so as to ensure proper networking and in close association with CRIS. Conclusions • It is necessary to implement RFID technology to achieve full benefits of FOIS on which Rs. 426 crore is being spent. • RFID can provide a tool for optimising utilisation of assets, maintenance and improve operational efficiency. • It can also provide automatic information to passengers regarding status of passenger trains. • It can further be utilised for automatic train location to increase line capacity and safety. 292 CALL CENTRE – A NEW APPROACH TO INTEGRATED PASSENGER INFORMATION SYSTEM by K.A.Manoharan Sr DSTE/MAS D.Sunil DSTE/W/MAS INTRODUCTION Today customers want to interact with an organisation in a way that is convenient to them. This might mean interacting with the organisation by telephone, email, instant messaging or Fax. Great customer service is all about answering customer’s questions quickly and accurately every time. To provide a consistent and efficient service across all of these customer contact channels an organisation has to deploy a multi channel contact center popularly called as call center. In fact, many organisations have achieved dramatic business results through the use of call centers. Realising the need to serve customers to the level of ecstasy, Chennai Division, Southern Railway has commissioned the state of the art call center. DESCRIPTION OF THE ENQUIRY SYSTEM EARLIER AVAILABLE AT CHENNAI The following are the list of BSNL telephone numbers that were available at chennai for various enquiries. 131 132 133,134 135 1361 1362 1363 5557780 5357790 5357800 — — — — — — — — — — General Enquiry. (16 Lines) Accommodation Availability. (10 Lines) Automated Arrival & Departure Enquiry. (10,6) Manual Enquiry.(5 Lines ) PRS IVRS English.(18 Lines) PRS IVRS Hindi.(2 Lines) PRS IVRS Tamil.(4 Lines) Arrival/departure IVRS English.( 12 Lines) Arrival/departure IVRS Tamil. (4 Lines) Arrival/departure IVRS Hindi. (2 Lines) A total of 89 analog BSNL lines were utilised to operate this enquiry system. This system had the following limitations. 293 (i) The BSNL lines for various services are hard wired; e.g., for 1361, 18 BSNL lines are terminated for English language enquiry, for 1362, 4 BSNL lines for Tamil and for 1363, 2 BSNL lines for Hindi. Depending upon the call traffic, at times the lines for Hindi and Tamil services may be idle whereas calls may get dropped for English and vice-versa. At times the lines for reservation may be idle while those arr./dep. enquiry may be clogged. Since lines for all these services are hard wired by BSNL, the line configuration that is increasing or reducing a particular service line is with BSNL and nothing can be done at Railways end and as such we are not able to make optimum use of these lines. From experience it is seen that the efficiency of analog lines i.e., number of lines working each day is 90%. On an average out of 90 lines, 9 lines may be out of order on a daily basis. If the lines are out of order the customer still gets a ring back tone and comes to a conclusion that his call is not being attended to. (ii) (iii) In this system there was no means of identifying the source from where the calls have originated. Thus we had no history of who has called and had to depend on DOT for call statistics. We also did not have any statistics regarding the calls hung up by the customer or the average waiting time in a queue. Caller line identification becomes very crucial particularly in cases of bomb threats etc., (iv) In this system there was no rerouting of calls. For example if a customer rings up a number for IVRS enquiry but wants further clarification from the manual enquiry, he has to hang up and redial the number of the manual enquiry which may be engaged at that particular time. Even in the queuing system the caller is not made aware of the average waiting time and may hang up if the queue prolongs. (v) In the manual enquiry system we often get complaints that the operators are not attending to the calls. When the operators are questioned they put the reasons down to system faults etc.,which cannot be confirmed. We did not have any facility to monitor the activities of our operators. Thus we were not able to have the statistics of calls handled each day by each operator and also to evaluate the performance of the manual operators. (vi) Since a particular set of operators have been assigned a particular service, at times the people used for manual reservation enquiry were idling whereas those used for manual arr./dep. enquiry were overloaded. We were thus not able to make optimum use of the manpower. To overcome all these limitations the automatic call distribution centre was set up at chennai central. The total cost of the project was 50 lakhs. SALIENT FEATURES OF THE CALL CENTER The following are the facilities available to customers after implementation of the call centre in MAS division. 