Accident and incident investigation is a crucial part of railroading. Although everybody hope that can pass the shift without any extraordinary event but the infrastructure managers and operators must be prepared for incidents as well. Read the rest of this entry »
Accident and incident investigation
August 27th, 2010Railways in Hungary – Energy
July 28th, 2010In my last post I introduced the basics of the Hungarian signalling system. Now let’s take a step further, let’s take a look at the energy system, particularly, at the overhead line equipments (OLE).
Indian Train Accidents-Reasons and Solutions
July 21st, 2010Indian railways is one of the largest among the world railways.
It had been over 150 years back ,the first train rolled on an Indian Track.
It is among the rare category of huge profit making railways of the world.
It carries millions of passengers,tons of freight and are the life line of the country.
Indian railways employs over a million people,runs an impressive network over 60,000 KM.
But it is sad to note the snail pace technology advancement to the network.
Train accidents are becoming common and there is not even a single day passed with out an accident.
Considering all these factors users have every right to have a safe journey.
Some of the reasons for high accident rate.
- Poor Maintenance
- Slow pace upgrading.
- Lack of training to employees
- Waiver to bypass the process and standards
- Non existence of train protection systems like Trainstops or AWS(Advance Warning System)
or ATP(Automatic Train Protection System)
- Too much of bureaucracy and red tapism.
- Corruption to certain extent.
- Poor administration.
- Ignorance of Political mechanism.
- Lack of competition(Monopoly)
- Poor Track maintenance
- Lack of quality rollingstock and maintenance.
- Staff fatigue,lack of enough rest.etc
- Terrorist or Extremist attack.
The life time of an installed safety infrastructure with timely maintenance is 25 years ,to a maximum.
But majority of Indian Railway installations are half century old or even before.
Solution
- Advance Training to drivers
- Adoption of new technologies like ERTMS,ATP or at least a trainstop in full pace.
- Timely maintenance
- Adoption of better quality process.
- University level system training courses.(Can even start Bachelors in Signalling and Rail safety systems)
- Enough rest for critical employees like drivers and assistant drivers.
- Revolutionise the administration
- Privatisation to a certain percentage under a strict monitoring mechanism on quality and pricing.
- A ‘capable’ cabinet rank minister and minister of states,who work and dream national interest rather to regional.
- A strong democratic opposition to highlight the Mal practices.
- A strong media ,bringing the culprits into public.
Deepu Dharmarajan
Railway Signalling using Wireless Sensor Networks
July 10th, 2010Railway Signalling is safety critical domain, where still traditional technology is in use. There are many reasons for using traditional technology; one of the main reasons being the proven Safety performance of the older systems (Relay Based). As the rail traffic is increasing and with higher speed of trains there is an acute need for modernization of Railway Signalling Technology. Even with the advent of Microprocessor based technology, the problems have not been solved. The current railway signalling technology involves huge amount of physical wiring used to receive inputs and drive outputs to the field functions, which is very difficult to maintain and up-gradation of this infrastructure is every signal engineer’s nightmare. This paper proposes the use of Wireless sensor networks in Railway Signalling domain which combines the Ground base signalling and the On–Board Signalling using customized routing algorithm, which is suitable for high Speed Railway Traffic which reduces the physical wiring to the bare minimum by applying distributed architecture to the field functions which are connected by Wireless Network.
The most important part of the railways is to carry out operations like safe movement of trains, this is achieved by Signalling. The Railway signalling is governed by a concept called Interlocking. Many interlocking system still in use follow either relay based technology or the Microprocessor based technology called Electronic Interlocking System (EIS). Relay based systems are very huge in size and have cumbersome wiring to perform operations. The advent of Electronic Interlocking systems reduced the relays and wiring to some extent, but still uses traditional copper cabling to be connected to the field functions such as signals, Track Detection equipment, points (Switches). In modern signalling systems, the signal and switch status needs to be sent to the On-Board Computers in the locomotives, this involves traditional radios connected to the wayside field functions that communicate this information to the OBC. This involves laying out track loops or balises that send this information to the OBC, these loops are venerable to climatic conditions such as ballast resistance, water flooding during rains, etc. Due to the failsafe nature of these systems the cabling has to be redundant, this results in large maze of complex wiring that is very difficult to maintain and upgrade. There is need to upgrade the existing Railway Signalling Infrastructure and addition of new technologies like failsafe wireless communications which shall combine both the ground based signalling (Interlocking Systems) and the Locomotives (On Board Computers of the train) which directly leads to simple distributed architecture which are highly maintainable and easy to upgrade in future.
Sandeep Patalay
http://verificationandvalidation.blogspot.com/
Supply Chain Management
June 13th, 2010Does Your Selection Criteria Include Supplier Size?
