Train Delay Control System

Introduction

Railways are always considered to be the pride of each nation, due to the fact that railways represent, on their own, a complete accurate communication system, linking people all over the national territory, in the most safe and speedy way. Accuracy in time is one of the major success key issues of operating railways’ networks; therefore deeply analyzing the delays’ causes and taking immediate corrective actions, avoiding repetition of the delay cause, is considered to be a vital issue in railways operations.

As the Egyptian National Railways authority has started a serious restructuring process, it was imperative to closely control and monitor trains’ schedules in order to maintain one of the most important railway’s traditions which is to be up to the minute on time.

Therefore the main objective of eT3 Trains’ Delay Control System, was to develop a managerial instrument capable of providing ENR’s management accurate data concerning any train delay including the delay’s main cause as well as the delay’s sub-causes on a real time basis in order to take appropriate immediate corrective actions.

In order to accomplish this objective, eT3 designed the trains’ delay control system as a web base application providing information at any time anywhere exclusively to ENR’s authorized personnel via a secured Intranet connectivity.

Overall System Architectur

The following picture is illustrating the overall system architecture:

1. The ENR’s Delay’s system server is actually hosting the eT3 trains’ delay control application in addition to the data base storing all the application’s data, and is connected to the Intranet network via a high speed leased line.2. ENR’s system administrator will be responsible of maintaining the data base master tables such as the users, the train/trip, delay causes tables in addition to the normal administration functions such as back-up and restore the database.3. In the first implementation phase, the trains’ monitoring process is centrally (at Ramses main Hub) performed by Supervision and Planning Group known as SPG agents who are currently responsible of monitoring the several train/trips performed by ENR and inputting the actual departure/arrival time of each train/trip and recording the delay’s causes when ever applicable using eT3 application.4. ENR’s top management is now capable at any time of the day to follow time table accuracy from eT3 application and accordingly take immediate appropriate corrective actions avoiding future delays.

5. Future phases will be to deploy the application in all railways station covering each ENR’s region.

Application Features

The following bullet points are summarizing eT3 application features: –

Dual Language Feature

Dual language capability in eT3 application is providing all screens in either Arabic or English according to the user selection who is actually free to select the interface language at any point of time in the application; the following picture example is representing the same screen shot in both the two languages;

Delay Concepts Feature

Upon train departure time the actual time entered by SPG’s agent is compared with the ENR’s schedule time stored into the data base if they are different the agent will be prompted to select one or more of the main delay reasons and accordingly one of the sub-reasons related to the main reason .

During the train trip, SPG’s agent will type the arrival actual time to the first stopping station and this time will be compared with the schedule time stored for this stopping station once again if they are different the agent will be prompted to select one or more of the main delay reasons and accordingly one of the sub-reasons related to the main reason and so on for all the stopping stations of the trip.

The same process will be performed for the departure time on each stopping station.

If the departure time on one of the stopping stations was correct (Actual time = Schedule Time) but the arrival actual time was greater than the schedule time in the next stopping station it means that the delay was between the two stations and of course the delay main reason as well as its related sub-reason will be documented.

Finally at arrival station the process is performed for the last time on this train/trip.

Calculated Schedule Time Feature

eT3 application is calculating a field called “Calculated Schedule Time” as appearing on the following pictures’ example;

eT3 designed the delay control application to fulfill ENR’s technical requirements as the following points are completely covered by the application: –

Trains are linked with lines and regions.

Directions are linked with trains and lines; direction are usually “Upper” to specify that the train is going up from Mediterranean sea level to any other destination within the same line, while “Lower” will be used to specify that the train within this line is returning back to the original destination of this line.

Train types are also kept into the database, such Air condition, sleeping cars, 2^nd class, mixed, or other trains

eT3 delivers Train Delay Control System to Egypt National Railway