294 (i) Single window for the various Customer Service applications: One universal phone number -131 will be available to the passengers/customers for accessing the various services available. Information on the following services are made available to the customers: • • • • • • • • Accomodation availability Reservation status Arrival & Departure Fare structure Concessions Trains for different destinations Summer specials Information on passenger Ammenities (ii) Increased availability of services: The existing IVRS has been enhanced to 60 ports and the existing analog BSNL lines has been changed to digital lines (E1). Since the reliability of the digital lines is almost 100% as compared to 90% of analog lines, higher availability is achieved and since the calls are optimally distributed through ACD, the waiting time is reduced. (iii) E-mail access: Customers can e-mail their queries to the call centre, which will automatically pop up in the supervisor’s screen. If the supervisor knows the answer, the reply furnished by the supervisor will automatically be mailed back to the customer. If he does not know the answer he can forward the mail to the respective department. Once the reply is obtained from the respective department, the same will be forwarded to the customer. (iv) Fax on demand: The call center is capable of recognizing, receiving and storing fax messages. Customers can receive by Fax the various concession forms and the complete list and details of special trains. Call Center shall announce a menu of documents that are available by fax. The subscriber can make a selection by dialing the document number and then the number of the fax machine to receive the documents. (v) Automatic announcing unit: The call centre shall provide prerecorded information to callers. The call centre will announce a menu of information that are available in the automatic announcing unit. The subscriber can make a selection by dialing a digit and then listen to the information. (vi) Call back facility on confirmation of reservation: In case of PNR enquiry, where a caller finds that his accommodation is not confirmed he can leave his telephone number. As and when the accommodation gets confirmed the system will automatically dial the number and the news of his accommodation getting confirmed will be intimated to him. 295 (vii) Accident related queries: In the event of any accident, the option of accident related enquiry could be activated in the system. The customers exercising this option will be automatically redirected to the accident information cell where he can access the required information. Railways can even avoid the hiring of casual BSNL phone connections for accident related enquiry as customers can access the information by dialling the call centre number. (viii) Registeration of complaints: The customer can register their complaints by calling the call centre. The system will register the complaints department wise and the same will be e-mailed to the respective departments. On getting the feed back from the respective departments the same will be conveyed to the customer. SYSTEM OF WORKING OF THE CALL CENTRE The network diagram of the call centre implemented in MAS division is as given in fig (a). When a customer dials the call center number the call will first land on the call center switch which will direct it to any one of the free IVRS ports. After playing the welcome message by the IVRS, the customer will be prompted to exercise his language option by pressing the relevant digit. Next he will be prompted to select the service he wants by pressing the relevant digit which will be played to him in the language he has selected. Based on the service selected the information will either be conveyed by the IVRS itself or the call will be transferred to the agents. If all the agents are busy the call will be held in the wait queue. The dynamic position of the call in the wait queue will be conveyed to the customer continuously till the call is finally transferred to the free agent. The agent on receiving the call accesses the information required through the agent workstation and conveys the same to the customer. Railnet connectivity is provided to the CTI server to enable the customers to access the call centre through Internet. Out bound Fax for the ‘fax on demand’ service will be accomplished through the Fax card installed in the CTI server. The following are the main components of the call centre. (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (a) PBX Switch CTI Server & Software IVRS System Agent Workstations & software Agent monitoring and reports software Connectivity to PRS & NTES Servers PBX Switch: The PBX Switch used is an ISDN, 100% hot standby, in built ACD and CTI enabled exchange. The switch is equipped with 8 E1 trunks, 72 analog extensions and 24 digital extension circuits. Connectivity from BSNL exchange to the call centre is through 4 E1 digital circuits (120 channels) which is terminated in the call centre switch. The switch is interfaced with the IVRS system through 2 E1 circuits and with the CTI server through the CTI link port in the switch. 