Tag: railroad
Signal Control Centre Maintenance Staffing Assessment
This was a challenging manpower assessment project that was difficult to perform using traditional industrial engineering methodologies due to the highly specialized nature of maintenance crafts within a control centre. The maintenance crafts were divided into different specialities where although the core skills were somewhat similar, the specific knowledge, high level of accuracy, and low latency required for attending to emergency situations essentially alone meant that it was not really possible to cross-train these highly technical employees to cover one another’s jobs. The “emergency response” nature of their jobs also meant that there will necessarily be downtime within their day if no technical faults were reported on their shift. It was simply not possible to enumerate all tasks performed and probability of having to perform that task on a given shift. We took an approach that assessed their “base workload”, that is, tasks related to preventative maintenance, and using probabilities of failures informed by historical failure data we added in the employee-hours required for emergency response, then we assigned the shifts and locations such that as much coverage was provided as possible given the resourcing constraints by assigning the preventative tasks across multiple shifts and at multiple locations (where feasible). Our analytical results formed the basis for justifying an expansion in the planned staffing levels in these highly technical disciplines because we were able to demonstrate that these sophisticated control systems required this level of manning for proper maintenance and incident coverage.
Journey Time Reduction Through Permanent Speed Restriction Review
On behalf of a rail infrastructure owner, we worked with in-house track, signal, and structural engineers as well as an engineering consultant to perform a review of all permanent speed restrictions on a number of high ridership corridors. We reviewed operating documents to identify civil speed restrictions throughout the study area rail network, and by using a train performance calculator, we determined those with the most impact to journey time for non-stop express trains and for local trains. Based on the result of the traction performance study, we arranged meetings with the relevant engineering areas to discover and document the reasons for each civil speed restriction. The engineering consultant provided the top speed potential given the existing track geometry and use of exceptional cant deficiency (underbalance). On occasions, multiple constraints were discovered as having contributed to one speed restriction (e.g. clearance issues or track geometry may restrict maximum authorized speeds, but even if those were removed through e.g. track realignment and resurfacing, spacing between distant and home signals may not permit speeds to be raised above a certain level unless additional work was done to relocate existing signal heads, which could trigger a signal system redesign in high density areas.) Based on the engineering findings, order-of-magnitude cost estimates for modifying the infrastructure constraints, and number of trains affected by each restriction, we produced a prioritized list of schemes to improve journey time performance in specific corridors. This programme of speed improvements formed an input to the national route utilization strategy and a basis for negotiating cost sharing agreements with train operating companies.
Freight Tenant WILD and Manifest Data Processing
For a passenger railway that hosted a number of freight track-rights tenant operators, we served as the business representative on a multilateral project to install wayside Wheel Impact Load Detectors (WILD) and utilize that data for operational purposes (alerts, audits, billing, etc.) The project involved providing the real-time information to the operations control centre (OCC) such that decisions can be made about whether the freight train is permitted to enter the passenger rail territory, and also matching real-time WILD data to a nightly freight manifest export for audit and billing purposes. We were able to design a fuzzy algorithm that matches the WILD data (containing only car IDs, and only some of the time) to the Manifest data (having train IDs, but not always accurate, and often contains ‘complications’ such as cars being dropped off or picked-up en-route, on both scheduled and unscheduled bases). This project improved the accuracy of the Manifest data being transmitted by tenant railroads, and reduced the instances of overweight cars, which indirectly contributed to improved host-tenant relationship.
Operating Plan Production in a Suburban Train Network
For a train operating company, we were responsible for all long-term and short-term schedule planning relating to a network of suburban electric trains that covered five depots, two equipment types, four terminals, and a branching structure including alternate paths, single track segments, and flat junctions. The outputs included working timetables, vehicle diagrams (set manipulations), train crew schedules (work programs), and public timetables. Constraints included labour agreements, train servicing needs, set storage issues, and various infrastructure related constraints. The crewing agreements required mid-route reliefs, physical needs breaks, and daily return to home terminal. The short term operating plans covered engineering related circumstances where special arrangements were required, such as turning sets on the main line, arranging for shuttles where line is blocked in the middle, and additional single line working if one track is closed. Built into this work is the need to ensure conflicts do not occur en-route where two trains are scheduled to use the same track segment or interlocking at the same time, which is both infeasible and has safety implications. Another consideration is to ensure the plan is robust, such that small perturbations to either train departure times or minor irregularities in crewing does not result in network-wide delays or train cancellations. Aside from producing feasible pairings where every train and every set is covered by a valid crew, we were also responsible for minimizing the resource requirements for cost control and flexibility reasons. Additionally, at that time the company was testing a new operating plan database software, so we participated in the testing and documented any anomalies we found.