Computer assisted railway control system for Sri Lanka railways

Abstract

This paper describes about the design and implementation of the Computer Assisted Railway Control System for Sri Lanka Railways. Currently, the train traffic control system of Sri Lanka Railways has two control units. They are Outstation and Metropolitan control units. In the outstation unit, controllers spend more time in manually plotting the TDG (Time Distance Graph) than decision making and for reporting purposes the same data are re-entered. In the metropolitan unit, switch boards in illumination based panel is used to monitor and control train traffic. This panel has many drawbacks such as congested layout, unclear information and unreliable bulbs and switches. So at the end of the day, all these problems contribute to trains getting delayed. The proposed system is built using 4-tier networked architecture which addresses the aforementioned drawbacks and bottlenecks. Features such as TDG, TDG Designer, Track Designer, Dispatcher Control View, Rules Editor, Train Timetable, Traffic Control Playback, Auto Train Supervision and Reporting have helped to improve the overall operation of Centralized Train Traffic Controlling of Sri Lanka Railways. Moreover, the solution comprises a high performance and more reliable hardware unit with higher I/O capacity that provides a hardware interface between the proposed system and the existing electromechanical interlocking system. The solution was successfully tested at Maradana Control Office and Dcmatagoda Workshop with the presence of senior officials from Sri Lanka Railways. The test results obtained depict that the system has helped to improve the overall train controlling operations of Sri Lanka Railways and proved its potential for implementation.