296 (b) CTI Server & Software: The CTI Server is interfaced with the switch, the agent workstations, the PRS & NTES Servers and the IVRS system. The distribution of calls to IVRS system, transferring of calls from IVRS to agents, distribution of calls among agents, fetching of data from PRS & NTES servers, activation of out bound calls, processing of Fax on demand requests and passing on the real time call status information and call statistics to the agent monitoring and reports software is all done by the Call centre application software and Computer Telephony Integration software running in the CTI Server. The configuration of the CTI Server used is Intel Pentium IV dual CPU Xeon processor of 1.6 GHz, 133 MHz FSB, 1GB SDRAM ECC protected memory upgradable to 4GB, 3X 18.2 GB Hot Swap Ultra3 10K RPM HDD’s (SCSI), Net RAID IM Ultra 3 raid Controller with 32 Mb Cache and with redundant power supply. Windows 2000 server software is used as the operating system. IVRS System: The IVRS system is used for providing standard responses to customer queries like ticket status, accommodation availability and train arrival & departure information. The system is integrated with the PRS & NTES database through the CTI server. Dual E1 60 port Intel dialogic card is used for implementing this system. Presently the capacity of the system is for handling 60 simultaneous calls, which is being upgraded for handling 120 simultaneous calls. Agent Workstations & software: The agent workstations are connected on LAN with the CTI server. Each agent is given a user name and password that has to be entered in the login screen of the agent workstation for enabling the agents to receive calls. The calls will be distributed uniformly and to the maximum idle agent. When a call arrives at an agent the appropriate screen will be displayed on the agent workstation based on the service request along with the information such as CLI, language preference, type of service requested etc. All the information required by the customer can be accessed by using the user-friendly software installed in the agent workstation. The workstation accesses the information by querying the various databases through the CTI Server. The configuration of the workstation used is Intel Pentium IV 1.6 GHz, 256 MB RAM, 20 GB HDD, 100 Mbps Ethernet card & 15” SVGA monitor. The operating system used is windows XP professional. Agent monitoring and reports software: Through the agent monitoring software the supervisor can monitor on real time basis the status of the agents logged in. The names of the agents logged in, their extension number, their status (whether talking, wrap up or idle) and the time duration in that particular condition will be displayed on the screen of the supervisor computer. It is possible for the supervisor to listen to the conversation between the agent and the customer and even intervene in the conversation if required. Through the reports software the various statistical reports regarding the performance of the call centre such as the total no. of calls arrived, the distribution of the calls among the various services, performance of individual agents etc could be generated. (c) (d) (e) 297 (f) Connectivity to PRS & NTES Servers: The dynamic data for the call centre viz: reservation information and arrival / departure of trains information are available from the PRS & NTES servers respectively. Due to security reasons the information from these servers are allowed to be accessed only through serial ports available at terminal servers which are connected on LAN with the PRS & NTES servers. The data exchange will be in the form of a query packet and a response packet for each information. 6 serial ports of the terminal server are connected to the serial card of the CTI server. Out of the 6 serial ports 4 are dedicated for PRS data and the remaining for NTES data. When a particular information is requested the CTI server checks for the free port available and accesses the data through it. Results after commissioning of the call centre The site for the call centre was developed on modular office design in an ergonomic manner. The improvement in the working environment for the agents itself has helped in bringing about a positive approach to the job. Also as a result of the agent monitoring system the discipline in the staff also has increased. The number of calls handled per day by the system has increased to 30,000 from 15,000 as compared to the earlier system without any increase in the agents. The automatic call back facility has been widely appreciated by the public as this is first of its kind implemented anywhere in the country by any organisation. The system has become very popular that most of the time the call centre is running at its full capacity of handling 60 simultaneous calls. To overcome this, the system is being upgraded to handle 120 simultaneous calls. Hurdles to be overcome for smooth functioning of the call center (a) The arrival / departure information of trains is accessed by querying the database of NTES server. The NTES database is updated through a terminal provided in the control office manually. Because of late entry or incorrect entry of data by