You need a supplier who will stay in business on a long-term basis. You need a supplier whose capabilities are scalable, so your delivery, service, or quality will not suffer if your volume increases.
But you also need a supplier who values your business. When you’re unhappy with the supplier or you need special assistance, you need your supplier to put forth extraordinary effort towards satisfying you.
Selecting a supplier of the “right” size – relative to your spend with them – can meet all of these needs.
Generally, if your business represents less than 1% of a supplier’s annual sales, you won’t be extremely valuable to them. So you may not get the service or attention you may need at critical moments.
Conversely, if your business represents over 10% of a supplier’s annual sales, that supplier may be too dependent on you. Decreases in your volume could force them to lay off portions of their workforce or even go out of business. That would negatively impact your ability to satisfy your requirements when regular demand patterns are restored. Additionally, volume spikes could clog the supplier’s operations.
When comparing supplier proposals, note the percentage of each supplier’s sales that would be comprised by your business. Assign one of three designations to your evaluation sheet to represent that percentage:
10%
If the highest ranking supplier is assigned either the “10%” designation, reconsider how the supplier’s size may negatively affect the performance you get out of that supplier during your relationship.
It may or may not change your decision. But it is something to be considered. Personalize this process: Think about your own attentive and inattentive suppliers. Calculate the percentage of their sales that is comprised by your spend. Then adjust the percentage thresholds (1% and 10%) to reflect the correlation between supplier size and attentiveness in your experience.
Manilal T.
Railways in Hungary – technical overview
June 11th, 2010Part one – Signalling system
The signalling system is speed based instead of route signalling. Mostly coloured light signals used, but there are numerous semaphore signals. The base principles of the coloured light signals:
- If there is one light on the signal -and it is not red- it means: The train can pass the signal with the maximum applicable speed and the light (its colour, continuousity) forecasts the aspect of the next signal.
- If there are two lights on the signal then the lower is always yellow and never flashes. This yellow light means: The train can pass the signal with maximum of 40km/h speed and, the upper light forecasts to the aspect of the next signal. There can be a horizontal green bulb line (or a green 8 ) below the lower yellow light. It means that the train can pass the signal with maximum of 80km/h speed. There can be a green 12 below the lower yellow light. It means that the train can pass the signal with maximum of 120km/h speed. There can be a vertical yellow bulb line (or a yellow 2) below the lower yellow light. It means that the train can pass the signal with maximum of 20km/h speed.
Forecastable speeds:
- The maximum applicable speed is forecasted with a continuous green light.
- The 120 km/h speed is forecasted with a yellow 12 above the main board of the signal.
- The 80 km/h speed is forecasted with a flashing green light or a yellow 8 above the main board of the signal.
- The 40 km/h speed is forecasted with a flashing yellow light or a yellow 4 above the main board of the signal.
- The 0 km/h speed (e.g. Stop!) is forecasted with a continuous yellow light.
Let’s look some examples:
First, the image above shows two different signals – almost. They have the same meaning: The driver can pass the signal with 40km/h speed and an 80km/h speed is forecasted for the next signal.
This second example shows the opposite of the previous image. The driver can pass the signal with 80 km/h speed and an 40 km/h speed is forecasted for the next signal.
Miklós Monostory
Request to Indian Railway minister and senior railway officials
May 22nd, 2010Hon\’ble Minister- Mamta Banerjee / Shri S.S Khurana- Chairman Railway Board To fill the knowledge and talent shortage
Railway Staff College needs to market Track Engineering, Electrification, Signaling Design courses to universities and colleages nationwide. As you are aware that On board signaling equipments are getting sophisticated. We need to do thorough job of preparing our workforce for demanding requirements. I hope you will support my ideas. New technologies adapted for the on-board control systems have inputs from leading edge expertise in the fields of software, hardware and communications;however the current employees ts involved may not have the adequate understanding on signalling and operation. Railway Staff College and IRISET need to take proactive role in ramping up the job oriented courses in Track Engineering, Signaling Design and implementation aspects rapidly. Here are some example of the companies that are offering courses, we understand IR too offers only basic and some intermediate courses but Railway Staff College and IRISET needs to do better job of reaching to schools, colleges and private sector to market the courses and stay on top of the latest technologies. Railway board, IRISET and Railway Staff College should join hands and solve the talent shortage by recruiting top notch trainers/ Professors from IIT train them in Europe on latest technologies and develop high quality courseware and teaching materials. Later these course can then be marketed to REC and other Engineering Colleges. General impression of the public is Railway Staff College/ IRISET is both the institutions are not doing much to develop the future pipeline of trained manpower. Look at China it is sending 350 engineers next month to California for building sophisticated High Speed Rail Network. Indian Railway should develop a comprehensive workforce strategy to address not just local needs but alo international needs. Railway Staff College and IRISET should be asked to act immediately. Jai Bharat!!!