the manual operator, quite often the data related to the train arrival / departure information which is accessed from the NTES server is found to be incorrect and complaints have been received from the passengers regarding this. To eliminate this problem separate software is being developed which will capture the train arrival & departure data from the control charting and automatically upload the same to the NTES server. For certain queries the data will not be available locally at Chennai PRS or NTES system. The speed of accessing data from outside location depends on the network load at the particular time. The call centre software has been designed in such a way that if the requested information could not be accessed within 20 seconds the system will inform the customer that the requested information is currently not available. However the PRS or NTES system will not accept any further queries on the serial port unless it receives the information from the remote location and the same is conveyed back to the call centre. Many times it has happened that the all the ports were blocked for more than 30 minutes and the information to the customers were blocked during that period. To overcome this problem one serial port will be dedicated for remote location data access and the remaining port for 298 (b) local database access. The software has to be modified in such a way that it will check whether the query is for local database or remote database and based on the result the query packet will be routed to the respective serial ports. This will avoid the blockage of ports for local database queries. However to avoid the delay for remote database queries the present network connectivity of 64 Kbps should be upgraded to 2Mbps. (c) Many information that are available from the concert enquiry terminal of Passenger reservation system are not available in packet structure format. As a result of this, the call centre could not access queries related to these. To overcome this problem some enquiry terminals have been provided at call centre so that any query from the customer relating to these will be obtained from these terminals and the same will be conveyed to the customer. The permanent solution will be creation of packet structure for these queries by CRIS. Figure (a) SR, Chennai - Call Center Network Diagram Railnet DSL PRS Server NTES Server DSL 2 E1 for IVR 4E1 (BSNL) PBX/ ACD CTI/ IVR Server Switch Agent PC CTI link Agent Phone L A N 299 Railway’s Infrastructure for Bringing Communication Revolution to Rural India EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES IN SAFETY AND CUSTOMER SATISFACTION June 14, 2003 VIGYAN BHAWAN, New Delhi Desh Deshpande Chairman, Tejas Networks Bangalore, India Agenda § § § § § § § Communications Revolution Implications of the Technology Revolution India’s Strengths in Technology Rural India Promise of the Future Engineering Challenges Summary 2 INSTITUTION OF RAILWAY SIGNAL & TELECOMMUNICATION ENGINEERS (INDIA) , June 14, 2003 300 Communications Revolution E v o lu tio n o ff th e P u b lic N e tw o rrk E v o lu tio n o th e P u b lic N e tw o k T r a n s m i s s i o n A r c h i te c tu r e s S o ur c e : Ov u m C o p p er, e le ctro n ic C o p p er, e le ctro n ic IIntellig en tt ntellig en O p tic al O p tic al N eetw o rking N tw o rking W D M /D W D M W D M /D W D M S o n et/S D H (T D M -b as eed )) S o n et /S D H (T D M -b as d P D H /A s yn c hr on ou s (T D M -b as eed )) P D H /A s yn c hr on ou s (T D M -b as d A n al og u ee T ra ns m is ssio n A n al og u T ra ns m is io n 1 97 0 10 F ib er, P h o ton ic F ib er, P h o ton ic 1 99 0 2 00 0 2 01 0 1 98 0 3 INSTITUTION OF RAILWAY SIGNAL & TELECOMMUNICATION ENGINEERS (INDIA) , June 14, 2003 Long Term Communication Technologies • Fiber Optics for Backbone • Wireless for access 4 INSTITUTION OF RAILWAY SIGNAL & TELECOMMUNICATION ENGINEERS (INDIA) , June 14, 2003 301 Promise of Productivity Network 5 INSTITUTION OF RAILWAY SIGNAL & TELECOMMUNICATION ENGINEERS (INDIA) , June 14, 2003 Role of the Network Time 6 INSTITUTION OF RAILWAY SIGNAL & TELECOMMUNICATION ENGINEERS (INDIA) , June 14, 2003 302 Agents of Change TECHNOLOGY CAPITAL BEHAVIOR 7 INSTITUTION OF RAILWAY SIGNAL & TELECOMMUNICATION ENGINEERS (INDIA) , June 14, 2003 Realizing the Network as a New Tool Solve New Problems The Network 8 INSTITUTION OF RAILWAY SIGNAL & TELECOMMUNICATION ENGINEERS (INDIA) , June 14, 2003 303 100 Remote Medicine Streaming HDTV HDTV - VOD Virtual Reality Gaming 10 PC Video (RealVideo, Windows Media Player) Full-motion Video (MPEG2, NTSC) On-line Back-ups Streaming apps Enhanced Gaming Bandwidth (per instance) 1 Web Surfing (flash, shocked) Videoconf. Multi-channel audio Real-time, mullti-player gaming 0.1 Web Surfing (text, pics) Instant Messaging Downloads (MP3, MPEG2 ,etc) Audio - CD quality VoIP CD quality VoIP 0.01 9 INSTITUTION OF RAILWAY SIGNAL & TELECOMMUNICATION ENGINEERS (INDIA) , June 14, 2003 Technology Innovation Application Size/Speed Users WebTV 10 INSTITUTION OF RAILWAY SIGNAL & TELECOMMUNICATION ENGINEERS (INDIA) , June 14, 2003 304 Network Transformation: More for Less = 11 SONET/SDH INSTITUTION OF RAILWAY SIGNAL & TELECOMMUNICATION ENGINEERS (INDIA) , June 14, 2003 Intelligent Optical Switching A Familiar Trend Mainframes PCs 12 INSTITUTION OF RAILWAY SIGNAL & TELECOMMUNICATION ENGINEERS (INDIA) , June 14, 2003 305 We have Come a Long Way 13 INSTITUTION OF RAILWAY SIGNAL & TELECOMMUNICATION ENGINEERS (INDIA) , June 14, 2003 Communications Building Blocks Innovative New Devices Convert Info to IPand Packets Applications New Switch IP Approaches Packets to Filling (Filling the Pipes) the Pipes Bigger, Creating Creating Faster, the Pipes WAN Pipes Moremove to move to Nimble thePipes the Packets Packets 14 INSTITUTION OF RAILWAY SIGNAL & TELECOMMUNICATION ENGINEERS (INDIA) , June 14, 2003 306 New Users, New Applications, New Service Requirements IP packets Ethernet Packets Mobile Packets Indian Railway Infrastructure 15 INSTITUTION OF RAILWAY SIGNAL & TELECOMMUNICATION ENGINEERS (INDIA) , June 14, 2003 India’s Strengths in Technology § India has built a $14B IT service business § This has allowed India to build a world class IT technology base and an excellent knowledge base § This will soon cross $80B, a substantial amount § In addition to developing technology for other countries India needs to start using the expertise to solve its own problems § THIS IS THE REAL GLOBAL OPPORTUNITY 16 NASSCOM-McKinsey study reported by Business Week INSTITUTION OF RAILWAY SIGNAL & TELECOMMUNICATION ENGINEERS (INDIA) , June 14, 2003 307 Rural India and the Economic Pyramid § C. K. Prahalad says: § World Economic Pyramid of 6 Billion people • 2 Billion – Rich People and Middle Class • 4 Billion – BOP (Bottom of the Pyramid) § What is a good way to serve the BOP? 17 INSTITUTION OF RAILWAY SIGNAL & TELECOMMUNICATION ENGINEERS (INDIA) , June 14, 2003 Bottom of the Pyramid § Subsidies and Government programs – have failed to alleviate poverty § Convert poor into active consumers § Generate more jobs and employment § BOP can be the spring board for Innovation § Need INNOVATIVE ways to develop products and services § BOP is an active market and ROI’s are higher than in traditional markets 18 INSTITUTION OF RAILWAY SIGNAL & TELECOMMUNICATION ENGINEERS (INDIA) , June 14, 2003 308 Promise of the Future § India can become the global Lab for INNOVATIONS for the world’s poor – a potential market for 4 Billion people § The focus should be on experimentation § The challenge of the less fortunate has been with us for a long time § The new opportunity is to serve them profitably § Railways/Railtel can lead the world in this experiment 19 INSTITUTION OF RAILWAY SIGNAL & TELECOMMUNICATION ENGINEERS (INDIA) , June 14, 2003 Engineering Challenges § India has become very familiar with IT technology by providing services to other countries § It is time to start using the technology to solve the problems of India § Don’t chase technology for Technology sake § Use Leading Edge but not bleeding edge § Innovate use of technology in ways that is used no where else in the world § India should build Companies that develop technology for India that meet the world standards and then become global suppliers 20 INSTITUTION OF RAILWAY SIGNAL & TELECOMMUNICATION ENGINEERS (INDIA) , June 14, 2003 309 Railtel Network: Vehicle for Indian BOP § Indian Railways reaches all nooks and corners of India • Economic activity in any small town/village centers around the railway station • Already serving the needs of India’s BOP in many ways § Railtel Network • Use the reach of Indian Railways • Add telecom-enabled products and services to India’s BOP • Wireless can be used in the first/last mile from the Railway station for rapid deployment of services § Need to innovate products based on understanding of customer needs § Potential applications include: • • • • 21 Broadband Applications and access to customers Remote health monitoring “Email-STD-Internet” booths … INSTITUTION OF RAILWAY SIGNAL & TELECOMMUNICATION ENGINEERS (INDIA) , June 14, 2003 Railtel Network – few inputs § Railtel has an opportunity to build a world class network which doesn’t have any legacy systems § They should use this to make a state of the art feature rich network to provide cost effective applications and solutions to their customers § New technologies which will help you staying ahead of competition are • • • • • Ethernet over SDH Upgradeable systems Support of Mesh technologies with using cross connects Open NMS Operational Support System for ease of management countrywide § Focus on marketing of your services to get faster ROI as competition will keep on driving margins down as more and more similar networks comes up. INSTITUTION OF RAILWAY SIGNAL & TELECOMMUNICATION ENGINEERS (INDIA) , June 14, 2003 22 310 Summary § India has and understands Technology § Technology has matured to a point of Maturity when it can solve serious problems § Railways has the architects and the reach to touch all corners of India § The Architects in Railways should lead the architecture and the technologies to solve the BASIC problems