Raj Jain
N.B:-Request for publishing the above has been received through contact us form Raj Jain.
If other readers have similar concerns and request about their nations railways ,and which can be published.Please send it across
Rail Industry Structure in Hungary
May 19th, 2010This is my first post on this blog and I would like to seize the opportunity to introduce the rail industry structure in Hungary. It is not a simple task, since the restructuring is not finished yet, although there are numerous private operators on the network.
The foundation of the current system was laid down by the Railways Act (2005) which created the conditions for the liberalized railway market. Some additional laws and decrees established the main regulation and control structures: the National Transport Authority (NTA), the Transportation Safety Bureau (TSB), and the Railway Regulation Office. This agency merged with the NTA – a year ago.
The Rail Capacity Allocation Office (VPE) is independent of railway undertakings and has nationwide competence in allocating rail network capacity and in determining network access charges.
The state owns and operates the entire infrastructure via its company, the MÁV. The MÁV has a plenty of subsidiaries; the most important ones among them:
- MÁV-START, the largest passenger operator,
- MÁV-TRAKCIÓ, the traction operator
The second largest passenger operator is the GySEV, owned by the Hungarian State (65,6%), the Austrian State (28,2%) and the Strabag SE (6,2%).
The former MÁV CARGO was the MÁV’s property earlier, but it has been privatized and its name changed a month ago to Rail Cargo Hungaria.
Besides, there are 30 independent freight operators width different company sizes – some of them have 2-3 locomotives, others have a large rolling stock fleet.
If you have any question, please, do not hesitate to ask them in a comment. Miklós Monostory
National Transport Authority
Hungary
THE COMPUTER BASED INTERLOCKING ARCHITECTURE
April 18th, 2010Generally following two types of redundancy techniques are used for achieving fail-safety
in the design of signaling systems:
Hardware Redundancy – In this case, more than one hardware modules of identical design with common software are used to carry out the safety functions and their outputs are continuously compared. The hardware units operate in tightly syncronised mode with comparison of outputs in every clock cycle. Due to the tight syncronisation, it is not possible to use diverse hardware or software. In this method, although random failures are taken care of, it is difficult to ensure detection of systematic failures due to use of identical hardware and software.
Software Redundancy – This approach uses a single hardware unit with diverse software. The two software modules are developed independently and generally utilize inverted data structures to take care of common mode failures. However, rigorous self check procedures are required to be adopted to compensate for use of a single Hardware unit.
Hybrid Model – The hardware units have been loosely syncronised where the units operate in alternate cycle and the outputs are compared after full operation of the two modules. Therefore, it is no more required to use identical hardware and software. Although the systems installed in the field utilize identical hardware and software, the architecture permits use of diverse hardware and software. Moreover, operation of the two units in alternate cycles permits use of common system bus and interface circuitry.
SOFTWARE TO TAKE CARE OF DIFFERENT RAILWAY PRACTICES
There are two methods of programming the SSI for a particular station, namely – Geographical Programming & Free-wire Programming. Most of the SSI systems adopt geographical programming where Control Table of the station is fed to the SSI system. This gives great relief to the user as he is not required to make the circuit diagram, data for any station can be programmed very easily. However, this method does not provide flexibility in terms of change of interlocking practice or interlocking rules. Adoption of change in interlocking practice of a particular railway requires changes to be made in the executive software and entails revalidation of the software. On the other hand, Free-wire programming, which requires circuit diagram to be prepared for each station and programmed into the EPROM as Boolean expressions, provides total flexibility as any given circuit can be programmed without touching the executive software. The price, however, is to be paid in terms of preparation of circuit diagram for each station.
Sandeep Patalay
sandeep.patalay@gmail.com
Basic Railway Logic Operation for a One Control Switch
April 18th, 2010- Operator request the route with the help of key board
- A processor /relay logic executes the request.
- Route Set Relay/logic energises
- Point will be called for required position(NLR/RLR)
- Point operates(NWR/RWR)
- Point get locked and detected(NLKPR/RLKPR)
- Route Reverses and locked (RUR picks /NLR drops)
- Route checking will be executed(UCR)
- If available route get approach locked(ALSR drops)
- Route locking applied (USR)
- Signal Clears(HR/HDR/DR picks)
- Signal off status is read back(RGKR pick up)
- After paqssage of train signal replaces(HR drops)
- Or It may be cancelled by signalman
- Stick relay energises(SR)
- Signal Replace to RED(NGKR picks up and RGKR drops)
- Approach locking released (ALSR pick up)
- Route Normalises(RUR drops ,NLR up)
- Route Locking Normalises.
Deepu Dharmarajan