of rural India in INNOVATIVE ways § This is an unprecedented OPPORTUNITY to make the Impact through TECHNOLOGY 23 INSTITUTION OF RAILWAY SIGNAL & TELECOMMUNICATION ENGINEERS (INDIA) , June 14, 2003 311 PASSENGER AMENITIES by Shanker V. Rao President, ShoshaCom Ltd. The Indian Railways: the largest single network of tracks in the world; you transport the most number of passengers a day, about 13 Million I believe; and the largest single employer in the world with over 1.5 million employees. It is now 150 years old. Celebrating 150 years of continued service to the public is a major achievement. I am not here to tell you about your history or achievements, which you only know too well. All I will do is congratulate you on all the achievements. It is indeed a pleasure for me to have this opportunity to speak with you. I am humbled to address this audience of such highly qualified and trained professionals. Today’s world can be characterized as one where all societies are becoming more and more information dependant. India is no exception. This thirst for information, and its availability, is slowly breaking down barriers between people, regions, countries, as well as continents. Lack of information and its timeliness is a major setback. Time and distance do not have the same meaning as they did a few decades ago. Three decades ago, we would wait a day or two before we read about a cricket game in the newspapers, and often the news about a war would already be a few weeks old by the time we read about it. It is true that we could hear the radio for the live cricket commentaries and the slightly dated news of war. However, that was possible only if you had access to a radio. The number of people who could do this was limited. I still remember the days when we needed licenses to own a radio in India. Some of you may be too young to remember that or even know about it. I can recall, a little over 30 years ago when TV was introduced in Bombay. We lived in a building of some of the top most people in Govt. in the country. All the kids used to gather in our house, because we were the only ones who had a TV. Needless to say, i was quite popular with all the kids. Today almost every house in the cities has a TV. Here, I am going based on just the number of antennas one sees in the huts in Dharavi, as we land in Bombay. Today, you can not only sit in the comfort of your house and watch games in real-time, we can also watch wars real-time. Blow by blow that is. Every pun intended. We are not here to debate the merits of that, so we will leave that point aside. 312 You, who work with the Railways, are probably sitting there wandering what watching a cricket game or watching the war has to do with you. If you are thinking that, I am pleased, because it tells me you are awake and alert. Now, let us see what all that means to you. Let us start by looking at how you define yourself. I learnt how important this is, when I studied why some railroads in the North America survived, and why others did not. I realized that those that believed they were in the transportation business, survived, the others did not. I believe Indian Railways has been clear about being in the transportation business. This allows you to focus on the movement of passengers and goods, without neglecting either. What does this have to do with you? The reason is simple. How you define yourself has an impact on how you approach any situation. As I mentioned earlier, the world has changed dramatically over the last few decades. This applies to all industries and walks in life. All of us have to adjust to the changes to keep ourselves relevant. How does the Railway plan to stay relevant in India? It is not an easy task when one is a monopoly, such as you are. We will now get to specifics. The Railways have optical fiber cable along the track. A very small part of the bandwidth, I would place it at about 2%, is required for internal use signals, internal communication (intranet), etc. That leaves a large potential for revenue. But how does one generate the revenue? Let me now talk about what we are doing, and where we can go with this. Here, I will only speak of some of the things that are in the realm of possibility today. SoshaCom Ltd. from Canada (my company), along with Bharti Cellular Ltd. have been in discussions with RailTel for about 9 months to develop and deploy some services. At this point I must acknowledge and congratulate Mr. Chopra, MD RailTel, for his vision and leadership. I am pleased to see that the Indian Railways gave him this daunting task of taking a new entity and giving it shape and direction. RailTel had a vision of providing internet and voice services at the train stations and on the moving trains. SoshaCom Ltd. suggested that the services can be extended, with a minimal incremental cost, to the areas surrounding the stations as well, and increase the revenue potential dramatically. Here is where the cricket match and the war on TV become relevant. You have to look at it as information. In my world of Communication, everything is data; it is information (bits and bytes / speeds and feeds). I will refer to all the services as data services, and describe some of the potential opportunities. 313 As engineers, I know we are taught that everything is possible. The key, often, is to make sure it is an acceptable solution. At SoshaCom Ltd. we started working on a solution. There have been many challenges in the process. One of the major challenges was to provide access to data services on the moving train in an economical manner. The other critical element was the antenna to be used on the train. My team has done a lot of research, and has not yet found such a service in the world. I am pleased to say that, with the cooperation and commitment of RailTel, we have not only developed a solution, but also tested, and demonstrated it. The Indian Railways in now the first in the world to be ready to deploy services for the public. Let me now focus on the services and the commercial value. Part of the technical design is provided here, and we have Inderjit Sehrawat here from RailTel, who has worked very closely with my team and will be able to address any of your questions. We start by providing data services on train stations. This can be done in one of two ways - hard wired or wireless to the kiosks. We anticipate that this will be a combination of the two. We do not see the commercial value of having hard wired kiosks on every platform. This will be a very poor use of the equipment and capital. This equipment, if hard wired, will only be used for a few minutes, at best, before and after a train stops at the platform that lie in the middle of a station. We feel a wireless mobile kiosk will allow movement between platforms for the optimal utilization. Services will be provided on a pre-paid card basis. During the pilot phase of the project, we see a few terminals being placed in a coach. The passengers will have access to the terminals for internet access. As the deployment progresses, we see an entire coach, and based on demand more, that will be dedicated for such services. This will be similar to a cyber cafe, and can be called “Mail on Rail,’™. We do plan to add voice services at a later stage. Having added towers and antennas at the stations, we foresee using the same facility to provide services to the areas around the stations. The first phase will identify enterprise/commercial customers (small and medium enterprises- SME’s) and provide them dedicated bandwidth. This will assure a steady stream of revenue. Over a period of time, channels will be established in each of the towns and villages. The channels will then set-up kiosks for public use, much along the lines of the STD/ISD booths. However, this will also act as a business center, with photocopy, fax, e-fax, scan, print, and similar services. Needless to say, all services for a fee. In rural and semi-rural areas, the kiosks will also become the hub of community access to e-reaming, e-health, and e-government services. E-Learning provided will range from basic literacy (ability to read and write) to 314 diplomas and advanced training. The content will be area specific. A farming community can have the latest in farming and agricultural details (e.g. How to deal with a new virus or how to increase yield of a specific crop.) A fishing district will have information that is relevant to them. The important thing is here to provide relevant information. E-Health will provide people access to basic diagnostics to advanced consultations with medical practitioners in hospitals from larger centers. E-Government will allow the government to provide the masses access to services such as news, forms, registration for voter lists, land details, weather details, information and payment of taxes and bills, agriculture, and contact details for any government matter. It allows the government to become transparent and re-deploy its human resources to other emerging priorities. Let me point out that as we have seen bandwidth costs go down dramatically over the recent past. Each of the owners of backbone and infrastructure now has to think of ways to keep the revenue stream going. The only way of doing that is continually layering services through different applications. There is no magic here, just think “VALUE ADD,’. Now here are thoughts on the types of services and applications for the near future. None of these are sci-fi. We have the solutions for these today. The first service will be access to the net with access to email. Consider a person going from Agra to Delhi. Today, from the time the person leaves their home till they arrive at their destination their access to information is limited. The only access one has is to the cellular phone, if they travel by train or road. If one happens to fly, their access is even more restricted. Let us see where the world is now going. With the services we are soon going to deploy, one can be in touch with all their important contacts, at all times, be they professional or personal. Let your imagination lose, we are moving towards services that will make traveling by train more attractive and a pleasure for business people, as well as families. Business people can remain connected, while families can communicate with friends or have the young children occupied playing games, chatting’ etc. Localized services: 1. GPS based - This is similar to what you find on flights. This will permit you to provide exact maps of the location of the train, relative to the stations. In addition, it can also help provide the passengers details such as hotels, monuments, city maps, entertainment, hospitals, news, public service announcements for the next station on the route. This can be done in one of two ways. The information can be provided to passengers either on demand, or through information boards on each coach. 315 What use are maps or details on Hotels, Hospitals, places of interest, things to do, etc.? The type of travel has changed over the last decade or so. It is no longer the case where people are traveling solely with the purpose of visiting family or for work. Today, more and more people have started traveling on vacation to see new places. This is a growing segment, and with spending power. This is a segment that not only requires these services, but is also willing and capable of paying for the information. Each of these services can be treated as a new service and a new business. This will create several new businesses and many new jobs. It will develop new small enterprises to develop and manage such content. Division specific Others types of services that can be provided include reservations and confirmations from any point of the network. Passengers can then make reservation and check the status of their waiting list tickets. This will make every location on the network a point of sale. In doing so, you will off-load some of the stress at the railway stations, at no additional cost. Ticket Collectors can scan tickets, verification will get done against a database, and the response will be provided to the passenger. We are talking about making a passengers life easier. I realize that this may not be a popular thought in some circles, but it certainly will help reduce some of the fraud, and may even help increase the revenue for the railways. Such an application will certainly be welcomed by the passengers and seen as a good step towards transparency. The last two points will significantly reduce the crowd situation that occurs on platforms. Imagine the impact of something as simple as these. You will reduce points of friction (less potential for fights, arguments, etc.) Reduce the prospect of theft (pockets being picked). The list goes on. All this also has an impact on security, safety, and even health. Think about how they provide you information on a plane about emergency procedures. Imagine being able to provide the passenger with information on what to do if there is a medical emergency on board the train. Imagine, you will have the ability to access medical advice from a near bye town while you are on board the train and get help. The question here is not how often such services get used, but what does it do for the passengers. We are talking about providing passengers a greater level of comfort. If we look at how many planes get hijacked, how many people have babies on board, how many people have heart attacks, or the list goes on in proportion to the number of flights everyday or the number of people that travel, the answer is a small fraction. However, that is not the point. The point is that there are procedures in place to minimize the stress of those situations, and the passengers feel assured about traveling. The beauty here is that, with what we are putting in place, you are in a situation 316 where all these kinds of things can be done without any great expense. Let me make one last poignant and relevant point at this stage. In the event of a train accident and you have had a few in the news lately, with this wireless network in place, you will have the ability to maintain communication. What does this do? This will help your emergency response capability and the response time. Time is limited, so I will conclude now. Let me leave you with a few thoughts. In the last 2 months I have been approached by a few other countries that are envious that we have demonstrated this capability, and are keen on doing something similar. The option is yours. One can sit and doubt this, and spend time contemplating ways of slowing such ideas down. However, as someone much wiser than I said, “there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come”. You have an opportunity to be part of history in the making, and get creative with what else can be done. You now have an opportunity to make a quantum leap in passenger amenities. The train is leaving the station, with or without you. Do you want to be part of another first for India in the World? Do you want to part of a model for the world on how to provide access to the rural and semi-rural areas of a country? The option is yours. We are here to help and make it all happen. 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340